Vlogs and other new-media ideas

A few new-media ideas for the Star and NS Radio:

Vlog is short for video blog. See www.rocketboom.com for an example. I don’t think hard news would be the best fare for this to succeed on the Star's site. Something more entertainment related. Maybe Flavor could help develop and contribute to it, since some of their content translates well to a video format. Sports, too. A couple of minutes a day would be long enough. For example:

• The Diet Coke and Mentos experiment you did this spring, and other strange science experiments, would be perfect for this.
• How-to cooking features
• Photo polls
• Football tailgating
• Funny takes on soft news stories that have been in the Star, like the Cole fountain, new Subway (could even play it like you think NIU is getting an underground train).
  Tours of campus buildings and random interviews with people inside.

We have budgeted for a digital video camera this year. Remember, though, that this kind of stuff needn’t have high production value. In fact, sometimes the cheesier it looks, the more fun and better received it is. The key factors: Is it smart and funny? And we also would want regular hosts who are good on camera.

We could sell advertising around this, obviously. If it’s consistently well-done, I think we could build a loyal audience.

NS Radio and Star Sports could do a daily Huskie Sports video update, too – maybe incorporating highlight video from sports info.

I wonder if this might be the future for NS Radio – producing audio and video podcasts and vlogs that users could download and play any time, anywhere.

- Jim