Imagine: Your Own FREE Foreign News Bureau

By

Randy Garsee

Let’s face it, no matter what your position, you may feel like your budget is under attack by economic terrorists determined to silence the voice of local broadcast and print news nationwide. Budgets are hacked with mathematical machetes. Correspondents are turned to crisp with financial flamethrowers. Reporters written off. Producers pushed out. Photographers flushed into the streets.

The last thing you’re thinking about right now is how to expand your international news coverage. The idea of putting a local face on the battlefields of Iraq or Afghanistan is not even a remote consideration, right? How can you possibly pull that off in this economy?

It’s simple. You can do it and it’s free. It doesn’t matter if you need video, audio, photos or print content for a web site, a newsletter, a newspaper or a television station.

In the past few years, the Department of Defense spent millions of your tax dollars to create the perfect tool for you to get domestic and international news. It’s called the Digital Video and Imagery Distribution System. Of course, we know how the military loves acronyms, so it’s also known as DVIDS.

More importantly, this is the farthest thing from propaganda. It’s access. You or your news team decides how to use the free articles, video or photos. Here’s an example of how to use DVIDS for a television station. Let’s say your assignments editor receives a call from a mother complaining that your station never mentions Iraq where her son or daughter happens to be deployed. With DVIDS you can request a satellite link-up and interview that mom’s son or daughter. You can record the interview and incorporate an interview with the parent. With little effort you’ve just localized an international story and made your audience care about it.

When you visit DVIDS online, there’s a link for media requests near the top of the page. For more information on DVIDS, go to www.dvidshub.net or call the 24-Hour Media Hotline at 678-421-6612. You should do it quickly. After all, your competition may be reading this too.