Video blogs are becoming a common addition to multimedia websites due to the rise of affordable and easy to use equipment. One of my favourite websites on the internet is Youtube and the popularity of this site has provided world wide exposure to both media and citizen generated vblogs. I believe that the vblog has a genuine place in multimedia journalism. You only have to think about how much communication you are missing out on when only working with written communication....the tone of voice, facial expressions and live action.
A good illustrative example of effective vblogging is the political website Alive in Baghdad. This website employs Iraqi journalists to produce video packages each week about daily life in war torn Iraq, as experienced by ordinary citizens. While there are thousands of very ordinary videoblogs in cyberspace, Alive in Iraq covers unique content that is both newsworthy and visually interesting. Each video is also complemented by a written explanation. Most importantly, our normal television news has seldom reported the war from the point of view of an Iraqi citizen, so Alive in Bagdad effectively fills a gap in war reporting.
Click on the below video for an example of how vblogging can be newsworthy:
But vblogs aren't always about news. The video below, though not of the same professional quality, illustrates how vblogs can effectively be used for personal communication:
Not everybody is good at telling their story and some people aren't very good at determining whether their story is interesting to tell. Others are not very skilled in multimedia technology or don't have quality equipment. But there is also some quality stuff out there and I imagine that as video blogs become more popular and technology improves, so will the content.
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