Print-centric to platform-agnostic
Posted on July 17, 2007
Back in December, this video about The Post-Crescent (Appleton, Wisc.) newsroom’s name change to The Information Center and what that means was posted to YouTube.
Andrew Oppmann, executive editor/general manager, describes how the paper is moving from being print-centric to platform-agnostic. “The whole goal of the Information Center: Get the information out in a variety of different ways rather than just the daily newspaper,” he explains.
The newsroom is broken down in to five major desks: Public Service, Community Conversation, Multimedia, Custom Publishing, and the Local desk. This video explains each and how the news gathering process has changed.
A multimedia/online news growing pain
Posted on July 12, 2007
Mindy McAdams is calling for more breaking news multimedia by showcasing a breaking news audio slideshow produced by photojournalist Dan Limmer about a protest in Kennebunkport, Maine, and providing an analysis of the piece.
At the end of her post, she brings up a most interesting question:
Dan thinks it might be problematic if a package like this one were edited by someone who never went to the scene:
“If a paper employed a producer, it would help overall in time/resource management. But in a news situation, I would want to be sure the multimedia was mixed in context to the photos and in accordance with ethical standards. That may be difficult for someone who wasn’t there.
The concept of editing audio and integrating still photos (the “vision” aspect of the multimedia) can’t be overlooked as challenging and time consuming. Going back to square one after already mixing sound once because it doesn’t flow or tell a story is a drag. Fortunately, this one came together on the first try.”
It’s a very important question: Will a producer who was not on the scene tell the story accurately? Obviously, the photographer could sit down with the producer and ensure that the real story comes through. But in cases where that’s not possible, what will be done to ensure that the finished product is accurate and true?
This is one of our growing pains.
I agree with Mindy and Dan that it’s quite difficult for someone who wasn’t on the scene to put together a multimedia story — it’s like writing a print story from someone else’s notes.
For this type of project, reporters/photographers are doing more than “spraying the scene” with video or recording an interview for an audio clip. They’re creating STORIES while they’re out in the field, and video, photos and audio are gathered with a storyline in mind.
Pass off the content to someone else to put together, and you risk wasting any creative intents by the reporter/photographer and, more importantly, getting the facts wrong.
But, whew, that’s a lot of extra work for reporters/photographers to do. Newspapers are cutting personnel, and leaner newsrooms means there’s more on everyone’s plates.
Not to say that reporters/photographers aren’t eager to learn new online skills. But they’re still expected fulfill their print obligations, and multimedia is one more thing they would have to get done for the story that could take them away from covering something else. Really, when it comes down to it, which is going to win: Multimedia or another news story?
So what’s the solution? With tighter resources, it doesn’t make sense to send two reporters to a scene — one for print and one for online. And it just gets us away from the integrated newsroom philosophy (which I fully support), so it’s not a viable option.
It’s got to be a change in workflow philosophy to reverse publishing.
When the newsroom ALWAYS thinks online FIRST — and decides the best way to tell that story (text, audio, slideshow, video or an interactive graphic/database) –THEN takes that story and modifies/edits it for print, the reporter/photographer always will be the creative behind the multimedia.
It WILL work. Editor & Publisher reports: Gannett’s Democrat and Chronicle, under the new “Information Center” directive, has learned that the online features can drive print circulation.
Editors discovered this in September when they prepared a multimedia package on local sex offenders, which included a database of registered felons and various audio and video reports. The Web package was prominently placed on the homepage Sept. 28 to promote much of the same material in a Sunday print presentation three days later. The effort resulted in the biggest Sunday single-copy sales of the year, with 4.9% more than any other Sunday. That record was broken two months later when the same approach was used for a report on police overtime.
Unfortunately, all is not rosy with this method; reporters/photographers still feel stretched too thin:
Still, the increased workload and broader news scope are stressing some staffers, who also worry about accuracy and the need for down time. “They are stressed out,” says Lou Mleczko, president of the Detroit Newspaper Guild, which represents newsroom staffers at Gannett’s Detroit Free Press. “It reduces the amount of time available to do reporting and other things they have to do. Errors are appearing online, and that is because there is not enough time to look things up. Editors are in such a panic to get things up on the Web.”
Maybe the answer is to switch everything around. Instead of having the same staff try to do both, why not keep the teams with concentrated focuses, but flip the resources. Instead of having our main production efforts going to print production, and a small online team, why not have the main production efforts be for online, and employ a smaller set of editors to package the print product?
Until we figure out the best workflow, I think management will look for ways to make the current systems most efficient, and that probably will mean we’ll see many organizations channel content through an online editor/producer. It will be essential for that person to make sure they tell the story accurately.
(BTW, all this leads me to wonder: Am I working myself out of a job? I’m a journalist, and I love to tell stories. But I don’t go out in the field to do the reporting — the reporters and photographers do that. So when my ideal scenario happens, what happens to the online producer?)
Harry Potter and the Prarie Hallows
Posted on July 12, 2007
I came across this cute, cute site tonight (via the Digital Edge), put together by the News-Gazette in Champaign, Ill., which counts down to the release of Harry Potter’s newest movie and book, both happening this month.
The design is very nice and quite a departure from the News-Gazette’s main site. One of their goals, according to Digital Edge, is to appeal to a younger audience, and I think the look and feel works for a pre-teen through adult (not so much for the younger readers, though).
The site is full of interactive goodies, including trivia, polls, forums, a calendar of local Harry Potter-related events, and a spell feature where readers can create their own spells, guess what other spells do and comment on them. Another cute feature: Send a friend a “howler,” which mimics the reprimanding audio-telegram that Hogwarts students receive from their parents.
Two things that would make this site even better:
>> The blog hasn’t been updated since July 5 — I want to read about the movie’s opening night reactions.
>> And I want even more reader interaction.
There’s a photo gallery, but I’d love to see a way for readers to upload their own pictures.
And on the In the News page, local Harry Potter Club members put together a video newscast, with their own commercials. It’s cute (a little hard to hear at times, and it is what it is: you’re watching a kids’ play), but it’s a great addition to this niche site. It’d be even better if other readers could upload their own videos.
For your mapping sweet tooth
Posted on July 11, 2007
Google today added more than 100 third party mashups to its MyMaps.
“It’s a really powerful innovation,” said John Hanke, Google’s director of maps. “It’s like combining chocolate and peanut butter. They’re good by themselves, but the combination is much more valuable than when they are served in isolation.”
I played around with it a bit, and I like. I did a real estate search in my area and found several listings in quite a user-friendly format.
This is the latest step in Google’s mashup evolution: In April, the company allowed readers to add text, photos and video to customized maps. In late June, they unveiled a feature that lets users easily change driving directions.
Newspapers better watch out. Google’s going even more local, and the opportunities are endless here. But then again, we’ve just been given some more powerful tools with embedding video and photos that I hope journalists will take advantage of.
Adding content to personalized maps:
Video views to triple by 2012
Posted on July 11, 2007
A new study from ABI research says the number of people watching video content over the Internet is expected to triple to nearly 1 billion in the next five years, reports Red Herring.
The leaders in this market: Asia, where about 400 million people are forecast to view their favorite clips, shows and movies via the Web by 2012. They will make up 43 percent of viewers, says the study; North Americans are predicted to actually decline in viewership from 29 percent today to 22 percent in 2012.
Good reads for 07.09.07
Posted on July 9, 2007
>> Howard Owens’ list of eight historical mistakes the newspaper industry made. “The race isn’t over yet,” he says. “But there are mistakes newspapers have made that I think will have lasting consequences.”
>> Paul Bradshaw wants some help with a paper he’s presenting on Wiki Journalism at http://wikijournalism.pbwiki.com/ (the password to contribute is ‘wikiwiki’), or go straight to http://wikijournalism.pbwiki.com/?full_access=pjxmsse6ur&l=S.
>> Chris Carroll’s notes from NPPA 2007 Summit also has excerpts from David Leeson and Rich Beckman’s speeches. Carroll says: “Do you want to be employed as a photojournalist? You must learn to produce and edit audio and video. This simple fact could not be more absolute. Representatives from the titans of the industry testified one-by-one that their organizations will never hire another photographer who does not possess these skills.”
>> Nielsen/NetRatings will replace page view metrics with amount of time spent on a site, reports Computeworld (be sure to check out Danny Sanchez’s analysis of this).
>> Is Digg/Fark traffic worth it? asks LostRemote (which we may not have to worry about anymore if PV’s are out). “I love that the viral attention drives up unique user and pageview counts - but its a little bit like a quick high,” Don Day says. “The folks surfing in from Digg aren’t likely interested in local advertisers - and actually drag down our pageview to unique user count - since they are usually only good for one or two pageviews per month.”
>> Angela Grant has some recommendations for video storytelling books that range from the beginner level to advanced.
Baghdad Tour
Posted on July 9, 2007
“Baghdad Tour,” part of Washingtonpost.com’s “America at War” series, shows readers what it’s like to patrol the streets of Baghdad via five video vignettes (the longest is 3:19) and a video introduction.
I love that this is map-based so I better understand where these locations are and in relation to each other. Each of the videos is quite interesting to watch (you can resize them to be bigger, too), and I appreciate being able to see each of these snippets of their lives — some shot/edited in an intimate way, such as the home-movie quality of Camp Victory.
One nitpick: All the text at the beginning of the video is mostly repeated underneath it when on the smaller size setting. Too many words. I’d rather see the text to the bottom/side of the video only.
Credits: Reporting by Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post; video editing by Jonathan Forsythe and Chet Rhodes, washingtonpost.com; design and production by Nelson Hsu, washingtonpost.com.
Quality, not quantity, & good positioning
Posted on July 6, 2007
Pete Clifton, the head of BBC News Interactive, announced that he wants to see two major changes with their online video: 1.) It should complement stories, rather than repeat streamed TV or an accompanying text story, and 2.) it should be embedded.
“Instead of putting up hundreds of pieces of video every week, is just to be more focused. We want to give [video] a higher profile so we can get to the point where we can embed them,” he said. “Once we are doing that, I don’t think we can afford to disappoint the audience. That’s not to say that stuff is badly made, it may just not necessarily complement the text that we have written and it may not just suit the platform that it’s on.”
So why are they so hot to embed their video?
In a trial run of it, they saw up to 40 percent of people watching, compared to 2 percent in a standalone player.
Wow. That’s a lot.
‘I want an iPhone’
Posted on July 6, 2007
David Pogue puts his dreams to music:
‘We dream in dissolves, we think in cuts’
Posted on July 5, 2007
In the latest Poynter Centerpiece (Blurring Boundaries: What Print Journalists Can Learn from Video Editors), Regina McCombs, multimedia producer at StarTribune.com and former TV photographer, asked four TV editors (Ram Guzman, John Hyjek, Jonathan Menell, and Jim Douglas) to review some newspaper audio slideshows and offer tips on what principles of video editing might be applied to improve our storytelling.Their reactions:
>> Watch your pacing — many were too slow and seemed to scream “Look at my photo!” (Personally, I’ve also seen some that are speed demons with photographers trying to cram in too much of their work.)
>> Watch your transitions — choose the right tool for the right moment:
A concept that has stuck with Menell is something he heard Hyjek say once: We dream in dissolves, we think in cuts. “It means that when you think during your day, thoughts come into your head instantly. You experience pow! — this is happening — pow! I feel like that. Dreams fade and come and go, and it’s a gentler process. The way it applies in storytelling, the point of editing, is the juxtaposing of one idea to the next.
“Cuts make pieces feel more urgent, more powerful and more precise, too. And more experiential, because people watching it are in their awake mind.”
A dissolve, on the other hand, does something else entirely, taking you a step back from the story. “You’re leaving the world of the immediate and entering a more thoughtful place, a more contemplative place, a more painterly place …”
>> Watch your sound — um, well, you know what I mean.
“The importance of sound is to bring the viewer a much more intimate sense of reality, to take the viewer where we went.” His [Jim Douglas, NPPA photographer of the year in 1985] recommendation: “Listen, listen and listen some more. Close your eyes and hold your breath and hear.”
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