Vlog reviews

Yesterday I watched three of Jeff Jarvis’ “vlogs,” his self-produced videos of himself committing punditry.

I was skeptical. Though I know Jeff is charming in person and persuasive in text, I wasn’t excited about sitting through three self-edited minutes of punditizing. Since video isn’t easily scanned and sifted like text, I thought I’d quickly run out of patience waiting for his bon mots.

I was wrong. First, Jeff delivered a steady stream high quality ideas and amusement. If anything, I was sorry he didn’t deliver more slowly so I could transcribe some of his points. (Then I realized Jeff posted a transcript.) Second, the reward of additional information — expression, cadence, tone — more than compensated my inability to fast-forward or click on links. I was reminded (yet again) why meatings achieve so much more than phone, IM or e-mail.

For bloggers looking to convince or cajole, vlogs will be an essential tool.

I watched three vlogs. I’d give “Year-end media cliches” 2 stars for tone and content. “Christmas 2002” gets 4 stars for content and 3 stars for tone (the graphics distracted.) My favorite was “Fast food fades,” which was full of swiftly delivered, tasty nuggets of fact and opinion. Jeff rightly concludes, “The problem may not be that the burger culture is fading… It may be that the Boomer culture is fading.” Ten stars!

(Two quibbles: like their blog cousins, all vlogs should be dated and need separate URLs.)