Thursday, June 7, 2007

Mission Statement

We are the new media generation! We've got cameras and we know how to use them! We're here to crash the party that the big media gatekeepers have been having at our expense for about the past 25 years. If it's relevant, independently produced video using the web and we can find it, talk about it or make it ourselves, we want to share it here. We love the new developments the web is bringing when it comes to sharing information on video. We see every new video we find out there as another crash of the battering ram against the gates of the media conglomerates, especially the TV news media.

The universe of internet video is growing larger every day. A lot of it is just promotions or clips from regular old TV and a lot more of it is barely watchable. Then there's all the cute pet and people tricks. . . . The good news is that there are also a lot of great independent video producers and journalists out there that are just starting to come into their own in this new outlet. It is their work we want to share with you.

We are web video producers ourselves and we want to bring our own voices to the table in this universe but we also want to help show you all the great stuff by other people who inspire us. We want to seek them out from many different domains and bring them all together here in one convenient place where we can all learn from what we find.

You are important in this journey too. Let us know if we miss something:

mediacrashers@gmail.com


What Kind of Media Do We Post?

We look at all kinds of media but Media Crashers is primarily a web video related site. Pictures, articles audio and other media forms will will show up here but the primary focus is on good video content that is independent of media conglomerates and originating on the web.

There is no particular subject that we want to stick with or exclude. You will find a little of everything. It could be a music video, a creative slide show, a documentary, a short film. It could be entertaining or informational or both. It could be news, commentary, politics, technology, cooking, skiing, fishing. . . you get the idea.

One thing you can count on is that our choices will usually be examples of what we consider the "new media." This is a development over the past 5 years that began with the text based blogs and is now quickly incorporating audio and video. It is a wildly independent media being built by ordinary people and creative entrepreneurs.

Another thing you can count on here is that the media we post will usually have a meaningful perspective. We want to show the world that the work being done on the web is more than pets, stunts and webcam videos. There is a growing body of independent producers doing good work on their own out here that is really beginning to show some relevance. Distribution is the final frontier for the desktop video producer and YouTube is just the first ship that started bringing people there to explore it. The very definitions of "People's Media" and "New Media" are still being written. We want to help show what we think they are becoming.

Finally, we generally look for work that stands out to us in some way. This is hard to define. It may be a story that isn't being told by the mainstream news or a famous person doing independent work outside the system. It could be something that is a past web video success somehow and we are cataloging it. It could be something that got grass roots recognition like lots of views on YouTube. It may be an inspiring approach or technique, it could be something that makes a great statement or a point that needs to be made, it could be just a great work of art.

This is all a tall order we know. Fortunately, we love digging this kind of stuff up so hopefully we can get it right more often than not.

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