The New Multimedia

In this issue, our longtime Contributing Editor Barry Braverman reports from India, where he's multitasking with the XDCAM HD (see p. 52). The idea that a cinematographer would simultaneously shoot feature film footage, DVD bonus material, an HBO behind-the-scenes special, and a daily video blog would have seemed — and would have been — impossible not so very long ago. Today, that old term “multimedia” takes on a whole new, more literal meaning.

So it is for us in journalism. There was a time when publishing a monthly magazine was a full-time job (much as shooting second unit would have filled a cinematographer's day). But now, with advances in production and distribution technology, we can — and must — communicate over all the transoms available to us.

Right now, we are working on two things I want to draw your attention to: As we go to press, we are preparing to do audio podcasts and a blog from the Sundance film festival. We did a similar blog last year, and it was a very satisfying project. While the rest of the Sundance press chases celebrities and news of multi-million-dollar deals, we talk to editors, cinematographers, and visual effects artists — our unsung constituency. Last year, I was amazed at how much they appreciated having the chance to speak to an audience who knew what their accomplishments really meant. Check out this year's blog at blog.digitalcontentproducer.com/sundance.

I also want to point out our Briefing Room blog (blog.digitalcontentproducer.com/briefingroom). This is an ongoing virtual press conference, where invited publicists post press releases, pictures, podcasts, and other news on a daily basis. These announcements come right from the source, so it's a good resource for information on product debuts, hirings, and projects. It's not a substitute for the reviews and analysis we do editorially, but it provides basic publicity data in a single location, and it will often be the first place you see news such as Adobe's recent announcement that Premiere Pro was getting back together with the Mac.

We decided to start The Briefing Room because our traffic reports told us that users read a lot of press releases and seem to find them valuable. We felt it was useful to make more press releases available and be clear about what they were. In this way, readers can clearly distinguish between a press release and a piece that is based on editorial enterprise such as a review (or Barry's feature story). All these types of information have their value, and it is a basic rule of journalism to simply identify the source of information. We're proud of The Briefing Room and grateful for the efforts of the publicists who support it. I hope you'll have a look and let me know what you think.

Finally, you can check out our YouTube debut if you like. Just search for Digital Content Producer, and you'll see our podcasts with Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese. I guess we really have bought into the New Mutimedia.