Two interesting Web-based multimedia reporting projects recently came to my attention and both are worth a look. Coincidently they both involved Iraqi and/or Afghan veterans involved with law enforcement, from both sides.

NPR used images and map animations to tell the dramatic story of a North Dakota veteran apparently suffering from PTSD who takes the state highway patrol on a winding chase. It culminates in a showdown where it appears he wants to be shot and killed. It's very well done, watch it here.

UW-Oshkosh journalism students created a very nice Web site accompanying a book and photo exhibit called "War Through Their Eyes" profiling more than a dozen Oshkosh students and alum who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. It is particularly relevant this week as one featured vet is Craig Birkholz, the Fond du Lac police officer recently killed in the line of duty. His account of close calls and dangerous times is made all the more poignant knowing the tragedy that found him at home.

The generation that makes up most of those fighting these wars for us has been called the 'digital generation' and it's interesting to see their stories being told in new and compelling ways.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the end of At the Movies the commercially syndicated movie review show that once was PBS's "Sneak Previews" with Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. Well, it appears that things have come full circle with the upcoming production of Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies.

The program launches next year and will be available only to public television stations. Ebert's involvement is as a producer rather than host, as cancer-surgery has rendered the outspoken critic voiceless. Elvis Mitchell, formerly a New York Times movie reviewer and host of "The Treatment" on KCRW (a favorite podcast of mine) will be one of the hosts.

Although Ebert will be a silent partner his involvement does mean the program can use its trademark thumbs-up. It turns out that Ebert literally owns the trademark.

Though I had not watched regularly for years, I was sad to see "At the Movies" end. The fact that I still thought of the program as "Siskel & Ebert" no matter who filled the chairs in the later years indicates what an impression it made on me in its early years as a public television program.

It's certainly the most successful public to commercial television crossover (where is Bob Vila today?). It may have succumbed to schtick in its marketing-- the two critics played up their rivalry but were in fact friends--but, like a lot of public television, the idea was an original.

There was Gene Shalit on "Today", and Leonard Maltin for a time on "Entertainment Tonight" and many local newscasts had an entertainment critic (I remember WRC's Arch Campbell from my days in DC), but it was pairing two combative critics that was the show's genius.

You can watch a nice remembrance of the show's history on the At the Movies Web site presented by the most recent hosts A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips (a University of Minnesota classmate of my office mate Laurie Gorman, I've just learned) here.

National Public Radio is no longer calling itself National Public Radio, opting instead for just the initials NPR, reports the Washington Post, saying it's more streamlined and modern.

If you've downloaded an NPR podcast or gone to npr.org to read a news story, you know that NPR is much more than broadcast radio, which was clearly a motivation for the name change.

It is, perhaps, a bit too easy to poke fun at this type of rebranding. "NPR used to stand for something, but now..." The most infamous is Kentucky Fried Chicken's change to KFC, as if removing "fried" from their name would remove any concern about nutrition.

I looked into this a little bit and it turns out KFC is bringing back the full Kentucky Fried Chicken title at new locations, and trying to emphasize its Southern roots. I'll raise a wing to that.

Maybe one day, when NPR content is somehow being beamed directly to our brains, they'll bring back National Public Radio as a quaint reminder of a bygone time.

After all, nothing beats the original recipe.

I've recently returned from a family trip to London. While I often look forward to "unplugging" while on vacation, during this trip I was an avid media consumer.

That largely meant World Cup coverage and obsessive national concern with the trials and all too few triumphs of England's team. Picture the kind of over-coverage the Packers get during the NFL playoffs and multiply at least tenfold.

For me, that meant a breakfast read of the Guardian and its stable of columnists, then paging through Metro during a tube ride to whatever sight was on the day's agenda and picking up a copy of the free Evening Standard on the ride home. Follow that with watching that evening's featured match on BBC 1 or ITV and listening to talk radio as I drifted off to sleep.

While visits to the British Museum and the Globe Theater were vacation highlights, following the national team is what really made me feel like I was getting to know the real England.

Take a look at the newly introduced video portal from PBS - video.wpt2.org This new site takes episodes, collections and specials from all of our locally produced programs and puts them in one place. We are adding new content daily so check back frequently to explore new content and re-experience some of your favorites from the past.

Can't find what you're looking for? There are a variety of ways to search our video content. If you're looking for something specific you can choose a particular program that you're interested in and sort through the videos by topic.
OR
If you're trying to find out as much as possible on a particular subject, you can select from a list of topics or use the search function to find video from all PBS programs.

I'm writing this from the annual Midwest Journalism Conference in Bloomington, Minnesota, in the shadow of the Mall of America.

Photojournalist Jim Gehrz of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has just wrapped up a presentation. It started with a series of pictures from early in his career, much of it spent in Milwaukee. He has a real eye for the moment and capturing the emotion of an event.

But he is now doing much more multi-media work, going into the field with an audio recorder as well as his camera. In addition to creating still images for the paper, Gehrz produces many Web site features that incorporate multiple pictures, audio, and at times moving images.

It is a very interesting hybrid format and not what you expect a newspaper to be doing. But it is just another way the Internet is breaking down traditional media barriers.

I wrote a few months back about the changes to what is now called the PBS Newshour. In addition to changing the name from "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer" the goal was to become an ongoing news source that integrated Web and broadcast content.

Well, some time has past, and this week I listened in on a "Webinar" given by the Newshour staff, specifically on how they have attempted to merge their Web and broadcast operations. The most significant step, as they saw it, was putting both groups in the same workspace. It used to be that the Web operation was in a separate building several blocks away. Now they are together in a large shared workspace. One you can see when new correspondent Hari Sreenivasan does updates on the program.

The value of this new approach was proven, according to the presenters, when news of the Ft. Hood shootings broke. While the broadcast staff started working the phones, they couldn't figure out what the online staff was up to. Thus the broadcasters were introduced to Twitter, which the Web people were using to try to find eyewitnesses and experts close to the scene.

Several of our organization's senior staff from radio, television and the Educational Communications Board were flown out to San Francisco by station KQED to learn more about their Quest project. This is a multimedia approach to science and environmental reporting that includes radio, TV, educators and community partners. They also emphasized that the first and most important step was gathering everyone in a single workspace.

Convergence was a big buzz word a few years ago to describe how all media was merging on the Web and other innovative technologies. But for many media outlets it really hasn't come together. To listen to the Newshour and Quest staff is to hear that proximity does not breed contempt, as the old saying goes, but collaboration.

This recent report on funding public and government access channels on cable from Wisconsin Public Radio's Shawn Johnson caught my attention (a print version is available here).

Not long ago, the state legislature passed laws deregulating cable television. In the past, cable providers have had to set aside channels on their systems for public and local government use and provide some operational funding. That requirement is set to expire in about a year. Sun Prairie Democrat Gary Hebl has authored a bill that would allow communities to fund these access operations by collecting one-percent from cable subscribers' bills.

My start in television was through public access about twenty-five years ago. We would shoot in the now defunct Betamax format using a shoulder mounted camera attached to what was essentially a VCR in a bag. It took some commitment, but the ability to actually make television was exciting and empowering.

Of course, a lot has changed, and that is the cable industry's argument against this mandate. Back then, cable was more or less a monopoly without the competition of satellite and other digital providers. Because a satellite dish doesn't need government authority to bring television wiring to your house, they are not subject to the same access demands local governments had been able to make to the cable providers.

And user technology has changed even more. Those clunky cameras of the past are no match for a palm-sized digital recorder capable of capturing full HD video. Video that can be edited on a laptop and seen by a potentially world-wide audience on YouTube or other video-sharing site.

So those barriers to making television have been substantially lowered by technology. But when I look back on how I first learned about video production, it wasn't just through access to the technology--thrilling though that was--but also from really good mentoring from the head of my town's access channel, the person who also gave me my first job in television. That's something that no law can ensure.