Welcome to the 53nd episode of the Mediatwits podcast, with Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali as co-hosts. We were off on hiatus the past few months while Mark was getting a kidney transplant and Rafat was launching his new travel startup, Skift.
This week we are looking at a couple big online video intiatives: the new HuffPost Live video channel that will stream 12 hours per day 5 days per week; and the new YouTube Elections Hub that includes video content from eight editorial partners and will live-stream the upcoming political conventions and debates. We were joined by HuffPost’s Roy Sekoff, YouTube’s Olivia Ma and GigaOm columnist Liz Shannon Miller.
Guest Bios
Roy Sekoff is the founding editor of the Huffington Post, and is president and co-creator of HuffPost Live. Before helping launch the Huffington Post, he was a writer, producer, and on-air correspondent for Michael Moore’s “TV Nation” show, and served as Communications Director for Arianna Huffington’s 2003 gubernatorial campaign.
Liz Shannon Miller currently works as a staff writer on G4’s “Attack of the Show” and writes a regular column for the tech site GigaOM about online video.
Olivia Ma is YouTube’s News and Politics Manager. She oversees YouTube’s news programming strategy, working closely with both news organizations and citizen reporters using the site to share news video around the world. Olivia has produced three YouTube Interviews with President Obama and last fall’s Fox News/Google GOP Primary Debate.
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Intro and outro music by 3 Feet Up; mid-podcast music by Autumn Eyes via Mevio’s Music Alley.
Here are some highlighted topics from the show:
Intro
0:30: Mark recovers from his kidney transplant
1:30: Rafat launches Skift.com
4:45: Rundown of topics on our show
HuffPost Live
6:00: Special guests Roy Sekoff and Liz Shannon Miller
8:45: Sekoff: We wanted to bring comments front and center on HuffPost Live
12:00: Sekoff: The focus is on great conversations and not commercial breaks
14:20: HuffPost Live will change with feedback as they go
16:41: Miller: I could enjoy HuffPost Live passively or actively
19:45: Sekoff: We’re not about breaking news but we want tohave conversations about the news
YouTube Elections Hub
22:10: Special guest Olivia Ma
25:00: Ma: Storyful will help curate the best political videos on YouTube
26:45: Ma: Popular political videos are coming from users, candidates and news orgs
28:30: Sekoff: HuffPost was launched around the same time as YouTube in 2005
More Reading (and Watching)
Arianna Huffington launches HuffPost Live with combination of new and old at Guardian
HuffPost Live: a terrible debut, but don’t rule out online video at Guardian
Overdosing on HuffPost Live at Adweek
HuffPost Live launches at CJR
Political junkies take note: YouTube launches new Elections Hub at L.A. Times
YouTube Launches 2012 Elections Hub at FoxNews.com
PEJ Study on Master Narratives in Campaign at Project for Excellence in Journalism
Weekly Poll
Don’t forget to vote in our weekly poll, this time about how you’ll be following the political conventions:
Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian and fiancee Renee. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit. and Circle him on Google+