You are browsing the archive for 2010 February.

Opening up Pandora’s box

February 24, 2010 in consulting, hope for the future, Multimedia views, Training

compRecently, I was on a plane flying back to St. Louis from a two-day workshop at The Daily Toreador at Texas Tech. (I say 2-day – thanks to the airlines and the weather, it was a little less, but that’s a story for another time).

Thinking back on it, I just realized the feeling I usually get when I do these workshops – it’s like opening Pandora’s box. Because I never just talk about audio or video. I always walk through all the other free and easy to use online tools that are available to tell a story online.

I’m so used to seeing all these tools and seeing possibilities to use them that I guess they almost seem mundane in a way.

but when I unpack them in front of a group of students who have never seen an online timeline, or known how easy it is to create a map or edit a piece of audio, I get a glimpse of the magnitude of the vista that is out there for some young journalist who wants to explore online storytelling. It can be intimidating.

That’s why I always repeat the advice I first gave several years ago – pick one thing and learn how to do it well. Don’t worry about the entire river, just find one current to surf for a while. After you’ve got a handle on that, then move to something else.

Everyone will settle on something different, but the crucial part is to get going.

This weekend, I’ll be in Phoenix for ACP’s National College Journalism Convention preaching the multimedia gospel again.

4 Comments »

links for 2010-02-22

February 22, 2010 in industry news

Comments Off

Dave Hon is our Spring 2010 intern

February 16, 2010 in CICM shop talk

honPlease welcome Dave Hon, online editor for the Griffon News, as the Spring 2010 CICM intern. You can read more about him here. I look forward to his contributions over the remainder of the semester.

3 Comments »

MPI Workshop Mardi Gras weekend

February 13, 2010 in General Media, innovation

MPI group

I’m in St. Louis this weekend for the Mid-America Press Institute/Ill. Press Foundation “Innovation and managing change in the newsroom” workshop. You can follow along on Twitter with the hashtag #mpichange, or read articles at the mpinews web site.

Also, watch Monday for an announcement about our Spring internship.

Comments Off

Xtranormal: in ur text, making it video

February 6, 2010 in ideas, innovation

I linked to this site almost a year ago when I first discovered it, but I thought it was worth looking at again: xtranormal.com. The site allows you to produce an animated movie based upon the text you type into a script. It allows for various camera angles, characters, and actions. And, as with most online software, it’s free to sign up and use.

Here’s a movie I produced in about 30 minutes:

How is this helpful for journalists? I can think of a couple of uses for this. Suppose you are covering a court case where cameras aren’t allowed in the courtroom. You could produce a “dramatic reading” with xtranormal. And editorial writers/cartoonists can have a field day with animated commentary.

For a writer who’s too shy to go on camera, this would be a fun way to “tape” a video of a story/column.

Who knows what other opportunities there are for a software like this. Experiment. Have some fun while doing journalism. Any other ideas?

Comments Off

Video camera guidelines: how much money?

February 4, 2010 in Multimedia views, Tech Talk

The Canon Vixia HF200

The Canon Vixia HF200

A couple of weeks ago,  I wrote a post about video cameras. In the comments to that post, Kathleen Flores, adviser at UT-El Paso, wrote:

I’m considering the Sanyo Xacti. It is only $160 but has no microphone/headphone inputs. I want to get something inexpensive so that I can purchase at least four or five cameras and equipment (I could make a mojo kit for $250) to make them accessible for our students. Has anyone used these or have any other suggestions. I would rather get more students doing some basic multimedia than just one or two using the more expensive equipment. Whenever a new student wants to use our more expensive equipment, I always shudder and hope they take care of it. I was thinking that this route would encourage more experimentation and participation.

I don’t have any personal experience with that camera, but I do want to reiterate my personal preference in the quantity vs. quality debate as it regards video equipment: where possible, try to do both.

Budgets being what they are, it’s sometimes impossible to purchase both prosumer and consumer quality cameras. But if it is possible, I’d recommend purchasing some consumer-level cameras for reporters to take out into the field and experiment with, and then get a couple of higher-end prosumer cameras for the photography staff, and people who really seem dedicated to exploring video online. The amount of control over the quality of the images and sound is vastly different between the two.

This is similar to the iMovie vs. Final Cut (use your imagination for the PC equivalent) debate. You can learn quite a lot with iMovie, and for most breaking news or quick turnaround work, it’s a fine product. But if someone is really interested in video, a higher-end editing package is a worthwhile investment.

Thoughts?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: ,
7 Comments »

RTNDA’s social media guidelines

February 4, 2010 in ideas, industry news, management

twitter

Via Al Tompkins at Poynter, here are the guidelines for social media as proposed by the Radio and Television News Director’s Association.

College journalists should perhaps pay special attention to this one:

• Avoid posting photos or any other content on any website, blog, social network or video/photo sharing website that might embarrass you or undermine your journalistic credibility. Keep this in mind, even if you are posting on what you believe to be a “private” or password-protected site. Consider this when allowing others to take pictures of you at social gatherings. When you work for a journalism organization, you represent that organization on and off the clock. The same standards apply for journalists who work on air or off air.

A few weeks ago at the Canadian University Press Conference, I made this point during a session on social media. If you don’t want anything to embarrass you, don’t put it on the Internet, or share it via cellphone. At all. In these days of ubiquitous cell phone cameras, it’s almost impossible to control all access to something that might be embarrassing. If someone feels that they do want to share photos of themselves, they should use a personal account with controlled access. Even then, a photo could be “leaked” through other people who have access.

This is another handy set of guidelines to refer to when your media outlet is compiling social media guidelines.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: , ,
4 Comments »

Frontline’s very serious Digital_Nation

February 3, 2010 in industry news

comp

I like most everything Frontline puts out. Digital_Nation is worth watching, just to be reminded how much of our lives are surrounded by, and wrapped up in, technology. Obviously, this has tremendous implications for student media. The first clip is embedded below. You can see the whole series, and associated content, here.

Comments Off