Herald Media Partners

  I suspect that we will shortly be returning to this matter of media ownership, assuming we had departed from it in the first place, of course.  Given the thirst for post-mature forms of media - though millions of Caribbean people bear no resemblance to the wired middle classes of North America in terms of access to ICT - we still need to discuss forms of traditional media that may be more responsive and responsible to the needs of our people, certainly while embracing new technologies and forms of communication that include more voices and audiences rather than further splintering them. Tangentially speaking, we also need to resist the temptation to cite change in some parts of the world to justify inaction in ours. Already in the Caribbean, a new 'digital elite' spread myth as gospel: so-called social media have made traditional media obsolete, that the smartphone has made terrestrial television and the newspaper and the radio irrelevant anachronisms and that the citiz...

Professor Aggrey Brown   "Rather, in examining and assessing what the media are in the Caribbean, we came upon the question - Talking with Whom? Do we have infrastructures and channels for communication without communications processes in the Caribbean?"  - from "Talking with Whom", Brown and Sanatan, 1987. For hundreds of us in the Caribbean - the name meant, and means, so much. Aggrey. Aggrey the teacher, Aggrey the torturer, Aggrey the brain, Aggrey the critic, Aggrey the angry, the sage, the visionary, the thinker, the talker. Dare we see his like again? I hope so. If any of his searing intellect, his fiery passion, his incisive and insightful criticism - and his caring about and for the West Indian Civilisation are anything to go by, then there are scores of Aggreys in the making, thanks to him, ever since 1974. For 22 tumultuous years, he was Mr. CARIMAC , synonymous with the training school, research crucible, lab and temple for Caribbean c...

 Caribbean Media Centre, Bridgetown (CMC) A question mark need not follow that headline, as it so often appends itself to ideas on this and many other little rocks in the Atlantic pond. I return to something I've been advocating and others have been talking about for some time now - a media farm: a single cooperative space where media artists and entrepreneurs can operate; a cottage industry in air-conditioned comfort; a one-stop shop for clients and creators - its eventual shape can be limited only by our imagination... and our resolve. I know of many Barbadian producers and filmmakers who crave a place to lay their hats, grab face time in a conference room, 'hold a corner' for their creative engine room, get access to a decent printer/copier etc. Picture a score of office enclosures, one-room suites and a central large space that's farmed out to occupants freely and at cost to outsiders - a soundstage or multicamera studio with audience bleachers, perhaps. S...

The Five Basic Methods of Market Research | Marketing & Advertising Market Research & Analysis from AllBusiness.com

Full disclosure: this may be viewed as somewhat self-serving. It may well be. I feel I have some idea of what it must feel like to be Andrew Mason. A lot of people like him for what he does and a helluva lot of people hate him for it. A lot more people don't like what he does and plenty more people hate him for it. I, too, will admit to having inhabited all of the above camps over the years, going back to 1983 when as a gangly youngster I would record his CBC Player of the Day programmes on Saturday afternoons at CBC Radio. Andrew can be as acerbic as he can be saccharine, witty as well as woefully cliché-ridden, energetic and enervating all at once. I have lived to hear him wish for the day when an elite panel of expert regional cricket commentators would be created, then hear him criticise the very idea of a panel when CANARadio (later CMC) created CricketPlus , which I produced from its inception until 2001. He was on that panel, too. The word 'mercurial' is for ther...

By Julius Gittens Derek Walcott's poem, "A city's death by fire", is a poignant and memorable recollection of the Great Fire of 1948 in Central Castries that razed three-quarters of the town. It left 2,000 people homeless, many of them with nothing left but the clothes on their backs. Accounts from newspapers of the time speak of the gutting of much of St Lucia's history dating back to Amerindian settlement - the destruction of government offices, including the Education Department to the public library, said to contain one of the best reference sections in the West Indies, to private collections of Carib artefacts and papers since settlement. Walcott, a gangly 18-yea-old on the cusp of literary greatness after meeting the great Frank Collymore that very year, was a stunned witness who all day "walked abroad among the rubbled tales, shocked at each wall that stood on the street like a liar". His chronicle by candlelight of Castries's death by f...

This is tough to write because a sick man is a sick man, whoever he is. We have been trained by our parents not to kick a man when he is down. We do not make light of illness. We are told not to disregard the impact of illness on a man or woman and their family. So, this is tough to write, also because in following age-old manners, I might be seen to be breaking another tradition. That tradition is to go away and curl up in a corner, away from public attention, when we are ill - that your illness is nobody's business but your own. It is a tradition rooted in some hypocrisy; witness the enormous traffic at visiting hours in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, by families, friends, acquaintances, fellow churchgoers, work mates, play mates, even the odd enemy. Serious illness tends to bring out the best in our humanity. I've witnessed, and participated in, the laying on of hands, the soulful touch, the kind and steady eye contact, the soft word, the cheerful smile, the disarming chu...

When Samuel Morse perfected the electric telegraph in 1844, he sent a message using his brand new code of dots and dashes: "What God Hath Wrought". So began the whirlwind of modern telecommunications that has swept continent and island so remorselessly ever since. Too often in these heady days of technological change and complexity I am left staggering with the same plaintive cry, "what God hath wrought". I am not in awe but in woe. I cannot know precisely what Morse's motives were in sending those words. He did not attach a footnote. We can surmise somewhat safely that it was the humble oblation of a God-fearing man to his original inventor, the Man Upstairs. I do wonder, though, if Morse, finger ready at the single key, became at once struck by the likely implications and impact of his machines and the wires that connected them. Just maybe, he peered into the crystal ball and saw an abyss - more messages to stir up a phony war than those to catch a murde...

A comprehensive public education programme was produced for the Caribbean on earthquakes, and unveiled two months before the horrific 2010 Haiti earthquake. But the Caribbean media wanted to get paid to run the public service announcements and educational programmes - a mix of music videos, animation and tips for everyone from policymakers to media to general public. So check for yourself at www.weready.org . The message: Drop, Cover and Hold On.

To harness, by naming, creation around; To label, unwritten, folk thoughts that abound; To fight life, with language sole arm of the fighter, Their tongue is the pen of a ready writer. - Richard Allsopp, 1923-2009 As professions involved in the daily use, appreciation and embrace of the written and spoken word, journalism and broadcasting in Barbados and throughout the Caribbean owe Richard Allsopp a tremendous debt of gratitude for his devotion of a half-century's work to mapping the English Language as it has evolved in the Caribbean. His crowning achievement, "The Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage", published in 1996 after 25 years of toil, remains as vitally important a reference tool as the "Oxford Concise Dictionary". Indeed, not only do we credit Professor Allsopp for ensuring the entry of authentically Caribbean words into the global English lexicon but for his insistence on the appropriate usage of English in a ...

Dr. Mark DaCosta Alleyne, brilliant communications scholar, author, journalist and broadcaster, and former features editor of The Bajan magazine died suddenly on Wednesday, May 20th, in Guatemala City. He was 47. Mark, associate professor of communications at Georgia State University, died from cardiac arrest at a hospital in Guatemala City, where he had been admitted after apparently developing pneumonia, his long-time friend and former colleague, Reudon Eversley, said. His death was also reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday, May 21st. Mark was overseeing six Georgia State students on a Spanish-language immersion course in Guatemala when he took ill. He developed pneumonia, was admitted to ICU, then moved to a regular ward on Tuesday May 19th and appeared to be on the mend but went into cardiac arrest during the night and died on Wednesday morning around 9, Reudon said. Funeral services are planned for Atlanta and a memorial service in Barbados. He was Features Edi...

No Fixed Place: Migrant Children and Education Cargado por JPAGmedia . - Mira películas y shows de TV enteros. Produced for UNICEF, this film examines the impact that the children of migrant workers in the Eastern Caribbean - mostly from Haiti and the Dominican Republic - are making on the region's education system, and asks whether education has adapted to the influx. Written and presented by Julius Gittens; Associate Producers Thalia Remy, Leroy Adolphus and Ben Meade; Photographed and edited by Lester Ifill. A Faith Motion Video production for UNICEF.

A Child's Right to Grow and Learn: The Roving Caregivers Cargado por JPAGmedia . - Mira películas y shows de TV enteros. A mini-documentary about how Christian Children's Fund's Roving Care Programme in Dominica reaches children from birth to three years of age while providing early stimulation for children and parenting education for parents. Young volunteers in the island's Carib Community and five other remote villages make regular visits to families and involve children in play that helps them develop motor, perceptual, emotional and thinking skills. They also offer tips to parents about how best to promote children’s health and safety. Written, produced and narrated by Julius Gittens; photographed and edited by Lester Ifill. A Faith Motion Video Production.

It's time we abandon our fatigued approach to talk radio in the Caribbean, with its open-phones: ever-swirling vortices of ignorance, prejudice and cynicism, with banality at the core. Move away from lazy open-phone shows, avoid "today we'll talk about..." or "our topic for today is..." BANNED. Don't even mention the word 'topic' or 'subject' on air.... From now on the issue/event/personality is actually a question and is posed in the form of a question. It's what any reporter starts with; you could do worse. Listen also to the talk radio shows I've highlighted. Web sites: Jeremy Vine, BBC Radio 2 and LBC 97.3 FM/London . The concept: POSE QUESTIONS as headlines for a segment as opposed to " next, we talk about diabetes ." RATHER: " What would you do if you doctor says you have diabetes?" OR " Are you controlling your diabetes ?" OR "Why is Diabetes killing so many Antiguans?" QUE...

It would be nothing short of astounding for a professional journalist to assume that entering a political campaign would be acceptable, ethical conduct, even in industries where some media organisations declare and promote bias. The principle of impartiality and neutrality – the most basic requirement of a professional journalist would be breached. The principle of neutrality is a commonsense ethical principle that need not be codified; it is part of the toolkit that a professional journalist brings to the job. Just as you need not have a published code of ethics to fire a plagiarizing or lying writer, you need not spell out the long-established ethical principle that journalists avoid conflicts of interest. Reporting on the news of the day involves reporting on the government and those who seek public office. Politics requires persuasive communication on the part of a candidate; how is the voter to choose wisely if he or she cannot be sure that the journalist seeking office or promoti...

If you can afford it, there's Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro), which brought non-linear digital audio editing to the masses of lowly radio producers and reporters in 1996. Radio hasn't been the same since... But it costs a bundle, now that it's part of the Adobe Creative Suite bundle... For my students, I've posted this introductory video tutorial to basic recording and editing with the next best thing - Audacity. It's FREE software, almost every bit as powerful as a full-featured Adobe Audition version 1.5, and it's available for download at www.audacity.sourceforge.net/ Here's how to go about downloading Audacity version 1.2.6: Now here's a short video tutorial on editing audio with Audacity: For continued learning on Audacity download these handy guides to Audio Editing by Mindy McAdams, in Adobe Acrobat files (.pdf): Super-Fast Guide to Audio Editing Editing Audio with Audacity (Part 2) But wait! There's more! Transom.org, par...

Way off the beaten radio track, I enjoyed producing election night for CNMG Television in Trinidad. Thanks to Knolly Whiskey for his great work in making the set design a reality, and to a great team of journalists and technical people at C. And respect due, of course, to the King of News/Talk, Julian Rogers, who fronted several hours of groundbreaking tv... Video did not kill the radio star!

I blog. You decide. Moyers and Olbermann - who was Goliath and who was David? No injuries reported, no giants slain. Only interesting insights into the arguments over news commentary versus screeching. Can Olbermann be added to the list of "screechers" along with O'Reilly and Limbaugh? Are they boundaries over which a good news commentator should not cross? Is this a liberal versus conservative argument (no accounting for taste, say the Romans) or is this about a commentator whose main selling point is the fact-count rather than the decibel level? Supporters distinguish Olbermann from the pack as actually being right, even prescient, about what he says about the Bush administration (his favourite food); critics say he's a liberal attack dog. But pay special attention to the interviewer. Bill Moyers proves why he's a worthy heir of the Murrow legacy at CBS - on PBS. Interviewing is 90 per cent listening. Read below and see why. By the way, Moyers himself was a news...