2024 AND RETURNING TO THE DREAM CROSSROAD
2024 AND RETURNING TO A DREAM. In the summer of 2005 I received a phone call from the US whilst out on a film shoot at 11 pm in Central London. The caller pleasantly asked if I would be willing to come to New York. They’d fly me over and put me up at the Marriott Hotel. A week later I did, and the following morning found myself at the the revered National Press Club in Washington DC alongside some of the world’s leading media in the audience.
At the lectern, thinking how surreal this all is, I spoke about a dream that I had conceived. It was a video platform showing cinema journalism films and articles from around the world. This was before YouTube. Viewmagazine.tv the platform made it to 1st place at the Knight Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism.
The news was only ever reported in one UK publication, the Press Gazette here. Viewmagazine.tv ran for a couple of years before I converted it into a platform around my interdisciplinary work and interaction with experts. Students have written about it over the years, more recently liking it to “an entire media school” …”shaping knowledge of the industry”.
Nineteen years later with several interactions behind me that include, Google, the British Library, creating AI features, chairing my universities Global Future of Journalism conference for almost 400 academics, and reviewing million pound projects for funders, a little more wiser I’ve an idea.
Five things shaped the idea.
1. Greater diversity in tech, creativity and storytelling.
2. Hearing from young talent, their stories — the ups and downs — that have led them to their own dreams.
3. Bringing together global experts to mentor them. The experts also share their stories.
3. Target the talent which is in that in-between space of uni and finding their job. There’s a huge untapped gap.
4. Revising the way universities create knowledge by producing real-life interdisciplinary projects that offer an alternative for developing richer knowledge
5. Create tech stories that envelop social attitudes and are seeped in cinema journalism. ( See link for cinema journalism here)
Then what if we could wrap this into one digital publication. I have and it’s called Media Hyphenates. It’s a platform providing inspiring diverse global stories of young talented innovators and storytellers alongside veteran journalism experts and entrepreneurs. Fourteen writers in 124 pages, because something else I’ve learned over the years. No matter how and what we do, we revel in being part of a community. And as individuals we give time to gatherings of people in communities sharing experiences.
