Dooty Diva
Posted on March 28, 2007
Never one to pass up looking at anything about dogs, I had see what all the fuss was about, since this audio slideshow by Kyle Green, an excellent photographer from Roanoke.com, has gotten two fellow bloggers talkin’ poop.
Here’s why it works:
>> Gorgeous photos.
>> Great ambient sound.
>> It’s a talker.
>> It’s short and to the point.
>> The “outtake” at the end made me chuckle.
Lifelong learning
Posted on March 28, 2007
You can’t get ahead if you don’t keep learning. And a Knight Foundation study concludes that’s a source of frustration among journalists, reports Steve Safran, from Lost Remote.
“Only 30 percent of news outlets have increased their training budgets since 2002, and 97 percent of news execs say their new hires don’t have the training they need. And there’s this: ‘Lack of training is the top source of dissatisfaction among journalists, ahead of pay and chances for promotion.’ “
Howard Owens points out that you can’t wait for/depend on training; each journalist needs to initiate and develop his/her own career development:
“In this day and age, you need to be a person who is always learning and knows how to learn without teachers or guidance. Teachers and guidance are great, and I am happy to mentor people, but if you have to be able to do it on your own, too.”
Too true. It’s shows initiative, self-discipline and a greater understanding than just being able to regurgitate information.
Besides, technology is moving faster than you can even sign up for a course, sometimes. Perfect example: Adobe Flash CS3 Professional (link via Mindy McAdams).
Need some help with your self-learning? I recommend this online library by O’Reilly.
Celebrity March Mania
Posted on March 28, 2007
OK, I have to confess. This interactive, by USATODAY.com has me repeatedly coming back to the site to find out if brains, beauty, brawn or beast will be the celebrity champion (my money’s on McDreamy!).
How’s that for stickiness?
Multimedia training opportunity
Posted on March 25, 2007
Here’s your chance to attend an almost-all-expense paid training session.
Knight New Media Center’s Multimedia Training Workshops, May 20-25; registration deadline is April 13.
“We sponsor in-person multimedia training workshops for mid-career journalists and some journalism educators. The workshops are held at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and are funded by the Knight Foundation, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation and other private sources.
“The expenses-paid workshops run for six days and provide intense hands-on instruction on how to do multimedia stories for the Web. Topics covered include using digital video cameras, photo cameras and audio recorders; doing storyboards, stand-ups, voiceovers and other broadcast techniques; digital video, audio and photo editing using Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro and Photoshop; creating photo slide shows with Flash; Web page creation using Dreamweaver, and multimedia Web site design.”
Share it with your newsroom. This is a great chance for reporters to learn some of these skills.
Need some more tech design resources?
Posted on March 25, 2007
Perusing this list of 42 magazines should keep you plenty busy.
And I meant to blog about this a long time ago: Patrick Beeson put together a helpful list of 5 must-read books for learning CSS.
More storytelling samples from Ira Glass
Posted on March 25, 2007
Need some more inspiration? Glass has a new TV show on Showtime, a version of his This American Life radio show.
Here’s a summary of the show’s concept from PR Newswire:
“Each episode will be hosted by Ira Glass and will explore a single theme or topic through the unique juxtaposition of first-person storytelling and whimsical narrative, allowing for the show’s distinct and original voice. The visual interpretation of the television series will reflect the structure and spirit of the radio show that has grown to be one of the most popular and innovative radio programs in the medium.”
Of course we know there’s discussion about how newspapers are getting into video, and how TV is behind. Andy Dickinson points out the need for radio to get on board, too. I’m curious about the fact that PBS didn’t pick up this idea and run with it. Seems like a missed opportunity. Until I found this quote from Glass:
“But what about taking the show to public TV? Don’t even suggest that option to This American Life host and creator Ira Glass.
” ‘Public television is terrible,’ Glass said, breaking up a roomful of TV critics in January. ‘I work for a public radio station, and many of the stations which carry our show are affiliated with public TV stations. So this isn’t the greatest thing for me to say, but it’s the truth. In terms of innovation and what they do, you know, it’s just not that interesting most of the time.’
“Sad to say, Glass is right. Besides, PBS didn’t come to him, Showtime did, and courted him for years before the famously nerdy host of the Chicago-based radio program said OK.”
Ouch.
Check out the trailer here:
(Thanks to Will Sullivan, who posted a heads up about the show’s debut on the NewspaperVideo newslist)
A peek behind the scenes
Posted on March 24, 2007
Check out The Wall Street Journal’s video recording/editing setup.
They give a lot of love to Apple computers:
“What we have in here is an editing suite. In this case we have both an avid editing facility, also a Macintosh Suite with Final Cut Pro on it. Again, you see the Macintosh computers. We’ve really adopted that as a standard in our editing, so we can have a number of people working with desktop editing, and we’ve found it to be very effective, particularly in the broadband area.”
And here’s an interesting quote from Bill Grueskin, WSJ.com managing editor on the use of video:
“And now here’s our next big challenge, which is doing more video. And, you know, as I said, and as I tell people, not every story in the Journal needs or deserves a video; in fact, really, not that many of them do. We’re only looking for a few good videos every day. We aren’t looking to have a video link list, 30, 50, 80 stories a day because a.) We don’t have the bandwidth; but b.) I don’t think our readers have that much time. We want to make every video experience as special as we can make it.”
(Link via Brendan Watson)
BOP on the Web
Posted on March 24, 2007
Congrats to all the winners of the NPPA’s Best Of Photojournalism 2007 Web division contest.
Top honors goes to The San Jose Mercury News, earning the title “Best Use of the Web.”
” ‘MercuryNewsPhoto.com is only a year old and already they’ve been able to truly push and help evolve the medium. Each of their entries demonstrated a mastery of telling a multimedia story over a variety of subjects,’ judge Andrew DeVigal said.”
>> Lucas Grindley points out that Roanoke.com cashed in this year, including Best News Audio Slideshow for photographer Josh Meltzer’s “Land of Opportunity, Dashed Dreams” narrated by reporter Beth Macy.
I got the opportunity to work with and learn from this creative and talented duo (with the project An Unlikely Refuge) when I was an online producer for roanoke.com in 2005.
Good stuff continuing to come out of beautiful Southwest Virigina, and a lot we all can learn from.
>> Richard Hernandez, judge and photographer for MercuryNews.com, has published a podcast of the judges’ impressions.
>> UPDATE: Lucas Grindley is wondering about the category definitions and suggests “there’s a bug in these contest results.” If this is true, I’m surprised the judges didn’t confirm entries were submitted correctly.
Unlikely Passage
Posted on March 22, 2007
Why can’t I come up with story pitches like this? A few Miami Herald photographers (including Chuck Fadely) are sailing around Florida by way of Lake Okeechobee and blogging about it on “Unlikely Passage.”
Fun, fun, fun. For the journalists on the trip AND the readers watching along.
I wish they listed more details in the about section. How long will they be on the trip? And the blog lacks an “intro” posting.
I hope to see more videos and photo galleries (it doesn’t sound like they have good audio equipment from this post).
Because it’s all about winning those contests
Posted on March 22, 2007
Really, it’s all about the reader. But if it garners industry attention, chances are your readers will take notice of the project, too.
Anyway, I was out of town this weekend and missed Richard Hernandez’s brilliantly funny how to win a contest tutorial.
My favorite slide is all the people getting pushed into the train — excellent visual of what we sometimes try to do to our sites and audio slideshows.
Be sure to check it out if you haven’t already.
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