Anyone know 5 ways to produce print copy without asking the newspaper for help?
Posted on October 8, 2007
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.
‘A Manifesto for Change’
Posted on October 5, 2007
Contrary to what some readers may think, less news (a thin newspaper) is not good news.
Journalism as we know it is over because the economic model has collapsed, says Geneva Overholser, editor of The Des Moines Register from 1988 to 1995, syndicated columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group, an editorial board member of The New York Times and ombudsman of The Washington Post.
She also wrote “On Behalf of Journalism: A Manifesto for Change,” published last fall.
“The story of American journalism is undergoing a dramatic rewrite. The pace of change makes many anxious, and denunciations are lobbed from all sides – and from within. It’s easy to overlook the promise of the many possibilities that lie before us. Our focus here is on those possibilities.”
I found an interview/presentation with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. You can watch it here:
Take that, NFL
Posted on October 4, 2007
So we all know by now that the NFL has limited video clips to no more than 45 seconds per day. In case you need a reminder, here’s what the Washington Post reported in June:
In a move designed to protect the Internet operations of its 32 teams, the pro football league has told news organizations that it will no longer permit them to carry unlimited online video clips of players, coaches or other officials, including video that the news organizations gather themselves on a team’s premises. News organizations can post no more than 45 seconds per day of video shot at a team’s facilities, including news conferences, interviews and practice-field reports.
Well, the Associated Press Photo Managers reports that Indianapolis Star photographers have found a loophole by creating video-like multimedia that they’re calling audio slideshows. You can see them here:
>> Colts’ fans in Houston
>> Colts’ fans in Nashville
It’s an innovative resolution, but it quickly gives me a headache. I could barely sit through both and was grateful for the still-photo intermissions. Readers who aren’t familiar with the ruling or simply don’t care may tire of the new format. But the newspaper says they’re more popular than the videos.
There isn’t any discussion on the APPM forum yet. Too bad. I’m quite curious about what others think.
Video editing 101
Posted on October 4, 2007
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s video editing philosophy and procedure (link via the Seth Gitner via APPM):
Good reads for 10.03.07
Posted on October 3, 2007
Lots of talk about the demise of the industry going on. Some see the glass half-full. But more see it nearly empty. Here are some good reads:
>> Howard Owens gives us 12 things journalists can do to save journalism. “The rules have changed, and newsrooms need to change as well,” he writes. “We need new attitudes and new cultures. This will only happen if individual journalists put forward the effort to change their minds about what their jobs are and how they do them.”
>> Jason Lee Miller responds: “Think, behave, report like a blogger – while, somehow, keeping with your standards and practices, your professional pedigree, your certifications, your piece of paper that says you know what you’re doing. Adopt, understand, and use the new technology before you. But above all, you must engage the audience where the audience is, and come down from your marble hill.”
>> What will be newspapers’ iPod moment? asks Jeff Jarvis. One of his readers responds, “For me, ‘the iPod moment’ for newspapers would be if my 12- or 14-year-old nagged me for a new newspaper, with more stuff inside of it, even though they had just bought one a short time earlier. Don’t see that one happening.”
>> Mindy McAdams Googled the use of that phrase (”iPod moment”) and found some interesting quotes.
>> Dilbert creator Scott Adams predicts the iPhone and its copycats will mark the end of print newspapers. “When you have a web browser in your pocket, a printed newspaper is redundant,” writes Adams. “Eventually, all cell phones will have Internet browsing built in. You might not have a web browser on your next cell phone, but the one after that will have it as a standard feature.”
>> Lucas Grindley is NOT going to advise a college class he’s visiting to pursue a newspaper career. “Online media isn’t limited to newspapers. AOL, Yahoo and Ask all have news sites that need journalists. Micro-local start-ups such as PegasusNews.com are viable alternatives. The truth is that if you’re looking to make progress, these competitors might be more productive places to spin your wheels.”
>> Newspapers don’t recognize the online talent they already have, says Alan Mutter. He writes: “But the young net natives, for the most part, rank too low in the organizations that employ them to be invited to the pivotal discussions determining the stratgeic (sic) initiatives that could help their employers sustain their franchises.”
And a comment to the post that’s worth posting in its entirety:
YES!
The large MSM paper I work for has had virtually 100% turnover in it’s online operations in the last 18 months. I’m not talking about the Podunk Daily News either, you’d know the name.
These people have been replaced to a large extent with folks with little or no web experience, especially in the newsroom.
There’s a story circulating about how the AME of online didn’t know you could type a URL directly into a web browser… and there was that discussion on whether to include a blurb above a story describing, “what the blue underlined words were for”.
When innovation does happen, its done as “skunkworks” and even then, among the praise are accusations of “renegade” work.
This is among the top (of a depressingly long list) reasons I think the battle is already lost. It’s 2007, now is not the time to be relearning basic HTML.
I just don’t understand it, there are people in the mix who really are trying to save this industry but who are battling of all things, this industry.
Tell me about this graphic
Posted on October 3, 2007
I meant to blog about this last week, but I like it so much it’s still worth noting. In this Layers of Ownership interactive graphic, The New York Times has added audio to explain a quite confusing topic.
Click the play button, and reporter Charles Duhigg talks about the complicated structure of the Habana Health Care nursing home and its facilities as the graphic changes in sync.
It’s like watching a mini-film tutorial at a history museum. I’d still like the option to click next, though, so I can move through it at my own pace.
Immersive Reality & journalism
Posted on October 3, 2007
Adam Clayton Powell III, director of USC’s Integrated Media Systems Center, spoke to Howard University students about technology and journalism in 2005.
He gets to the good stuff in part 3, in which talks about how “Immersive Reality,” the 3D virtual reality advances we see with gaming, can be applied to journalism. “There’s something about the way we as human beings are wired that leads us to the game format,” he says.
Keeping in mind that this is a 2005 lecture, it’s interesting to see that he’s talking about 3D mapping environments that already are being done.
Here are recordings of the lecture, divided into three parts:
Covering a courtroom drama
Posted on October 1, 2007
Trent Nelson, a photographer from the Salt Lake Tribune, was at the Warren Jeffs trial last week and blogged about his experience. It’s an interesting read, particularly since it makes me feel like I’m really getting an inside look at what a pool photographer goes through during a trial like this.
I also like the 60-second audio slideshow updates he produced for each day. What a nice way to enhance the audio, even in a situation where the photos may be limited.
You can watch the audio slideshow series here (unfortunately the index page doesn’t list all of them): Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9
A video of the reading of the verdict also was published by the newspaper to YouTube. Interestingly, this clip is linked from the paper’s Web site — meaning it seems that they ONLY published it to YouTube and don’t have it on their site at all.
I’ve noticed more and more papers are using YouTube. I think it’s a great form of viral marketing, but if you’re going to do this, you should take full advantage of the marketing potential by branding the video and including links to your site in the summaries.
Speaking of opportunities, the index page shows some missed ones. The long list of links doesn’t invite the reader. If it weren’t for the subject matter, my eyes would glaze over. But this page, the video and audio slideshows are great examples of how content can make up for any obstacles to quality (the style of the video, repetition of some photos and audio levels).
If you’re interested in this case or even the least bit fascinated by the polygamist lifestyle, you’ll watch/read it all and be hungry for more — not just because of the topic, but because of how the content is presented. THAT’s what makes storytelling skills so important. THAT’s what makes journalists unique.
In addition to the missing 60-second update archives, the leadership tree and community comparison graphics could have been so sweet if they were interactive. I know the constraints of resources, time and newsroom priorities; I deal with that every day at my newspaper. But I think this story warranted the extra time to create the interactive graphics and a better overall design.
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