2007 EPpy winners

Posted on May 30, 2007

Mindy McAdams, you’re wonderful for linking up all the winners.

Many thanks.

(I know, this is so last week’s news. I’ve been out of town; playing catch up!)

Still behind the 8 ball

Posted on May 30, 2007

Working in an industry in transition means you’re constantly feeling off-kilter. It’s both exhilarating and nerve-racking to try new things:

>> We get to try out new products and stretch our imaginations and notions of what storytelling is.
>> But at the same time we we wonder: Should we spend the resources and time on a new venture that could end up being yesterday’s fad?

Every so often we experience bursts of creativity that we see pay off, such as the advent and quick adoption of video clips (roanoke.com’s TimesCast and naplesnews.com’s Studio55), audio slideshows (thank you, Joe Weiss for Soundslides) and interactivity (USATODAY.com’s redesign).

But really, these advancements are too small and delivery is too late when compared to what other sites and companies are producing. Ahem … Google. Yahoo. Craigslist. YouTube. Yeah. You’ve heard all that before.

But get this: Microsoft today announced a new product: Microsoft Surface. You can use your fingers, pens, brushes, etc., to create and manipulate digital files … all on a table top (much like Jefferson Han’s touchscreen). Set your PDA on that table, and it’ll sync information to it.

Damn. Seems like we’re missing the big picture here if the best we can come up with is putting together a video show online. Newspapers are NEWS PROVIDERS. We should be at the forefront of content delivery — and I think that should include the hardware development. How cool would it be if we actually invested in resources to create a product like Surface or Apple’s iPhone that would make everyone’s jaw drop and then clamor to have one?

Instead, we’re caught in this muddy swamp of trying to cling onto the past (print) and say we’re investing in multimedia (digital). If we keep this up, we’ll be known as parasites, not innovators.

There’s an ongoing discussion on Romenesko’s forum pages on Poynter about this topic, which got me riled up about this issue again. In the most recent letter, ArtsJournal.com Editor Douglas McLennan, wrote:

“While [newspapers] say they’re working on it, their investment has been far behind the curve, and virtually every meaningful innovation in the digital delivery of news and building of usership has been made outside the newspaper industry. Most newspaper websites are dull, confusing and difficult to read, violating long-established principles of reader usability. At a time when social networking sites are showing how to build massive loyal communities, news organizations’ interactivity is rudimentary at best. Companies like Google have raised digital advertising to an art, making it easy for advertisers to find the customers they want. Where have newspapers been? Asleep, while Craigslist and a host of other competitors have eaten their lunch.

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Time out for funnies

Posted on May 30, 2007

Need a break and a laugh?

Danny Sanchez is sharing his editorial cartoons.

This one’s great:

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A recipe for infographics

Posted on May 24, 2007

“Why don’t editors and publishers get it?” asks Alberto Cairo about newspapers making creative visual storytelling online.

Cairo is the former director of online infographics at the award-winning elmundo.es and current assistant professor of infographics and graphic design at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

And he has posted on his Web site a copy of his how-to article “The future is now,” published in the SND’s winter 2005 Design Journal. I just found the link via Desiree Perry’s del.icio.us bookmarks, but it’s obviously been around for awhile.

Cairo writes:

“Newsrooms have undterstood multimedia only as a multiple media: text, audio, video, animation and interactivity are used, yes, but separately, not in integrated storytelling pieces. I think that one of our golas is to learn how to combine all the tools the Internet offers and use them to enhance the reader’s experience.”

And he continues (emphasis below is mine):

“In print you deal with space. In online you deal with space and time because you can sequence the action. This means that you are not constrained by a physical frame anymore. This give you freedom, as you can offer as much information as you wish, but it is also risky: TOO MUCH INFORMATION IS NOT INFORMATION, SO BE CAREFUL. Keep the balance between providing context and what your journalistic criterion tells you about what the limits are.”

(Mindy McAdams also has made the above point many times.)

Unfortunately, I don’t think much has changed with online infographics since then. But it’s encouraging to see that he’s teaching students about the importance of it all.

Aside from the fact that, ironically, this explainer is a copy of a print story about making interactive explainers, this is a great resource to print out and hand out to your print graphics department and print editors.

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Shift happens

Posted on May 10, 2007

This slideshow based on content by Karl Fisch has been around. But in case you haven’t seen it yet, check it out. Here are some of the points I found most interesting:

>> The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the total population of the planet.

>> It is estimated that a week’s worth of New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.

>>There are about 540,000 words in the English language — about 5 times as many as during Shakespeare’s time.

>> We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.

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What in the world?

Posted on May 4, 2007

Since I was sick this week, I missed most of the popular “Where in the world is Matt Lauer?” series on the Today Show.

So I headed over to today.msnbc.com to catch up.

And I was disappointed with this interactive, the first link I found off their homefront.

Firstly, the location markers on the interactive graphic are hard to see. Clicking on one, brings up a horizontal bar of video links. Click on one of those and grab your knitting needles. You’ll have time to make a sweater while you wait for the video to open in MSNBC.com’s beta video player. (Other videos on the site open up much faster, so I don’t know why these take so long.)

Yay! for it being in Flash, but Boo! for it being in a pop-up window that is divorced from the thoughtful design of the original package.

And I don’t get any other resources about these places? Just video reports from Matt’s TV appearances?

Then I scrolled to the last link on the page and found the series’ section front.

Aha … more information. Almost too much. This page is crammed full.

And now I’m confused. What’s the point of a separate interactive that showcases video when all the video already is listed on the section front?

Then I stumbled upon this interactive that has some fun games and such. But why isn’t it in the “interactive” box with the other graphic?

Text stories are a mess of information, too. I think it could have been better organized as blog entries, such as USATODAY.com’s Bly on the fly series.

Hmpf. If I’m having a hard time figuring this out and putting together pages like this is my full-time job, what’s a reader to think?

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Achoo!

Posted on May 4, 2007

Sneezes, sniffles and a sore throat means lots of sleep, liquids and the appropriate dose of Dayquil to get me through the day.

I’m feeling better tonight, so I thought I’d look up some info about the “common cold.”

Interestingly, the only interactive type of graphic I could find during a short Web search was this one by familydoctor.org. Sure beats trying to read through all this to get some quick answers (the latter does look like a good resource, though).

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A photographer’s life

Posted on May 1, 2007

To celebrate Sport Shooter’s 100th newsletter and for a little inspiration, Herald-Tribune photographer Chip Litherland and other photographers via aphotoaday.org compiled a list of 100 Things Completely Right About Our Jobs.

I’m not a photographer, but I still got a kick out of reading this. Here are a few of my favorite entries:

3. Looking at people for an extremely long amount of time and not having to feel creepy about it.

7. Experiencing both the best and the worst parts of peoples lives, sometimes in the same day.

40. Every time you tell someone what you do, they NEVER say “Oh, man, that must suck.”

54. Never waking up to the same two assignments, shooting the same damn thing, or meeting the same damn people.

61. Putting down the camera and listening, because people will tell you the damndest things just for being a stranger that cares.

64. It takes one picture to say what a 30 inch story can, and it translates into every language imaginable.

Fun stuff. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we don’t have to wait until the 200th anniversary list to see something about the Web/multimedia on it. ;)

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Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive internships

Posted on May 1, 2007

If the subject line isn’t enough to grab your attention, the rest of Rob Curley’s posting surely will.

Here’s a great excerpt:

“We want solid journalists who can write their backsides off. We’re also looking for programmers with an understanding of Django. And if you’re a kick-ass designer with killer Flash or motion-graphics skills, we want you.

“But what we really want are self-motivated bad-asses who have at least one of the skills I listed above.”

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