Hey folks, just a reminder that the voting
continues over at Current.tv, the new television vehicle that Al Gore has attached his name to. They’ve got a
contest going on for the best citizen videos and have put five finalists online. Yours truly has a piece there called
Varanasi Postcard about a trip to India I took last August. I’d appreciate your vote if you can
spare a moment (I promise this is the last time I’ll ask).
All the pieces are good, I think, and the whole enterprise deserves some attention. The fact is when it comes to TV,
there are still pitifully few real outlets for the average person to tell his/her story. And with the proliferation of
high-quality video cameras like the Sony PD-170 and the Panasonic 24P models (not to mention even cheap standard models
which still can tell a great story in the hands of the right person), amateur journalists and TV producers can really
make an impact.
If current lives up to its statement of purpose, it could take off and become a new kind of citizen’s TV, truly
democratizing a medium that has largely been in the hands of a few dominant players. Let’s all cross our fingers that
they pull it off. And in the meantime, get over there and vote for whoever you think did the best job.