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:
Nat sounds make your story come alive
Posted on September 16, 2007
Mark Poepsel, who teaches Television News Writing at the University of Arizona, has put together two takes of a video package to illustrate the importance of using natural sounds in your video.
Two points to remember:
>> You should include natural sound at a low level underneath all of your b-roll
>> You should use nat sound breaks to highlight important moments in your story
This cat can fetch (or when multimedia training catches on)
Posted on September 7, 2007
A 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 benefits.
Steve Echeverria, Jr., a features reporter at the Herald-Tribune, gets it. He sees how multimedia can build upon his storytelling and better serve the reader.
And he’s sharing his knowledge with colleagues. A couple of weeks ago, he attended the NABJ 2007 annual convention and was a panelist in the session “Podcasting Your Way to 1A: Enhancing Print News with Podcasts.”
The session’ summary:
As newspaper circulation continues to fall nationwide and the news hole shrinks, newspapers are faced with an issue: how do they compete with the immediacy of television news while continuing to offer the depth of print journalism? The answer lies in audio and video technology.
Steve has been proactive in his multimedia storytelling and was among the first to record audio and video podcasts for HeraldTribune.com. And despite a lack of time and resources, he was the first to edit on his own, rolling up his sleeves and learning Audacity and iMovie. And he consistently sees these storytelling tools as part of his journalist’s toolkit.
I briefly spoke with him this week about how his presentation went, and how attendees responded. When he showed them samples of what we and other papers have done, their jaws dropped, he said. And they couldn’t wait to try it out themselves.
Love it. A multimedia producer can’t ask for much more than that.
You can watch a summary of Steve’s presentation here:
‘If I don’t update my skills, I’m going to be obsolete’
Posted on September 5, 2007
Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Jennifer Lin has been in the business for 25 years. In this video, she talks about her experience learning and producing video for her paper.
About two to three years ago, her managing editor mentioned that when young people applied for jobs, they talked about their video skills.
“It occurred to me that if I don’t update my skills, I’m going to be obsolete,” she said. So she spent a semester at University of Pennsylvania and learned how to shoot and edit video with Final Cut Pro.
Training is important, she stresses, but she finds the lack of classes offered and time available to be an obstacle. Regardless, you shouldn’t let that deter you because if you want to remain competitive in the marketplace as a journalist, she says, you should know how to use a video camera.
And her advice to students is the same: “If you want to be a journalist, if you want to be a newspaper reporter, you need to know not only how to write stories, but tell stories visually … this is the future.”
Newspaper video back in the day
Posted on August 29, 2007
I found this video on YouTube, which shows a 1924 film made by the Oakland Tribune newspaper and the American Theatre. The two teamed up to sponsor a weekly contest for the most unusual dream. Winners received a $25 grand prize and “the privilege of acting on screen.”
YouTube is …
Posted on August 21, 2007
… ridiculous, unzipped, laughter, possibilities, community, friends, knowledge, life-changing, inspirational, and more …
Sony’s flexible full-color paper screen
Posted on August 12, 2007
You could also call it e-paper, which could someday revolutionize how we receive our daily “print” newspaper. (Link via Editor’s Weblog; video with narration found via a YouTube search)
Details from the video:
Sony researchers have developed a full-color flexible plastic display that shows video. The 2.5-inch screen supports 16.8 million colors at a 120 x 160 pixel resolution. It’s an OLED (organic light-emitting diode display); the pixels produce their own light, which enables the screen to use less power and can be made thinner.
We’ve come a long way, baby
Posted on August 4, 2007
This circa 1950 film, “Your Life Work Series: Journalism,” reminds us that we have come along way not just in what we do, but who does it. The narrator in the video states:
“Women find it difficult to compete with men in general reporting jobs. So girls who want to be successful in journalism should prepare for work in the special women’s departments.
“Home decoration, childcare, gardening, and household hints are found in the homemaking section, a department handled by women.
“Also included are cookery, meal-planning suggestions, menus, recipes and attractive ways of arranging the table. Work in fashion, beauty care and merchandise reporting, affords further opportunities, almost exclusively for women.”
Opportunities for women seem much better nowadays, but a 2006 census by the ASNE shows that the number of women in the industry is up only slightly.
“Women outnumber men in entry-level jobs. But when it comes to the prestige beats, the assigning editor ranks, the department heads and upper management, the scales tip back toward the men,” says Pam Moreland, assistant managing editor of the San Jose Mercury News and former president of the Journalism and Women Symposium.
“The larger the newspaper, the likelihood is that you will find male publishers, male executive editors, possibly a woman managing editor, two or three women in the deputy or assistant managing editor ranks, and two or three women department heads. Progress when compared to 30 years ago? You bet. Progress when compared to five years ago? A bit.”
But one place where we seem to be coming full circle: 1950’s “country publisher” is becoming today’s “backpack journalist.” The film’s narrator says:
“In fact he has to know and be able to do a great many things which can be learned only through actual experience … all this knowledge and experience seems a great deal to ask of one man, but he leads a happy life.”
Sound familiar?
Prometeus - The Media Revolution
Posted on July 25, 2007
Some guesses about what will happen on the Web during the next 40-50 years. “A new figure emerges: the prosumer, a producer and a consumer of information. Anyone can be a prosumer,” says Davide Casaleggio.
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.
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