Anyone know 5 ways to produce print copy without asking the newspaper for help?
Posted on October 8, 2007 by Melissa Worden
This post, Five ways to produce online news without asking the web guy for help by Ryan Sholin, makes me cranky.
First off, and to get it out of the way, it’s written in a sexist manner. Sounds harsh, I know, but he even acknowledges it at the bottom of his post:
(Yes, I know, I know. Next time I’ll use the phrase ‘web gal.’)
Really. Well that’s nice. But in actuality, it would have taken almost as long to modify the text to be gender neutral as it did to write that disclaimer.
But most importantly, I do NOT agree that Web teams don’t need to be involved from the beginning or even at all.
Sholin suggests:
Here are five ways you can put together something wonderful for the web without asking the web guy a single question.
WHAT!?!?!?
Two examples of what Sholin recommends:
Record your video. Edit it in iMovie (free on your Mac) or Windows Movie Maker (free on your PC). Upload it to YouTube. Send the web guy the URL. Bask in the glory.
Produce an audio slideshow: Record your audio. Gather your photos. Forget about SoundSlides for the moment and edit it as a video file in iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. Upload it to YouTube. Send the web guy the URL. Bask in the glory of your award-winning tearjerker.
The suggestions are meant to help an already overloaded Web team. I agree 100 percent that with the emphasis in online publishing, the Web team is feeling the pressure and seeing mounting work loads. I deal with this every single day.
But at my paper, I also see graphics and photo swamped because their teams are smaller. And the reporters on nearly every section are being asked to do a lot more because they have fewer coworkers. Even the paper itself is shrinking in size. And I know we’re not alone.
So hmmm … maybe what we need to do here is to find a way to help them produce a print product without asking the newspaper for help.
How about: Is your editor too busy to put your story in the paper? Then report, write, photograph, design and graphically illustrate your own story and mail out a newsletter with your newspaper’s banner on it.
Would you do that?? If not, then why is it acceptable to “go around” your Web team?
They should and have to be involved from the very beginning to the end. You SHOULD be asking them questions. THEY’RE the ones who just might know the product the best. After all, that’s their full-time job.
Many people are commenting about Alan’s Mutter’s posting I wrote about last week. They’re in agreement that newspapers aren’t taking advantage of the Web talent and “young net natives” they have. But going around the Web team to “save them time” is the same brain drain Mutter’s accusing newspapers of doing in upper-management decisions.
My point is not that the newsroom shouldn’t be taking the initiative. I agree with that wholeheartedly. As the one multimedia producer on the team (plus Web producer plus early-, early-morning maintenance producer plus editor plus etc.) I can’t do it all. I can’t do all the projects, and I can’t even both teach everyone AND produce.
So they (and not just reporters — photographers, page designers, graphic designers and copy editors) HAVE to learn to master Web skills, too.
Sholin says:
Don’t wait around for someone else to hold your hand through this stuff. You’re an adult. You can handle this on your own. Get started today.
Very true. But your Web team also should be available for questions. They should point you in the right direction to learn your new skills. As Mutter points out in his post, if we’re truly on the same team, there’s no reason to keep reinventing the knowledge wheel within your own newsroom.
Again, don’t get me wrong, please. The newsroom SHOULD use the tools Sholin suggests. And they’re great ideas on ways to publish content alternatively. But we should all be a team. And that means each player is going to have his OR her own expertise to bring to the table. That includes the Web team.
And maybe what bothers me the MOST about this post is that Sholin says this:
None of this requires any technical know-how. You don’t need any training to point-and-click your way through this process.
I completely disagree. Software to newbies can be so intimidating. That’s probably the No. 1 reason they haven’t ventured into the online world yet. AND, please, let’s not forget the importance of learning online storytelling, too. The audio slideshows are a unique blend of reporting and visuals. Photographers have to learn how to tell a storyline, and reporters have to learn to think visual. Add motion pictures to the mix and it gets even harder.
We all have to start somewhere, and whenever you start learning, there’s going to be a learning curve. Your early work is going to be green. But your Web site should have the same publishing standards as your print newspaper. It should be planned, reviewed and edited. And that means your Web team should be involved.
Tags: online journalism, multimedia
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[…] Anyone know 5 ways to produce print copy without asking the newspaper for help? Ryan Sholin wrote a post about five ways to get stuff online without bothering “the web guy.” Melissa Worden strongly disagrees with much of what he wrote. As someone who believes in quality jourmaoism, I’m with Melissa; as someone who’s too often found the IT folk roadblocks to getting anything done, I’m with Ryan. […]
I’m really trying to get out of the habit of leaving comments that start with “What I really meant to say was…” when people disagree with me, so I’ll keep this brief.
Not every news organization has a web “team.” Some have one person who functions as a funnel to the web, no matter what’s in their job title. Some news organizations, believe it or not, have no one with the web in their job description.
My goal, and my advice for reporters, has less to do with lightening the web guy or gal’s load, and a lot more to do with getting compelling content to readers online without worrying about technology.
The inspiration for my post was this comment on Meranda Watling’s blog.
Ryan, you’re absolutely right. I’m coming at it with the notion that newspapers are not operating in a pre-year-2000 workflow and actually have a Web “team” of people who know what they’re doing and have a vision — even if they may not have much time to do all they want to do.
I also have heard about photographers and reporters having to go around the system — even create their own Web sites — because they don’t have the support they should have.
Understood.
It really is a shame that we’re still at this point, isn’t it? And I do think this ties back to a root problem of not making online news, let alone multimedia, a priority (unless of course, it’s a buzz word like “video”).
I’ve had a certain amount of go-around-the-web people at my own job. I work so hard on a piece of multimedia, send it over there. And because there are only a few people processing the work of hundreds … My work never makes it online. It used to make me so angry that finally I decided it was easier for me to do it by myself than it was to get angry that it was never done right.
I do believe that people need to take it upon themselves to pitch in for the online product.
I don’t believe it’s so easy as Ryan’s flip comments make it out to be.
Newsroom training is not avoiding the ‘Web guy’…
This entry is a response to Ryan Sholin’s post titled “Five ways to produce online news without asking the web guy for help.” I take the standpoint that it’s not training for newsroom folks not familiar with Web content to go around the Web profess…
When I was reading Ryan’s original post, I was thinking about Web people who have described to me the recent explosion of ideas in their newsrooms.
The story goes something like this: “We used to be separate from the newsroom. We couldn’t even get them to talk to us. In recent months everyone has got that Web religion. Now they all want everything on the Web. And they’re lined up at my desk, saying, ‘Do my project!’ ‘No, mine!’ ‘No, do mine! Mine!’”
So I was thinking that Ryan was encouraging all those print-side people to get out of the long line and start making stuff themselves.
I was interested to see Melissa’s take on it!
I’ve got to back Melissa on this one. While instructing the newsroom to create its own multimedia content and just ship it over to the Web team might work when there’s just one person running the online show, it’s a big mistake everywhere else.
We shouldn’t be encouraging the newsroom’s misperception that being an online journalists is the same thing as being a journalist. The truth is photog who can shoot photos doesn’t necessarily know what makes a good audio slideshow. The reporter who covers a daily beat doesn’t automatically know what makes a good blog entry. The list goes on and on.
Sorry, Ryan. What you’re suggesting only works when the standards for quality are set very low.
[…] the same time, I fully agree with what Melissa Worden said in her response to Ryan. I do NOT agree that Web teams don’t need to be involved from the beginning or even at all […]
From a “web person” in charge of the other “web people”:
1) We aim to create tools that enable people to go around us.
2) We’re not going to create a new special website for every enterprise package that runs in the paper. We’re not staffed for that, we’re a 4-person team that services editorial, sales, marketing and circulation. Show me audience potential and we’ll move mountains to get it done, and experiment with form on your own time.
3) The only problem with newsroom people using wordpress or other tools is that they start to understand how far behind Newspaper CM systems are, and they demand more. Hey, that’s not really a problem, is it?