ICM interview: Kiyoshi Martinez, reprise

I interviewed Kiyoshi Martinez over a year ago when he was a student at the University of Illinois. He’s since taken a job with 22nd Century Media as a web editor. We chatted Tuesday night about his job and issues related to student media and the web. Check below the fold for the full transcript.

(as an aside, this is my first entry in the journalism blog carnival, which is being hosted this week by Scribblesheet in England. Check here for some information about the blog carnival.)

ICM: Okay, first question: How long have you been working for 22nd Century Media?

Martinez: Just over 3 months now.

ICM: Tell me a little about the company?

Martinez: The company is relatively young, about 2 years old from what I understand. During that time it’s grown from one paper to five and next year we’ll be expanding to a sixth. Our newspapers are weeklies based in the south suburbs of Chicago. Our distribution method is a bit different. We deliver a copy (free) to every mailing address in the towns we cover — i.e. every household and business. Also, the focus of our editorial content — and by extention our advertising — is hyperlocal. No wires filling it up with national and international news. Sports coverage is about local schools, not the majors in Chicago.

ICM: Do you work for one paper? Or several? Tell us a little about your paper (if one)?

Martinez: I work for all five of the papers as the Web Editor under our Director of Online Operations. So, I coordinate with five editors, and their assistants, on keeping their sites up to date, shooting video, etc.

ICM: Expanding on that answer, What do you spend most of your time doing now?

Martinez: Typically, I spend mornings updating two of the five sites — we split the daily updating between three people — and this process varies in how much time it consumes. It includes copy/pasting text, uploading photos, creating galleries and such. The second largest time consumer is probably video-related in some manner. The third would be site development.

ICM: How has your job evolved over time?

Martinez: Despite it being a relatively short period of time, it’s changed somewhat. It used to be mostly updating the sites, but now it’s shifted more and more toward doing video. At first I was just taking the raw footage editors shot and editing it down and posting it online. Now, I’m going on some shoots myself and doing the edits, too. Outside of video, I’m getting a chance to do more site development in a few areas, which is neat because I get to learn about stuff I don’t fully understand the mechanics of just yet.

ICM: What are some examples of that site development?

Martinez: One thing we’ve done so far was find a way to both drive site traffic on weekends and also promote user-submitted content. So, we worked on developing a different front page for the sites on weekends that highlighted our readers’ submissions.

Some other things are design related. Others deal with increasing the amount of outreach we do to get people to submit content. And we’re also trying to find ways to improve our SEO.

The most ambitious will be social networking, but I’m hesitant to go too deep into that, because nothing’s concrete yet.

ICM: When did you start working with video?

Martinez: Haha, my first day I was handed a MiniDV camcorder with footage and told to upload it. I’d never actually done that before, either personally or professionally, so that was fun. I put it through Windows Movie Maker and did some chopping and learned how to add a screen credit at the end.
I know it sounds so noob-ish, but it was cool that I got to do something like that on day one.

ICM: How did you improve since then - with video?

Martinez: I knew my editing had to get better. I know all the pros demand Final Cut Pro or high-end software, but I didn’t even know the limitations of WMM. So, I started learning how to do basic editing of whatever footage I had. Then I began asking editors to shoot B-roll so I could splice that over audio. Then I asked for them to shoot interviews.

Also, I made it a point to watch *gasp* TV newscasts and try to mimic their edits. Now, when I shoot, I make a point to look at how others are shooting, what angles they used, where they had to be to get a particular shot, etc.
I’ve never had a broadcast class or learned video editing in any formal fashion, so I just picked up whatever I could online and then tried to mimic what I saw others doing.

ICM: any particular sites you’d like to mention which helped your training?

Martinez: Haha. Um, Google? News Videographer has been a good read as well. But really, it’s been more “in the field” than anything. I’ve recalled my time in Springfield and the TV photographers there and remembered how they would do their shots at news events. Now, when I see TV crews at the same event, I follow them around and copy them. I figure they’ve probably got a better idea of what to do than me!

ICM: What kind of equipment do your editors and reporters take with them on assignment?

Martinez: Some use digital recorders. Others just go old school with pen and paper. But, I should note that quite often they’re also doing double-duty as photographer and sometimes bring a camcorder, too.

ICM: sorry, should have been more clear. are these consumer camcorders or higher-end camcorders?

Martinez: It’s a Sony DCR-DVD108. Films on MiniDV, standard consumer grade.
http://www.wolfcamera.com/product/592080436.htm

I know pro-video snobs will probably react negatively, but for what we’re doing now, it works. Obviously, I want to go higher-end on equipment, but I felt that it’s important that I get the technical skills down first. I’m a firm believer that it’s not the technology, it’s how you use it.
There’s obvious advantages to doing hi-def, having a shotgun mic, etc., but I want to make sure that I have a skillset that can utilize that first.

ICM: How does the staff at your paper work with the web?

Martinez: It’s a bit different because we’re a weekly, but it’s very flexible. We post our stories onilne ahead of print publication, so our readers actually get their news faster and before it’s delivered to them. To do that, I work with the editors to plan out what updates will be made throughout the upcoming week and also help them out whenever they have breaking news updates. Also, they usually grab me to go on assignment with them to shoot video. But perhaps the biggest use of the web from our editors comes from the user-submitted content.
To kind of follow up on that bit, we allow anyone to sign up and submit content to us: articles, photos and YouTube videos. This is in addition to being able to comment on any story on our site. And we’ve had quite a lot of submissions, and a significant portion of these actually end up in our printed papers.
I think our biggest strength is that we don’t segregate our user-submitted content away from our staff-written articles.

ICM: Have there been any challenges with that - outrageous comments, etc.? How have you folks handled that?

Martinez: Well, online we have developed a comment policy. Basically, comments with profanity get moderated. Comments made by anonymous — ie: users without a login — get moderated and held for approval. But if you have an account — thereby giving us at least a valid e-mail address to attach to your handle — your comments will appear instantly.

As far as submitted content goes, I don’t recall any real issues with that so far. Our readers, and now contributors!, have been really good. I think it’s because the sites and papers are seen as a community forum that people are generally respectful in. Comments can get a bit heated, but it hasn’t been a huge problem. Then again, the volume of them doesn’t approach national levels, like what you’d see on USAToday or NYTimes.

ICM: Okay, so taking those lessons, what would you do differently if you were running a student media web site today?

Or, what would you *do* if you were running a student media site today?

Martinez: Well, first, I think that student media has a very different audience than what we do as a community newspaper. Therefore, I think the execution would be very different. At the core of both, however, there has to be a realization that online and print are tied together… forever. Saying, “we’ll be paper only” or “we’ll be online” only won’t be as successful. The paper is the best promotional tool for your website, and the web allows you to be more relevant and service your readers better. With that in mind ….

For the paper: I’d switch to a tabloid format. Get rid of the broadsheet. It’s not helpful for students who’re trying to read your paper in class on small desks that are falling apart. I’d also focus a lot on design and presentation in addition to plenty of cross promotion for the website and have a really consistent branding throughout.

On the web, this is where you can go nuts. I wouldn’t stick with the traditional “news” website that you see a lot of papers have. Instead, I’d let it be driven more by the students not officially writing for you. I’d let readers develop profiles, host their blogs, let them upload photos and video and promote that heavily on the front page — either by an editor or by “the crowd.”

I’d put a huge emphasis on video, and focus on keeping it short: 30 seconds.
Your A1 for the paper shouldn’t be driving what’s on the front page of your site, you should ideally be more flexible than that and know when your new-media content deserves better play.

Now, what this site would look like design wise? I can’t really tell you, but those would be some points that I’d start with when trying to sketch it out.
Also, one big point that I think student media needs to expand into is being more service oriented.

Don’t just do news.

Students, especially freshmen, need a place to go for everything. Instinctively, you’re going to the internet. So, if everyone’s going online to navigate the things that come up on a daily basis, you should be the one they come to for help.

ICM: So what is your advice for current journalism students - print, broadcast, web, whatever?

Martinez: At the end of the day, you need two things after you graduate: skills and a job. Looking back, I wish I had skills in video — editing and shooting — as well as Flash, which I still don’t know yet. I went through undergraduate and even graduate thinking it’d be too late for me to break into the online side of newspapers and I’d be just doing print reporting, but I’m glad that turned out to be wrong. It’s not too late to start learning these things, but ideally you’ll want to have something to show an employer. I was fortunate that my employer liked the few online skills I did have and had the capacity to learn others quickly.

As far as job hunting goes, the biggest advice I can give is for j-grads to start networking. Looking back at my job hunt, I sent out dozens of dud resume and clip packages to places I never heard back from. You improve your chances by leaps and bounds if you know someone on the inside to talk to whomever’s doing the hiring to not pitch your stuff to the wastebasket or hit delete. I don’t think they teach this enough in j-school, because it’s a realization myself and other friends of mine didn’t have until we were several weeks into our job hunt. There ought to be a class in j-schools that teaches you this stuff about the realities of breaking in. I won’t lie: it’s tough.

ICM: where did you work before 22nd century?

Martinez: Just one internship with the Rockford Register Star. I worked in Springfield, Ill., at the state Capitol covering state politics for six months. The RRS was a Gannett paper when I started and became a GateHouse Media paper by the time I left.

ICM: Okay, so final question: Is there any project, video or whatever on the web that you’re especially proud of, that you’d want to point to as an example of your work? and if so, what is it?

Martinez: Well, I’ll give you a recent example.

In one of our towns there was a contest held by a Chicago radio station at a local Dunkin’ Donuts where men could come dressed up as Disney pop-singer Hannah Montana in an attempt to win a pair of tickets for Montana’s show. About 25 or so dads showed up in blonde wigs and mini-skirts as this tiny donut shop dancing to Montana’s songs. Now, this is a fairly soft-news story in itself and probably would generate a fair amount of hits. But it’s also something that screams visual and can get more interest with video.

Link 1

Link 2

So, I shot video of the entire event and put together a clip. It’s been our most watched video on any of our sites so far.

ICM: Do you put any of your video up on viral sites?

Our video-hosting solution right now is YouTube.

Outside of that, no, I don’t really try to get our video out to other viral sites. I did share this one on my Facebook page though. I figured a few of my friends would be amused by it.

One thing that I didn’t hit on was Facebook. While I know how daunting actually developing a social network can be — and I don’t think any newspaper could directly challenge Facebook at their own game — I do think that at the very least news organizations should start getting on board with Facebook and use their new Facebook Pages.

The other day we discovered that a few students at the local high school had made a Facebook group saying that they’ve been featured in one of our newspapers. This set off a light bulb in my head: We need to have a presence on Facebook for our papers.

So, this week I’m supposed to get Pages up for each of our papers. I’m not quite sure what we’ll do with them just yet, but it’s free marketing and with a few Facebook apps you can import RSS feeds to help drive traffic to your site.
There’s no reason why college papers shouldn’t have a Facebook Page. It takes 5 minutes to set up one.

Oh, and it’s free!

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