Steve Garfield

Steve Garfield, video-blogger extraordinaire, came to our Reinventing the News class on Wednesday. He has this really awesome phone/camera/video that can shoot live through Qik, which streams live online. It was something I had never even heard about before he came to talk to our class.

One of Garfield's recent video blogs was about a Staples promotion for 50 free business cards. However, as he showed in his video, there were a number of things preventing a consumer from just receiving 50 free business cards in Roslindale. You have to buy 50 business cards to get 50 business cards, according to the voucher you must go in to receive. The problem is on the leaflet it does not say anything in the fine print that you have to buy 50 to get 50 free. If Staples execs saw that Garfield was upset about their tactics, he'd probably be able to get 50 free business cards, no exceptions.

The Steve and Carol show I also really enjoyed. It shows that videos can be entertaining and lighthearted even when you're just sitting on the couch and talking together. It reminded me of a lot of things you see on youtube from many amateur people, just trying to get their name out there, but Steve's is done much better and is not in their league.

I also enjoyed when Steve talked about how he became an iReporter for CNN during hurricane kyle, when he explained that he was on the Maine shoreline when the storm was coming in for a wedding. I thought it was great that he could get the video of the storm, which was definitely newsworthy, and then upload it even quicker and send it along to CNN and get more publicity for his website.