Not by my counsel. Production values such as photo and fancy HTML tricks are one thing, and video is another.Even the use of italics and boldface and colored type can be overdone to the detriment of content. With automatic spellcheck on my Mac, there is no longer any excuse for me to ever let typos bleed thru to a post. Which means that I have to vet the spelling carefully. The production values in text and the occasional still image are cost enough - I do not prefer to see us going to video. Uses up bandwidth without adding much if anything to the intellectual heft which is the raison d'être of FR.
Think of it this way: Rush Limbaugh is a star for two reasons:
It follows that you can be an excellent analyst without being able to compete with Rush because of his talent at a form of production value which exploits the audio broadcast. If you can't compete with Rush in his audio production values, why would you think you can compete in the regime of video production values?
- his excellent analysis of current events, and
- his ability to verbally dramatize (which was grieviously threatened by his deafness).
In print the fact that I look more like Fred Thompson than Mitt Romney is perfectly opaque. And that's the way I like it.
Well you may be right about that but my belief is that the very visual younger generation is flocking to video websites and that these websites will dominate the distribution of news in the future.
Video is admittedly not a good medium for a forum. You are right on that count. But it is an excellent medium for presenting the news because in many cases the moving image is important - we want to see what happened first hand. You cannot do that with the written word or by listening to someone's verbal description of the event.
So maybe I should withdraw my recommendation for a regular Jim Robinson videocast but it does seem that it is time for Free Republic to accommodate the posting (i.e. embedding) video that is already on the net. Now maybe you can do this now. I haven't tried it, but I'm betting it wouldn't work.
Just putting in my $.02 for the Good Old Free Republic.