What a week.
Monday saw my first ever lecture. Kristine Lowe explained to the students why we should all blogging. The ‘Do’s and Don’t’s of Blogging’ was my part — I spoke for 20 or so minutes. I think it went down well: a good new Lincoln blog appeared the next day. I’m glad at least one person caught the ‘buzz’.
My lecturers had some very kind comments for me afterwards, which I’m delighted about. It certainly bodes well for my New Zealand trip in May.
Hopefully by Monday I’ll have a recording of my talk, so I can stick it up on here for you all to enjoy/disagree with!
Then we had an earthquake. Awesome. I was up in my room at the time, about to go to bed, when all the empty cans on my desk rattled about and fell off, and then it got even more violent. In case you haven’t heard, Lincoln was right on top of the epicentre, so we got a good hit. All very exciting.
Then I posted THAT video. I remember thinking, at the time, that if I could get the video online quickly I’d stand a good chance of getting some hits in.
And then it all kicked off.
I woke up in the morning to find 20 emails from YouTube. Comments… and plenty of ‘em. It’s really quite funny, apparently, and I started to wonder quite how far this might all go.
Then I got a message from Julian March, saying how much he enjoyed it, and that he’d love to mention it on the Sky News Editors’ Blog. Which he did. I did what every cheeky student journalist should do in this situation — and applied for some work experience.
Then the Guardian got involved. “Give them a job at sky,” says the post on the Media Monkey blog. Couldn’t agree more, chaps.
Then, through the wonderful medium that is Facebook, I got this message: “In case no-one from Sky has got in touch with you to let you know, your video has caused a great deal of amusement within the newsroom. As I’m sure you can imagine, Sky likes nothing better than to beat the BBC to a story.”
That was from the Sky News presenter that night, Faye Barker.
Some more blogs got going. Journalism.co.uk wrote about it (although, mysteriously, the entry has now gone). Paul Bradshaw added his thoughts on the matter here.
Perhaps the most bizarre reaction was from a group of Sunderland students who emailed with some great comments after seeing the clip in a lecture. “I have been in a lecture since nine this morning, i’m tried, i’m irritable and I havn’t washed in days. But by god, the video you posted made me forget all my sorrows and now I feel clean again! Thanks for the emotional wash Dave pet,” wrote Lisa, who gloriously added ‘pet’ at the end too. Love it.
Back to Sky. I was contacted by Rob Kirk — editorial development manager for Sky News — who asked me to give him a call. Last time I’d spoken to Rob was while he was on his holidays, I was covering a story for Press Gazette about an internship he was running. Anyway, I gave him a ring, and he has asked if he can use the clip in a promotional video for Sky. Unbelievable.
Even more unbelievable is that he has invited me down for the day, and also offered to try and fit me in for some work experience in the near future; hopefully around Easter.
Which, I don’t really have to tell you, excites me a lot. Especially when I hear that they’ve been inspired by Jeff Jarvis this week. It seems that Sky might be the newsroom I’ve dreamed of: Multimedia everywhere. I’m not sure what I could possibly contribute to the whole situation, but I’m certainly looking forward to visiting. Just the very nature Sky got in touch tells me they are all tuned in: Julian sent a private message on YouTube, and Faye used Facebook. Says a lot, I think.
To top off the week (which, by the way, included a 2000 word essay and an ‘interview’ assessment day…. I almost forgot my course existed until they came along and knocked me into shape..), we did the SU Election Liveblog for the newspaper. And it went extremely well — some really good content, and over 2000 hits. A great result.
In retrospect, this whole affair with the video has been a strange one. I stick by the reasons for making the video — I still find it shocking — but do feel a bit ‘dirty’ for slating the BBC. It’s like the England football team. Sometimes I’m flabbergasted at how awful they are yet, after a good sleep, I find myself supporting them even more.
I could make a 2-hour long video about all the things the BBC does brilliantly. Better than Sky. It just so happened that on this occasion the BBC fell on their face in a massive way. I’m yet to hear any response from BBC, but this blog has been linked to via this url which I can’t access. It’s the BBC’s intranet. I’m dying to know what’s being said — so if anyone can find out, that would be great.
To finish this point on a lighter note, I’d like to tell a little story. I work, part time, at a Staples store in Lincoln. It’s a dull job, but one thing happened today that will live with me forever.
We’ve just had CCTV installed, and like many places, we have a monitor at the front of the store to make it obvious people are being filmed. Today, a little lad aged about 4 or 5, saw this screen. Like most children, he found it fascinating. Unlike most children, however, this particular lad found that the funnest use of this technology was to, er, drop his trousers. Bless the little fella. I hope for his sake he eventually grows out of it.
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