Today I went to Jamaica-gleaner.com to read my daily news as usual and came across an article titled “Check Out Our Latest Video” and decided to check it out and see what this was about. I always wondered if the Gleaner Company planned to be more than just print media so the mention of “video” piqued my interest.
The article dealt with screenings for Sickle Cell and said “The Gleaner has produced a video on a visit by project personnel to Porus High School in Manchester, where 90 students were screened.”
They embedded a video that they posted on YouTube and I clicked the play button, only to get the message that “This video has been removed by the user” to my dismay.
On top of that, the Gleaner might be suffering a little embarrassment because the first video that YouTube provides in their scrolling list at the bottom that I can watch is titled “Sex with anyone??”, something I doubt the Gleaner would not like.
Solutions:
(1) If you remove the video, you need to remove the article as well or keep the article and remove the embed while leaving an explanation.
(2) I prefer that media companies use a different video provider if they are going to embedding regularly. Vimeo would be a better option for the Gleaner if embedding is the priority. YouTube is definitely better for discovery though (far more eyeballs).
The video is there… It was there earlier and it is there again
November 17th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
It looks like they need some lessons Ingrid,
Teach dem no…!
November 17th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
*hangs head in shame*
will the Gleaner ever learn…
November 21st, 2009 at 2:42 am
Anonymous, a screenshot of the video not being on the Gleaner website is clearly provided with the post to prove that it was not there.
If the video appeared later, it was after this blog post was written (maybe because of the blog post)
November 23rd, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Did you check back later that day? or after you were finish writing? The video clearly was not up for a while but it was definitely up before your article appeared and again after your article the same day.
Clearly there was an issue.
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Anonymous, I you clearly misunderstand a number of things:
(1) The point of the post was not to say that the video is still unavailable. It serves as a record of a glaring mistake at a large, profitable corporation that should know and do better. This serves as a good case study for other businesses and provides alternative ways of dealing with the issue.
(2) If a car dealer advertises a car for a certain day then when the customer comes at 10 am they are told “Sorry, the car is currently unavailable. Check back later”, that is poor customer service and the customer may not come back later.
It is no different when you advertise a video and then there is no video. “Check back later” is besides the point - The video should be checked BEFORE the article is published and IMMEDIATELY AFTER it is published.
Large, profitable corporations should not make such basic mistakes.
(3) I noticed you have avoided dealing with the issue of the “Sex with anyone??” video that was indicated as a recommended video to watch as captioned in the screenshot.
Even if the video worked, that should still be somewhat worrying for the Gleaner and someone would need to look at whether YouTube is really the best video vehicle for a company with a reputation to uphold.
November 25th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
David yu messing with some dumb issue on the gleaner site that i cant seem to understand why its even blog worthy and yu site down for days now realvibezmedia.com, dude blog bout some real issues.
November 25th, 2009 at 8:25 pm