A Room WIth Views

John Hood

May 19, 2009

Listen to this story (4 minutes)

RALEIGH – Carolina Journal now has a room with a view.

Actually, it’s more like a suite with many views. It’s Carolina Journal TV, the latest addition to our Carolina Journal media program that already included a monthly print newspaper, a weekly radio show, and the daily Carolina Journal Online site you are reading right now.

Carolina Journal.tv collects and presents all of the video content that Mitch Kokai and other CJ and JLF staffers generate each week. Kokai, formerly a radio news director and cable TV anchor, is frequently seen around the state capital with his trusty camera in tow. When not filming JLF events or taping “Carolina Journal Radio,” the weekly newsmagazine he co-hosts, Kokai records press conference, interviews state lawmakers, and covers other public-policy events in Raleigh and beyond.

Carolina Journal.tv presents all this video content in a format that is easy to watch and easy to search. There are four kinds of videos on the site:

• Real Time – Quick reactions to the news of the day and brief interviews on issues currently stirring debate in the legislature, political circles, the mainstream media, or the blogosphere.

• On the Record – Live-to-tape coverage of press conferences, committee meetings, panel discussions, and other public events.

• Air Wars – Outtakes from recent appearances by JLF staffers on “NC Spin,” News 14 Carolinas’ “Political Connections,” and newscasts on TV stations across the state.

• Locke Box – Excerpts from recent JLF luncheons and presentations. You’ll find some famous faces in the Locke Box archives, such as Bobby Jindal and Winston S. Churchill.

Since its formal launch a couple of months ago, Carolina Journal.tv has already attracted a strong and growing audience. Just during the month of April, our CJTV video content was viewed more than 16,000 times. And we’re just getting started.

Today is a particularly good day to visit CarolinaJournal.tv because of the lead story we currently have posted on the site: a fascinating discussion of North Carolina’s constitution and the power to tax. As part of JLF’s State of Our Constitution series, we traveled to Edenton last month to produce this program in the oldest government building in North Carolina, the historic Chowan County Court House. The panelists for this professionally produced program included prominent constitutional attorney Gene Boyce, former Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, Barton College historian Jeff Broadwater, and Wake Forest University political scientist John Dinan.

We were delighted to host the discussion for the standing-room-only crowd in Edenton. But we’re even more delighted to be able to broadcast the program to thousands of North Carolinians through CarolinaJournal.tv.

Look for lots of similar programming in the future. CarolinaJournal.tv will continue to expand and improve as we deploy new technologies, load past JLF events into the database, and expand our video coverage of North Carolina government and politics.

As always, let me know what you think. It’s time to give our new room a view.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation

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