That moment when the video team cranks up the weird. These are a handful of the “gif-erstitials” that you’ll start seeing at the end of all our original video posting on the site—like this one. Consider this a tumblr exclusive!

Video of space shuttle Enterprise flying over the west side of Manhattan! Taken from our roof.

A new documentary that follows a team of video activists in Homs, Syria reveals they embellished footage to make it appear more dramatic—in this case setting fire to a tire in an alley to create a column of smoke in the background (skip to 8:05). While nobody is debating the extent of the crackdown in the country, episodes like this surely give the Assad regime something to point to when they claim the resistance is fraudulent, no doubt.

So why’d they do it?

The activist tells us by email: “I set the tire on fire because there was a violent shelling on Baba Amr district and we couldn’t reach it. We are being killed with cold blood by the occupying Assad regime. This is the idea that came to my mind to show the world about the shelling as the sky of Homs was covered with smoke.”

“They are desperate to get the word out,” the producer of the documentary later said. “But they don’t need to embellish. It’s all around.”

In which your tumblr talks about social media’s role in gathering information around today’s tragic shooting at Ohio’s Chardon High School.

Lloyd Grove just pre-taped a segment that will air on Good Morning America tomorrow morning on the reopening of the Natalie Wood trial. (We used Diptic iPhone app for the shots).

Check out “NewsBeast”—a new “daily roundtable” we’re producing from the newsroom on the day’s top stories. Today, Tina, our new Executive Editor Justine Rosenthal, and Senior Editor Rebecca Dana talk Penn State, Syria, Justin Bieber, and Occupy Wall Street.

Our video team launched a new original series this morning called Op-Vid: Campaign 2012. They’re pretty excited! In their humble words, It’s summed up as “opinion, without the pundits yelling. Handmade animation, without the caricatures. Essays, without the text. Complex topics, without the boring.”

This first edition in the series features Harvard professor and NewsBeast contributor Niall Ferguson taking on the economy.

Creator/Director Joe Posner’s gone down this road before, with “Austerity,” a similar video concept featuring Professor of International Political Economy Mark Blyth talking about Austerity budgets. That wound up on NPR’s All Things Considered.

Come, expand thy brains.

journalofajournalist:

I just wrote for @fastcompany about a new subscription service that lets intelligence agencies, academics and police/military stream from a library of 15,000+ terrorist propaganda videos. Think of it as “The Netflix of Terrorism.”

Looking forward to your follow-up on “The Qwikster of Terrorism,” and the resulting consumer uproar within the CIA’s ranks!

elizs:

newsweek:

[uh, what!?]

Thanks to Newsweek, I signed up for Reddit and ended up making this (be sure to mute the left video).

Changing lives, one industrial dance at a time!