From TVTV to YouTube: A Genealogy of Participatory Practices in Video

Author(s): Stephanie Tripp

Source: Journal of Film and Video , Vol. 64, No. 1-2 (Spring/Summer 2012), pp. 5-16
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the University Film & Video
Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jfilmvideo.64.1-2.0005

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From TVTV to YouTube:
A Genealogy of Participatory Practices in Video

stephanie tripp

chris hill’s description of early ex- The new video technologies proved the political
periments in video as “a radical paradigm undoing of US Senator George Allen in 2006
for a participatory democracy” (5) could easily after he hurled his notorious “macaca” epithet
be mistaken for one of the exuberant claims at S. R. Sidarth, a campaign staffer for Allen’s
made on behalf of amateur video in the age of opponent who wasted no time uploading his
YouTube. As video defined as a specific me- video recording of the encounter to YouTube.
dium came to an end in the mid-aughts, the In 2009, several people used cell phones
emergence of near-instantaneous distribution and portable cameras to record the shooting
through YouTube and other video-sharing sites death of twenty-two-year-old Oscar Grant at the
evoked the utopian vision of early practitioners hands of Oakland transit police, and the foot-
that low-cost portable video equipment would age posted to YouTube played a large role in
allow everyday people to engage in a democrat- the resulting criminal case against the shooter
ically produced, decentralized public sphere. and the broader public discourse related to
That early vision had waned by the close of the incident. Indeed, amateur videographers
the 1970s as programs distributed through worldwide have combined portable cameras
local-access cable television failed to gain wide with almost instantaneous mass distribution
audiences, and entry into commercial markets to bear witness to an array of misdeeds, from
proved elusive for most independent produc- the merely embarrassing to the indisputably
ers. Yet the proliferation of a new technology egregious. Although this assortment of citizen
may be reviving the promise of an older one. journalists, from chance eyewitnesses to enter-
This article seeks to trace a genealogy be- prising storytellers, may not be conscious heirs
tween early practices in video as social experi- to the alternative media movement of the late
ment and contemporary video production as 1960s and early 1970s, some members of the
part of a globally distributed “participatory YouTube community have remarked its poten-
culture.” Nearly forty years after the develop- tial for, in the words of Gooyong Kim, “realizing
ment of the Sony portapak gave first-generation grassroots democracy” (15). Examining the
videomakers the means to document a coun- phenomenon of YouTube’s citizen documentar-
tercultural revolution, the ubiquity of the hand- ians against the earlier countercultural video
held consumer video camera combined with tradition raises the question of what it means
the ability to share images almost instantly to participate in today’s video culture.
has given a new generation unprecedented Much has been written about YouTube’s sta-
potential to effect change by bearing witness. tus as a social platform for video distribution,
but I aim to focus on the production and organi-
stephanie tripp is an assistant professor of zational practices embraced by early communi-
communication at the University of Tampa. She is ties of videomakers and how those practices
a digital media artist and scholar. have continued among—or have been discov-

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ered anew by— those making videos today. The from a portapak, as the DV-2400 and similar
practices I refer to are evident in work such as units came to be known, could be played back
TVTV’s Four More Years (1972), in which the quickly on a portable deck, enabling the timely
use of lightweight portable equipment proves turnaround enjoyed by large-scale media oper-
an obvious foil to network television cover- ations at a cost affordable by amateurs. Within
age of the Republican National Convention, a short time, alternative media groups such
and David Cort and Curtis Ratcliff’s Mayday as Raindance Corporation, Videofreex, and
Realtime (1971), which captures the turmoil at People’s Video Theater were using portapaks
an antiwar demonstration in Washington, DC, to cover events that they believed were being
from the point of view of those experiencing it. ignored or misrepresented by the mainstream
They also are apparent in the video festivals media. Their subject matter included women’s
and community screenings organized by groups liberation, gay rights, and antiwar demonstra-
such as Global Village, Video Free America, tions; interviews with movement leaders;
and People’s Video Theater. Fortunately, online protest actions; and musical performances. The
sharing sites have facilitated a renaissance production practices adopted by these groups
of sorts for videos produced in the 1960s and grew out of their countercultural affinities as
1970s, launching new efforts to digitize and well as the affordances of the new technolo-
archive early video footage and reenergizing gies. “Turning the limits of their technology into
existing ones. Efforts such as the Media Burn a virtue, underground videomakers invented a
Independent Video Archive and Video Data distinctive style unique to the medium,” writes
Bank provide access to materials that were not video historian Deirdre Boyle. “Tripods—with
widely available only a few years ago. their fixed viewpoints—were out; hand-held flu-
Although today’s videomakers have an op- idity was in. Video’s unique ability to capitalize
portunity to learn from archived work, it is far on the moment with instant playback and real-
from clear that many of them do. Tom Wein- time monitoring of events also suited the era’s
berg, founder of as Media Burn, notes that a emphasis on ‘process, not product’” (“A Brief
lot of young people view archived video on his History” 52). Accessibility, portability, rapid
group’s Web site or through its YouTube chan- playback, and the ability to erase and reuse
nel. “There’s an audience who’s looking for it videotape supported the mantra of “process”
as historical and there’s a significant audience partly inspired by Marshall McLuhan and trans-
who’s looking at something that’s fresh and lated into practice by his research assistant
new to them,” he states. Weinberg, an original Paul Ryan, Michael Shamberg of Raindance, the
member of TVTV and a longtime independent editors of Radical Software, and others.
television producer, suggests that many vid- Videomakers working around the country
eomaking techniques simply filter down into a relied on publications such as the magazine
“main consciousness,” and newcomers adopt Radical Software (1970–74) and various do-
them or alter them to suit their needs. After all, it-yourself technical manuals to keep track
he asks, “Does it matter if you know where your of technical developments and the work of
techniques come from?” Regardless of the ex- their peers. By describing what people were
tent to which videomakers of the YouTube gen- doing with video and how they were doing it,
eration comprehend their inheritance, its traces these publications helped identify the style
are visible in much of the work they produce. of a nascent medium. Fewer artifacts of the
The alternative video movement emerged in alternative media movement had greater influ-
the milieu of 1960s counterculture and was fa- ence at the time than Guerrilla Television, a
cilitated by the introduction in 1967 of the Sony book coauthored in 1971 by Shamberg and
DV-2400 Video Rover, a lightweight mobile the Raindance collective. Part manifesto, part
production unit that recorded up to twenty min- descriptive narrative, part instruction manual,
utes on half-inch magnetic tape (Sharpe). Tape Guerrilla Television went further toward shap-

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ing the style and tactics of video as alternative of many early videomakers involved simply
media than anything else. Its single volume exploring the medium and “discovering what
comprises two separately paginated sections: was different about it.” Interviews with and
a “meta-manual” that situates the guerrilla publications by several videomakers about
television movement within the milieu of their work underscore a resolve to distinguish
“Media America” and against the establish- their approach from both film and mainstream
ment mass media and an “Official Manual” that television production. For instance, videomak-
identifies the movement’s key players, primary ers realized early on that they could afford a
tools, and activities. “Guerrilla Television is much more casual approach than those work-
grassroots television,” Shamberg explains. “It ing with 16mm film, which was considerably
works with people, not from up above them” more expensive than videotape and could not
(Shamberg and Raindance, “Official Manual” be reused. “Film makers and video people have
8). He illustrates his point by comparing two radically different styles of working,” writes
stills from a video of an antiwar demonstration Parry Teasdale, a founding member of Video-
in Washington, DC. The first image features a freex. “We would turn on our cameras and enter
long shot of NBC News correspondent Sander a scene, sometimes observers, sometimes par-
Vanocur standing atop a platform looking ticipants, usually some combination of the two,
over the crowd of demonstrators. The second but always with the idea of allowing events to
is dominated by the head and shoulders of a unfold at their own pace” (45).
young woman with dozens of other demonstra- The immersive shooting style championed
tors behind her and a distant White House in in Guerrilla Television was a signature of street
the upper left-hand corner (“Official Manual” protest videos produced in the early 1970s.
8). The rhetorical effect is clear: the mainstream Mayday Realtime (1971), by David Cort and
media sets itself apart from those participat- Curtis Ratcliff, which documents an antiwar
ing in the event (“above them,” as Shamberg demonstration in Washington, combines “per-
says), whereas the alternative media videomak- son-on-the-street” interviewing techniques with
ers from Raindance remain part of the action. long takes and street-level camera perspective.
Under the guerrilla model, then, stylistic in- Unlike that of the tightly edited segments on
novation assumes a political role, even if it is the nightly news, the pace of Mayday Realtime
not employed to convey any openly political unfolds as events occur, moving from desul-
message. As Marita Sturken explains, “The tory street-corner discussions to the panic of a
term guerrilla television, with its implications group of demonstrators as police pursue them
of aggression and subversion, came to signify with batons and tear gas canisters. As police
a specific kind of activist videotape, one that charge the group, the camera pans and tilts
functioned as an ironic observation of the fol- wildly as terrified people brush past it and as
lies of the establishment as well as a stylistic Cort himself is struck by a baton. At one point,
revolt against the conventions of television” one of several demonstrators blocking traffic is
(107–08). run down by a car. As he follows a group that
Of course, many techniques described in carries the injured man to a park for first aid,
Guerrilla Television and practiced by young Cort, far from being the distant observer culti-
videomakers did not originate with the in- vated by mainstream television journalists, is
troduction of portable video. The absence of obviously embodied in the scene: people speak
voice-over narrative is characteristic of Ameri- to him, their faces moving closer to the camera,
can cinéma vérité filmmakers of the 1960s, for and they jostle him, causing the camera to
example. Yet finding the essence of the new jerk. Women’s Liberation March NYC (1971) and
medium was a conscious concern for many. Gay Pride March NYC (1971) by People’s Video
Skip Blumberg, an alumnus of Videofreex and Theater, though less frenetic than Cort and
TVTV, notes that an important contribution Ratcliff’s footage of the turbulent Washington

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demonstration, still convey the kinetic energy announced they were shooting from within the
of the streets through the use of handheld crowd, subjective and involved” (“A Brief His-
cameras. These videos focus on the voices tory” 57).
of participants as they tell their stories, often Perhaps even more characteristic of TVTV’s
responding to an interviewer’s question of why alternative approach to the conventions than
they are (or, in some cases, are not) taking part its immersive camera work is the unapologeti-
in the events being recorded. cally subjective personae its crew reflects on
If Guerrilla Television asserted video’s su- camera. Skip Blumberg’s off-beat interviews
periority over broadcast television, the 1972 with the network television personnel ac-
national political conventions gave its followers centuate the contrast in style. Some network
a chance to prove it. Comprising a crew from personalities, such as Walter Cronkite of CBS,
three of the best-known media collectives of answer Blumberg’s questions in earnest,
the time (Ant Farm, Raindance, and Video- whereas others come across as pedantic or
freex), TVTV was the brain child of Michael even sarcastic. What may be the most telling
Shamberg and a group of associates that in- interview is not really an interview at all, but
cluded Allen Rucker, Megan Williams, and Tom rather a prolonged sequence of Roger Mudd
Weinberg, an old friend of Shamberg’s from from CBS News stonewalling Blumberg. After
Chicago (Boyle, Subject to Change 36–38). Mudd refuses even to utter a reason for demur-
Armed with press credentials and just enough ring, Blumberg impishly asks Mudd whether he
funding to send crews to both conventions, may be too tired. Met with Mudd’s continued
TVTV’s strategy was to cover the stories the silence, Blumberg redirects the question to
networks were ignoring. The result was two camera operator Nancy Cain. Mudd eventually
documentaries: The World’s Largest TV Studio provides a grudging nod, and the crew moves
(1972) and Four More Years (1972). away. In what might be described as a perfor-
With network coverage of the Republican mative riposte to Mudd’s refusal to take on the
convention focused dutifully on the unsurpris- role of the subject of an interview, Blumberg
ing nomination of Richard Nixon for a second displays his own subjectivity in grand style,
term, Four More Years glances along the side- pulling out a harmonica and delivering a series
lines of the event, taking in everyone from of ad hoc riffs he calls “the Republican Conven-
party boosters making merry to protestors tion Drag.”
demonstrating outside the Miami convention Despite the critical acclaim garnered by Four
center to jaded members of the press corps More Years and subsequent projects, TVTV ulti-
grabbing a break from the grind. Working with mately could not get enough of its productions
the lightweight portapaks, the TVTV crew in front of large enough audiences to support
navigates nimbly around the convention floor its ongoing work, a problem videomakers had
as its network counterparts remain tethered faced from the beginning. Indeed, the chal-
to their cumbersome production units. The lenges of distribution and the strategies that
crew members lithely follow Ronald Reagan various groups adopted in response often de-
through a crowd of delegates as he glad-hands fined the nature of their work. For some, expo-
supporters while en route to the podium. They sure to wider audiences through broadcast tele-
capture the crush of demonstrators outside the vision enabled them to get their countercultural
convention center at eye level with the harried messages and alternative modes of production
delegates trying to make their way in. They tell in front of a mass audience. For others, the
their story from the ground—no sweeping pan- pursuit of television exposure was a distraction
oramas or voice-over from the control booth. from goals of community building and organiz-
True to Deidre Boyle’s description of guerrilla ing for social change. The availability of public
television practitioners, the TVTV crew “proudly funding for video projects, especially under the

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New York State Council on the Arts in the 1970s, power weekly broadcasts, favoring an “unpack-
eased the pressure on groups to seek wider au- aged, community-responsive, seat-of-the-pants
diences to sustain themselves financially (Hill production approach” that was, in Teasdale’s
27–29; Sturken 111–12). Boyle suggests that mind, “inherently superior and incompatible
groups began to settle into camps around is- with the media establishment” (88). In the
sues of funding and distribution, with “guerrilla spirit of community engagement, the group
television producers” such as TVTV on one side invited local residents to appear on the air and
and “community video activists” on the other frequently used on-air telephone call-ins to
(“A Brief History” 56). Before that time, how- make their programs more interactive.
ever, individual videomakers and even groups Unlike the Videofreex and other groups that
embraced both models, as was the case in the explored distributing their work on television,
in the early days of the Videofreex collective. People’s Video Theater (PVT) considered itself
The partnership between the Freex and CBS a community video activist group from its in-
to produce the ill-fated “Now” project is the ception. Ken Marsh and Elliot Glass founded
stuff of early video legend. After hearing about PVT in June 1970 as a “means for exposure of
the work of Videofreex founders David Cort community people’s ideas, goods and services
and Parry Teasdale at the Woodstock festival, to be supported by those using it” (Marsh 18).
CBS executive Don West commissioned them In an article in Radical Software published that
and several of their peers to roam the country fall, Marsh states “PVT serves to explore more
producing a video compendium of US counter- responsive handling of information in working
culture. CBS canceled the project at the end of with groups and covering their needs” (18).
1969 after spending a considerable amount of Marsh and Glass made numerous videos on
money on equipment, travel, and rent, but be- the streets of New York and around the region,
fore airing a single episode of the series—even- sometimes covering public events, demonstra-
tually named Subject to Change—that the net- tions, or local happenings and at other times
work had hoped to broadcast on Sunday nights conducting “video polls” on issues of the day.
as a replacement for The Smothers Brothers Videomakers would invite people whom they
Comedy Hour (Boyle, Subject to Change 16–25). taped to visit the group’s loft in the West Village
Although the Videofreex came up with some to watch the videos and discuss them. Screen-
socially significant footage—most notably an ings were open to the public; a flyer for one of
interview with Black Panther leader Fred Hamp- PVT’s weekend shows invited prospective at-
ton a few weeks before his murder in a Chicago tendees to “see mini documentaries,” “speak
police raid—CBS executives, obviously uncom- back to the news,” “become part of the news,”
fortable with the group’s freewheeling style, and “see yourself ” (qtd. in Shamberg and Rain-
declared the project at least five years ahead of dance, “Official Manual” 18).
its time (Subject to Change 25). In addition to its public screenings, PVT also
Within a few years after CBS pulled the plug showed its videos to community stakeholders
on the “Now” project, the Videofreex would as a method of mediating (literally) disputes.
move to Lanesville, New York, a small town in Marsh cites as an example a controversy over
the Catskill Mountains, and set up a distribu- construction at Washington Square Park. In Au-
tion model that could not be further removed gust 1970, the group spent several days taping
from their early network TV aspirations. Based people in the park about the construction and
in a rambling house on a property known as edited together a fifty-minute segment “iden-
Maple Tree Farm, members of the video collec- tifying the who and what of the park” (Marsh
tive set up the nation’s first pirate TV station 18). They gathered responses to the segment
(Teasdale; Hill 13). Between March 1972 and from park visitors, city officials, and others
February 1977, Lanesville TV aired 258 low- and added that footage to the original tape.

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They showed the final version in the park on a system. It has inevitably disappointed those
Saturday afternoon. Although public feedback expectations. (108)
was crucial to PVT’s “video mediation,” a mass
audience was not. The work of People’s Video Ironically, what has superseded video as the
Theater exemplified an alternative distribution great hope for participatory democracy carries
model centered on community-based participa- on its shoulders far greater expectations than
tion and decision making. early videomakers ever could have imagined.
By the 1980s, the alternative media move- As Korot perceptively notes, today’s global
ment had lost its momentum. Although many high-speed computer networks—combined
groups managed to survive thanks to public with palm-held digital cameras and powerful-
funding and private philanthropy, opportuni- yet-intuitive editing software—give everyday
ties became more competitive as the freshness people unprecedented opportunities to pro-
of video wore off. Few independent producers duce and distribute their own media messages.
could reach large enough audiences through It’s the portapak on steroids—with its own
local-access cable television or videotape dis- satellite uplink. Indeed, many claims for the
tribution to sustain their work, and any support liberatory power of online video have rivaled
from broadcast television required compro- the heady utopian predictions made on behalf
mises on content that only a few were willing to of the early World Wide Web. Although many
make. Those who became successful produc- scholars and members of the press have cited
ers for the mainstream media, most notably compelling examples of video sharing as a
Guerrilla Television author and TVTV principal mode of populist empowerment, critics such
Michael Shamberg, were accused of “selling as Toby Miller have warned against embrac-
out” (Boyle, Subject to Change 185–89). In ing “cybertarian” assumptions about YouTube
the meantime, broadcast producers appropri- and other Web 2.0 technologies without more
ated the signatures of alternative style to add sustained and broader-ranging study.2 In the
novelty to their own offerings, which by the end interest of maintaining a more tempered per-
of the 1980s amounted to little more than pro- spective, I would prefer to avoid speculating
totypes for the worst of reality television. “The too much on Web 2.0’s potential and instead
pathetic thing of course is [video] never did concentrate on what some members of the
quite fulfill its promise,” laments Beryl Korot, YouTube generation are actually doing with this
the New York–based artist who co-edited Radi- technology and how they may be viewed as
cal Software. “The computer actually is much heirs to the portapak generation.
closer to what Radical Software was about than One might argue that the ubiquity of inde-
what’s become of the video medium.”1 Yet if pendently produced video segments appearing
alternative video failed to realize the hopes on YouTube and other sharing sites makes
of its early practitioners, the blame cannot be a strong claim in itself for the democratizing
attributed solely to economic reasons. After all, potential of online distribution. Evaluations of
as Marita Sturken points out, the expectations democracy at a meta level aside, though, the
were great: prodigious volume of videos on these sites
quickly raises practical problems of how to ap-
Not only were the media towers going to proach this mass of work at the level of content.
topple and the individuals going to have Thus, video in the age of YouTube presents a
their say, but the realms of art and society double-edged sword to those who would study
were to lose their boundaries—everyone it: the number and variety of offerings that
would be a producer; everyone would control result from the “democratic” possibilities of
information flow. Video’s arrival came to distribution necessarily make it impossible to
symbolize this potential redefinition of the evaluate systematically the content of those

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offerings.3 In view of this challenge, I have media proponents had been espousing for de-
decided to focus on organizations or communi- cades: in the era of lightweight video, anyone
ties of videomakers who, like so many earlier can produce the news. The launch of YouTube
video groups in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in February 2005 extended that message:
experimented with available technologies and anyone can broadcast the news. Since then,
modes of storytelling in order to challenge the people have been uploading citizen journalism
values and conventions of mainstream media. of all stripes, from the banalities of backyard
I believe that my findings provide insight into meteorologists to accounts of human rights
how some alternative video practitioners today violations, from video blogs of angst-ridden
have adopted existing mainstream and alterna- preteens to professional-level documentaries.
tive production practices and have crafted a S. R. Sidarth’s “macaca” video was among the
variety of distribution strategies, to suit their first to gain national attention, and countless
particular needs. others soon followed. Yet few of the millions of
Although what follows is a discussion videos posted to YouTube each year carried the
primarily of video from the YouTube genera- weight of a handful of chaotic clips depicting
tion—work created after video-sharing Web the shooting of Oscar Grant on an Oakland sub-
sites were introduced in the mid-aughts—it way platform. The video accounts of the Grant
is crucial to acknowledge the ongoing work shooting stand out as a reminder of both the
of those who got their start in the portapak witness-bearing power of video and the chance
era as well as others working in alternative encounters that can turn anyone holding a
video who have crossed over to working in the smart phone into a journalist.
digital networked environment. Paper Tiger When the Bay Area Rapid Transit train she
Television, which began operating its New York was riding pulled into the Fruitvale station at
local-access cable channel in 1981, is among around 2:00 a.m. on New Year’s Day 2009,
those “old new media” entities that have a Karina Vargas had no aspirations of becoming
robust online presence and have seized on new a citizen journalist. When BART transit officers
technologies to expand their reach. The work of began restraining several young men on the
numerous other groups that arose during the platform, however, the young Hayward woman
heyday of local access is finding its way online, started recording the incident on a pocket cam-
making it easier for scholars and the general era. “I figure, people’s rights are being violated
public to understand within a broader context right in front of my eyes. Let me turn my camera
projects that were far-flung and often isolated. on,” Vargas says in a video interview with Josue
In addition, activist groups such as WITNESS, Rojas and Paul Billingsley for New America
an international human rights organization Media (Vargas, “The Eyewitness”). As angry
founded in 1992 by musician Peter Gabriel, bystanders continued to crowd the platform,
have leveraged Internet video-sharing technolo- Vargas stepped back into the train, but when
gies to further their work. In the case of WIT- officers began striking Grant, she braved the
NESS, the organization has trained people in platform again and had moved to within ten
more than seventy countries to use handheld feet of him when officer Johannes Mehserle
cameras to document abuses and messages of fired a bullet into his back. “They just shot
dissent and has logged thousands of hours of him!” Vargas can be heard exclaiming to her
video into its archive (WITNESS). The WITNESS friends as she rushes back to the train. When
Web site credits the 1991 videotape of Los An- a BART officer tried to seize her camera, Vargas
geles police beating Rodney King as inspiration was able to retreat behind the closing doors as
for the project. the train departed the station (Vargas, “Oak-
Among the lessons gleaned from the Rodney land”). Her video account, provided a few days
King incident was one that early alternative later to a local network affiliate and uploaded

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to YouTube, initiated a national furor. Vargas’s ganization in the Boston area combined footage
documentation of the event, combined with of a teenage boy being beaten by police with its
video uploaded by others shortly afterward, own hybrid form of storytelling to produce a re-
assured that Mehserle would be prosecuted port from within rather than about a community.4
and played a key role in his trial. It also high- In October 2010, a student at Roxbury Commu-
lights the increasingly common phenomenon of nity College captured on her cell phone footage
“accidental journalism” and its relationship to of police beating a sixteen-year-old boy who
both alternative and mainstream media. had purportedly escaped from a nearby juvenile
Because Vargas chose both avenues of detention center. The footage, uploaded to You-
distribution for the two video sequences she Tube and covered by local TV news, prompted an
captured that night—YouTube and a local investigation into police behavior. Press Pass TV
news station—we have the opportunity to see used a short piece of the video in its coverage of
how they are framed within a variety of public local reaction to the incident. In “Police Account-
storytelling contexts. Whereas local TV cover- ability Rally” (2010), the young videomakers of
age inserts a voice-over narrative from its own Press Pass TV interview several community mem-
reporter to serve as an authority over what is bers. Although the visual style of the segment
happening on the screen, in two independently has the polish of a local news broadcast, from
produced segments shown online, interviews its crisp high-definition video to its own custom
of Vargas accompany the footage. In the first, identification bug, the narrative strategy differs
produced by the Oakland unit of alternative significantly. Interview subjects are given plenty
media group Youth Radio, excerpts of the of time—twenty or thirty seconds, an eternity by
video are shown without any added sound or TV news standards—to make their points. The
graphics. The shooting footage is intercut with reporter, identified as Shalimar, speaks only a
footage from Youth Radio of Vargas revisiting few seconds at the beginning of the segment to
the Fruitvale station and recounting events on identify the event as a community rally. Aside
the train platform (Vargas, “Oscar Grant”). In from asking a few brief questions, she lets com-
the second piece, posted on the YouTube chan- munity members tell the story. Cara Lisa Berg
nel of GioSifaTaufa, Vargas is shown watching Powers, codirector of Press Pass TV, explains
her video on a laptop computer in someone’s that it is important that PPTV segments appear
home, possibly her own. Medium shots of polished and professionally produced because
her watching and commenting on the video the visuals can add credibility for mainstream
are intercut with footage from the video itself, audiences even if the message is not what they
which is sometimes combined with audio from have grown to expect. She states that members
the interview segment to provide the sense of of the group like “making things that have an
a play-by-play of events on the platform in Var- almost radical message and making them look
gas’s own words (Vargas, “Oakland”). really professional” at the same time.
Community members’ abil- Press Pass TV, founded in
ity to control the context of Watch it on “JFV Volume 64” Vimeo 2004, evolved out of a rather
their media participation—be Channel serendipitous encounter
(http://vimeo.com/jfvvolume64)
it uploaded video, in the case between its founder, Gabriel
of Vargas, or simply words “Police Accountability Rally” (11/3/10) Mugar, who was working as
TRIPP/“Police Accountability Rally”/
recorded during an inter- a video specialist in a local
Press Pass TV/ Nov. 3, 2010
view—has been a rallying cry Apple store at the time, and
for alternative media since the a customer who had just
first days of video, from the “video mediation” received an education grant and bought a
experiments of People’s Video Theater to Lanes- computer and needed someone to help him
ville TV’s call-in shows. In an interesting parallel with video equipment. The grant involved work-
to the Oscar Grant story, a community media or- ing with children in public schools, so Mugar

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began volunteering at an after-school program tion record.” The Reel Grrls’ social media savvy
in Roxbury, one of Boston’s poorer suburbs. earned them notoriety recently when a tweet
Every time he looked at the local news, he saw by the group about former FCC commissioner
Roxbury depicted negatively with stories that fo- Meredith Baker leaving her post for a job with
cused on crime and poverty. “Being a volunteer Comcast brought on the wrath of the cable
I knew about a lot of positive things happening giant, whose representative shot off an e-mail
in the communities,” he says. He decided to threatening to pull $18,000 in funding for a
encourage the students he was working with to summer program. Without skipping a beat, the
produce video segments on positive aspects of Grrls posted a video responding to the threat.
their communities. They began doing a student- In less than a minute, two young women, shot
hosted half-hour news show that compiled seg- at medium range against plain backgrounds,
ments produced over the course of the school speak their minds in a simple, but devastat-
year. Early topics included a feature on a local ing retort. “I can’t believe you broke up with
hip-hop artist with an inspiring, positive mes- me over e-mail because of a tweet,” one of
sage to his music and another on a successful the women states at the beginning of the
after-school program. As Mugar began to ease forty-one-second video (“Dear Comcast”). The
himself out of the group’s day-to-day opera- national media picked up the story the day the
tions in order to pursue a doctorate at Syracuse, video was posted to YouTube, and a Comcast
PPTV was able to hire two part-time codirectors: executive apologized and backed away from
Berg Powers and Joanna Marinova. All three the funding threat within a few hours (Kang).
had some experience with media production, Bullying from benefactors notwithstanding,
but none was schooled formally in the history the viability of alternative media organizations
of early alternative video. Mugar put together such as Reel Grrls and Press Pass TV appears to
a workbook in 2006 that lays out the basics rest with their educational affiliations. After all,
of the five-shot sequence and other staples of funding for education may not be what it used
television news. Since then, the group has in- to be, but it is still more abundant than funding
corporated some techniques from documentary for the arts.
filmmaking and other sources. Berg Powers The question of viability—both of financial
notes that she and Marinova are “voracious sustainability and of social consequence—
consumers of media” who are always looking remains a serious one for alternative media
for new techniques to try. organizations, even in the digital age. Now
Press Pass TV is among a number of estab- that millions can broadcast themselves, to
lished alternative media organizations empha- paraphrase YouTube’s motto, who is going to
sizing youth education. Others include Califor- pay attention to what you in particular have to
nia-based Youth Radio and its affiliate, Youth say? The case of the Reel Grrls’ dispute with
Media International; the Appalachian Media Comcast is a good example. Although the group
Institute (Appalshop); and Reel Grrls of Seattle. has received more than 12,000 hits on its
Many of these organizations were established “Dear Comcast” video, a respectable number
before the advent of online video sharing (Ap- by Web standards, the tally is puny compared
palshop was founded more than four decades to the audience figures garnered by media gi-
ago), but they have embraced the ability to post ants such as Comcast. Only when the likes of
their media work online. Reel Grrls, founded in the Washington Post become involved do the
2001, originally was conceived in the context scales become balanced. Even in the highly
of women in film, but the training program is publicized Oscar Grant case, the ultimate im-
now decidedly multimedia. Kathleen Sweeney pact of the videos uploaded to YouTube by Var-
notes in an article from 2005 that graduates of gas and several others came not from the few
the Reel Grrls program come away with a broad hundred thousand views on YouTube during the
digital skill set and “a significant video exhibi- weeks following the incident, but from the foot-

journal of film and video 64.1–2 / spring/summer 2012 13

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age subsequently being broadcast to millions “Now it’s easy to get your work on. Now you
of people on network television.5 get on every day. And how do you generate an
Even within YouTube itself, the Goliaths ap- audience?” Tom Weinberg, whose work with
pear to be dwarfing the Davids at an increasingly Media Burn has him pondering similar ques-
dire pace. Research from 2010 shows that the tions lately, suggests that the solution must lie
work of independent news producers posted with an enhanced curatorial function for video
to YouTube is being “overshadowed” by main- linked on the Web. Although he frets about the
stream producers such as the Associated Press, accelerating consolidation of media powers
which at that time was publishing twenty-five and its impoverishing effects on programming,
to forty stories a day. As Albert L. May writes, Weinberg, always the true believer in the power
“Despite the hopes of YouTube’s founders for a of new media technologies, remains optimistic:
medium of user-generated content and indepen- “The fact is that those videos are now available
dent producers, the platform is showing some to people in a way that they never were.”
of the same signs evidenced elsewhere on the Press Pass TV, meanwhile, is approaching
Internet, where major corporate news sites, such the question of audience with a bold new strat-
as CNN.com and MSNBC.com, draw dispropor- egy that has its roots recognizably in the past.
tionate traffic” (501). Further, as several studies In 2010, it inaugurated “Press Pass TV on Tour,”
of Web topography have shown, online traffic a program to screen its videos before small
in general more closely reflects a broadcast groups of community stakeholders. PPTV’s You-
model than a more evenly distributed pattern Tube channel describes its work with this state-
that would be suggested by the term “Web.” ment: “We take our content on the road—right
Indeed, access patterns on YouTube mirror those to the communities we serve. . . . We provide
that have established themselves across the the viewers with information and the tools to
Internet: despite the hype of the “long tail,” the take action.” The rhetoric sounds as though
blockbuster still reigns supreme. What several it could have been lifted from Ken Marsh’s
media critics intuited at the launch of the World handbook for People’s Video Theater. The
Wide Web has been borne out since by math- tours are central to Press Pass TV’s distribution
ematical models of Web traffic: rather than an strategy, explains codirector Cara Lisa Berg
egalitarian distribution of connections, the Web Powers. “We’re taking our content to where we
is a constellation of highly visited superstar think it will have the most impact,” she states.
“hubs” amid a vast array of obscure nodes. Un- She notes that the success of the community
surprisingly, these hubs are almost entirely com- screenings can be evaluated based on steady
mercial, and many are Web-based extensions growth in attendance and in the level of en-
of mass media conglomerates. According to gagement with the audience and dialogue pro-
Albert-László Barabási, the mathematician who duced at the forums. She cites as an example
supervised the first and most influential model a video PPTV made on domestic violence and
of Web traffic, “[t]he hubs are the strongest argu- long-term strategies to address the problem
ment against the utopian vision of an egalitarian within the community. Among speakers invited
cyberspace. Yes, we all have the right to put to the screening was the lieutenant governor
anything we wish on the Web. But will anybody of Massachusetts, who had taken a special
notice?” (58). interest in addressing problems of domestic
For alternative media veterans such as Skip violence; a professor who studies domestic
Blumberg, Barabási’s question presents an violence; and a social services professional
old problem with a new twist. “Back in the day, who works with abusers. Berg Powers says pro-
the issue was, ‘How do I get on?’ But once you viding community organizations and members
got on, people would know about you because of the public with an opportunity for unscripted
there were only three or four channels, or in access to someone with the stature of a lieuten-
New York you had six,” Blumberg explains. ant governor is an important benefit that their

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“town hall” distribution model provides. “While 2. Miller, interestingly, alludes specifically to the
early video movement in his definition of cybertarian-
our message may not fall on the ears of those
ism: “Cybertarianism dovetails with three utopias: the
whose minds we are trying to change, we are free-cable, free-video social movements of the 1960s
definitely reaching those people who want to and ’70s; the neoclassical, deregulatory intellectual
know about and join these movements,” states and corporate movements of the 1970s and ’80s;
Mugar, the group’s founder. “If our role is to and the post-Protestant, anti-accumulative hacker
ethos of the 1990s and today. Porta-pak equipment,
create awareness amongst the activist commu-
localism, a disinterested, non-corporate approach to
nity and help create bonds that did not exist, newness, and unrestrained markets supposedly pro-
then I’m fine with preaching to the choir.” vide an alternative to the numbing nationwide com-
In conclusion, the young videomakers of the mercialism of mainstream media” (426). Examples
YouTube generation may not be aware of the of more sanguine outlooks on the social effects of
participatory video include Convergence Culture:
portapak generation, but they face many of the
Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins,
same challenges and share many of the same Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing with-
goals. Introducing these nascent practitioners out Organizations by Clay Shirky, and “The Practice
to the history of their field seems a natural of Everyday (Media) Life: From Mass Consumption
goal for media educators, yet often the work of to Mass Cultural Production?” by Lev Manovich. The
YouTube Reader, edited by Pelle Snickars and Patrick
many early videomakers is omitted from cur- Vonderau, features essays from critics with a variety
ricula as institutional histories gravitate toward of perspectives, including Miller, Bernard Stiegler,
film documentaries or video art. Blumberg is Richard Grusin, Thomas Elsaesser, and several others.
among several people prominent in the alter- In addition, Jean Burgess and Joshua Green provide
a valuable overview of the YouTube phenomenon in
native video movement who have made it a
YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture.
goal to “make sure that the history of video as 3. Giovanna Fossati describes a similar dilemma
a unique medium from 1965 to 2005, when it when she writes of the challenge of curating a sample
merged with film . . . is remembered,” along of one hundred YouTube videos: “A curator is sup-
with “this huge community of people.” Such posed to have a good knowledge of the collection’s
content as a whole, which I certainly do not have in
attention would indeed remedy an oversight
the case of YouTube. How was I going to select one
and give many deserving individuals and orga- hundred clips with the claim that they are in some
nizations credit for their contribution to video way representative of the whole?” (458).
history. More importantly, however, the story 4. The group’s codirector, Cara Lisa Berg Powers,
of alternative media at the dawn of video offers says she considers Karina Vargas one of her heroes,
and PPTV has named one of its annual student
a valuable resource for the citizen journalists
awards in her honor.
working today. Further, an effort by scholars 5. According to an analysis by Mary Grace Antony
and teachers to examine new work within a and Ryan J. Thomas, four videos of the shooting up-
better informed sense of video history affords loaded to YouTube received just over a half million
all of us working in the field a broader critical views between 6 January and 2 February 2009 (1285).

context. It is my hope that this initial attempt at

references
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notes
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journal of film and video 64.1–2 / spring/summer 2012 15

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