Alternative forms of media continue to offer new opportunities
This week I started a new venture (what else is new?) to broadcast interviews using online video and audio technologies. The show is called "Point to Point." We'll see if I can manage a weekly production (and it is a production, despite the promotion that online access is easy -- it ain't!). It is also sponsored by www.YallaTunes.com, which is an online social networking site for Arabs and Arab Americans that features news videos and music videos. It is also cohosted by the National Arab American Times Newspaper (www.AATimesNews.com).
My first show was posted today (at www.ArabAmericanTVOnline.com) and features two veteran Palestinian-Israeli dialogue facilitators Len and Libby Traubman. They are in San Francisco. I am in Chicago. All you need are two cameras, we each had one on our computers, and audio capabilities (which can be challenging). Using MegaMeeting.com, a pay per month subscription service that offers video conferencing to major corporations, and gerry-rigging the audio (although you can hear the interview back and forth, not all computers offer full duplex technologies to permit recording it -- why, because tekkies don't think about what's good for the consumer, they only worry about the mundane details of the software programming).
This is a first effort, featuring Arab American and Arab World interviews. They are 10 minutes long. I think 10 minutes is long enough for a TV feature interview -- although my other Cable TV shows in Chicago are 30 Minutes long and my radio show each week is 2 hours long -- although the radio interviews come down to about 20 minute to 30 minute segments. And the quality of the programming will improve.
Regardless, the quality will only improve. I am using Camtasia software to record the screen. Camtasia does a great job of recording yourself, and your own screen, but offers very difficult and limited abilities to record full duplex audio coming and going. (They say it does, but it doesn't. Take my word for it. I'd have to buy a brand new computer with a special audio feature to make it work and that defeats the purpose of using online technology, which is supposed to not only make communications accessible, but also affordable.
So, I have a mini-digital recorder spliced to my headset (using a y-chord plug) and I record everything I hear. Of course, the digital recorder doesn't record my voice that great because the headset doesn't think that it's importan tot let me hear myself in my own earphones as well as the otherside can hear me because, again, tekkies just assume we don't want to hear our own voices.
Have you ever met a real journalist? These tekkies need to get outdoors more often.
So enjoy the show. I have several people slated to do interviews. If you are interested in experimenting and being a guinea pig, just email me ... especially if you have something close to an issue involving the Middle East.
Ray Hanania
rayhanania@comcast.net
www.NAAJA-US.com
Oh ... and PS ... we soon will have another blogger joining mehear ... Arab American journalist Lara Salahi. Yeppie!