MNPW: How to teach a cat to fetch (or training your newsroom)
Posted on August 22, 2007 by Melissa Worden
On the second day of the Multimedia News Producers Workshop, Photojournalist Mike De Sisti of postcrescent.com and Multimedia Producer Jenni Pinkley of startribune.com talked about how to take all this knowledge back to our newsrooms.
Pinkley put together a YouTube video (above; you have to click on it, I can’t embed it, unfortunately) describing how we get everyone as excited about multimedia as we are. It’s as simple as:
>> Measure and gauge interest
>> Create a buzz; show them they can have fun
>> Be patient (they’re scared).
Just watch the video. It’s much more fun.
Which reinforces to me that learning has to be as fun and exciting as all these new applications with which we’re now working.
Reporters, photographers, copyeditors and assignment editors are used to a certain workflow, and they know what’s expected of them. And now we’re asking them to redefine how they tell stories. Oh, and at the same time, they need to figure out how to operate this machinery and navigate these software applications and content management systems they’ve never seen before. Yeah, and do everything they’ve already been doing on the job, too. Thanks so much.
I don’t mean to stereotype here because there are exceptions in hopefully every newsroom. But I do feel the majority of people find change to be stressful, even when it’s good change. Add on top of the stress of changing workflows and expectations that people are just plain worried about keeping their jobs. This is a tough time to be asking them to move outside of their comfort zone.
So it’s important to remind them that this is fun. And it’s for them. These audio and video clips, interactive graphics, slideshows and more enhance their stories. It makes their writing more accessible to readers, which, I imagine, can only make them shine as multimedia stars when the company is looking for ways to downsize.
Pinkley described how she teaches her newsroom, which is a part of the paper’s overall training program for their staff. Classes are for about 6-10 people in two sessions of approximately three-hour blocks, during which they gather and edit audio.
She also worked on SeeSaw, a compilation of life samplings told through multimedia, with reporters and photographers in her newsroom. The benefit of this evergreen content is that as it adds to the community development of the site, it gives the newsroom a chance to learn and play with multimedia projects and storytelling.
Mike De Sisti teaches reporters video at his paper. In this example video shown below (click on the image to go to the page to watch it), which he played during the session, he worked with Post-Crescent reporter Kate McGinty to produce a video project.
What a great way to educate a.) the public on what reporters are doing with video, and b.) reporters on what they can do in telling a story through video. And as a bonus, she got a chance to show off what she learned.
The mechanics are a critical part of learning multimedia, but it’s also essential to understand what kind of multimedia to use when. For his paper, De Sisti has put together a multimedia production star system that rates the overall necessary skill level of each project.
I’ve heard of other papers using tiered systems for multimedia projects, and I think these are important to share with reporters and photographers and particularly assignment editors so they can understand the different levels of projects. I particularly like the production time guides given.
>> One star: Raw video, recorded for no more than 45 seconds. The final product has no editing or titles. Production time: 1-2 hours, which includes shooting, ingestion, formatting and posting.
>> Two star: Very rough cut video. Two to four cuts in a short video with limited titles. Production time: 2-4 hours, which includes shooting, ingestion, formatting and posting.
>> Three star: Project is shot, edited and posted the same day. Includes 1-3 brief interviews (A roll) with other shots (B roll). Titles are used as intro and to introduce people. Production time: 4-6 hours, which includes shooting, ingestion, formatting and posting.
>> Four star: Often supplements in-depth enterprise stories. Video may contain several interviews and voiceovers or on-camera reporter interviews. Production time: May take several days to complete, which includes shooting, ingestion, formatting and posting.
Tags: multimedia, training, audio slideshows, video
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You can get some video plugins that will allow you to embed … I had the hardest time figuring that out!
Thanks for the tip, Angela. I can usually embed video but it looks like YouTube gives the author an option to NOT allow the video to be embedded. So it doesn’t work. The other one is a quicktime video.
[…] MNPW: How to teach a cat to fetch (or training your newsroom). Melissa Worden’s wrap-up on a recent multimedia training session has two things going for it: (a) it’s a great report and (b) it includes links to a very funny video that cat owners will appreciate. […]
That time guide is fabulously handy.
I wish I had some other easy time guides that like Flash packages and other multimedia elements.
It would really help in working with assigning editors and reporters/photographers in trying to scope projects and create reasonable deadlines.
On cats and newsrooms…
Melissa Worden has a nice post on the Multimedia News Producers Workshop in Minneapolis, Someone put together a funny video about newsroom training being similar to training cats to fetch. Since herding them didn’t work, maybe teaching them to fetch…..
[…] few weeks ago I wrote about how teaching your newsroom to create Web content may feel like training a cat to play fetch. Another way to get your newsroom excited about multimedia: Let a convert preach its […]