October 26, 2011 in College Media, Conferences
Today begins the National College Media Convention in sunny Orlando. I won’t be attending this year, but I’ll be following along with the goings on via Twitter and the hashtag #ncmc11.
September 29, 2011 in Conferences, industry news
I’m traveling today to St. Louis for the Mid-America Press Institute to participate covering the RJI Tablet/Mobile Strategies and Vision for News Organizations workshop and participate on a panel at SND’s conference. I’ll be tweeting throughout my time there, and you can follow along with the goings on for the full convention with the Twitter hashtag #sndstl. The session I’m involved in is at 10 a.m. on Friday morning, about educators keeping up in a fast-paced digital world.
See you on the tubes.
March 13, 2011 in Conferences
College Media Advisers, Inc.’s annual Spring College Media Convention in New York City begins officially today.
If, like me, you are unable to attend, you can follow along via the Twitter hashtag #cmanyc11. You can also follow the official Twitter account – CMANYC – and read along on the official convention blog.
November 29, 2010 in CICM shop talk, Conferences, video
The stories produced for the CICM workshop in Louisville are now up on the Mapping Main Street site.
Mapping Main Street is collaborative documentary project funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.
August 31, 2010 in Conferences, Legal Issues
Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Center for Sustainable Journalism are hosting a one-day Media Law in the Digital Age workshop at Kennesaw State on Saturday, September 25
Len Witt, who heads the CSJ, mentions that there are a few student scholarships available to reduce costs to $14.99 instead of the full $69.
The digital age has provided a host of challenges to traditional legal concepts of privacy, libel, copyright, etc. This looks to be a good overview of the subject.
August 30, 2010 in Conferences
Students and advisers can now register online for the fall National College Media Convention Oct. 27-31 in Louisville. Which means you can also register for the Main Street Stories multimedia workshop we’re putting on during the course of the weekend. Details on the workshop are available here. For more details about the convention, download the registration booklet (PDF)
August 19, 2010 in Conferences, Links
Do you have *your* parking pass yet? Start of a new semester. Here are some links from around the Web to stuff I’ve been reading. In no particular order, and with some non-journospecific goodness.
Choose Your Multimedia Tools Strategically: Story is Still King, Marc Cooper: “New multimedia tools, now reproducing themselves exponentially, provide reporters and editors with sometimes awe-inspiring ways to tell our stories. Learning to master these tools and when to choose them, however, can be as important as which tool a surgeon requests for a certain procedure in the compressed atmosphere of an OR.
Selecting the wrong application for your need, or innovating for the sake of innovation itself, can be as big a mistake as ignoring these tools to better tell your story.” Yep.
Journalism Warning Labels, Tom Scott: Humorous, but true. (via Doug Fisher).
A fresh look at reporting skills, Mindy McAdams: asking the question: what skills should a reporter know?
Matt Thompson at the Argo Project: A quality series of posts like “A blogger’s morning ritual: 5 points to keep in mind,” and “A quick tip on hyperlinks.” Peruse the whole series.
Master the Art of Low-Effort Cooking, lifehacker: Who knew a rice cooker could be so useful? Apparently, Roger Ebert.
Catharsis, David McRaney: Apparently, blowing up and venting your frustrations will not help you relieve stress, but actually makes behavior worse over time. Perhaps something to keep in mind in the newsroom. (via Lifehacker).
The Web is Dead, Long Live the Internet, Chris Anderson: Wired’s editor and Michael Wolff troll for page views on a Web site and in a dead-tree magazine. Oh, irony.
60 ways to increase your influence online, Sam Rosen: Advice from some pretty well-known online types.
August 5, 2010 in CICM shop talk, Conferences
The CICM Story Project • Wednesday, Oct. 27, 1-6:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 28, 9 a.m.-9 p.m., continues intermittently until 6:30 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 31 (schedule allows regular convention participation)
College journalists and advisers looking for an intense hands-on multimedia training experience taught by some of the nation’s most pioneering pros will have a unique opportunity during the ACP/CMA National College Media Convention in Louisville this October.
The CICM Story Project, a special four-day extended workshop beginning Oct. 27, will take 60 participants and outfit them with audio, video and computer gear along with support from a team of expert coaches. Attendees will receive both classroom training and field experience as they produce and launch by workshop’s end the interactive site “Main Street Stories: 12 Blocks in 12 Hours.”
This immersive workshop will allow participants to learn practical multimedia skills they can take back to their newsrooms and into the professional workplace. More than just an academic exercise, this workshop will have participants producing content that can serve as real and lasting additions to their portfolios.
The workshop will feature a dozen instructors and coaches, including David Stephenson, winner of the 2010 Pictures of the Year International multimedia news story; Seth Gitner, nationally award-winning multimedia producer/editor with Roanoke.com, now at Syracuse University; Carissa Ray, MSNBC.com multimedia producer; Lee Clontz, former New York Times, CNN web developer; Carrie Pratt, multimedia producer for the St. Petersburg Times; Jim Hayes, former TNN/CMT network producer; Meg Fenton, former photojournalist/multimedia producer for the Chattanooga Times Free Press; with additional new media experts/instructors. The final list of instructors is subject to change. Participants will work with instructors in a group setting, in small teams and one-on-one.
Workshop participants will actively learn multimedia story planning, audio and video content capture and editing, and other tools and tips for executing compelling online story packages. The workshop will begin with an intensive story development and production instruction session on Wednesday.
On Thursday, workshop participants will hit the streets in Louisville to cover character-driven stories on 12 specific blocks near the convention hotel. Content gathered by attendees will be produced and edited with assistance from the professional instructional staff throughout Friday and Saturday.
The workshop’s final product will be added to the national “Mapping Main Street” collaborative documentary media project, sponsored in part by Corporation for Public Broadcasting and NPR. The site created by workshop participants will be unveiled to all convention attendees during the Sunday morning general awards and keynote session.
The CICM Story Project workshop is an initiative of CMA’s Center for Innovation in College Media. Participants will work exclusively with the workshop Wednesday and most of Thursday, Oct. 27-28 and during special sessions Friday through Saturday, Oct. 29-31. The workshop schedule is designed to allow attendees the opportunity to also participate in most convention activities.
Workshop participation is limited to 60 individuals, with both students and advisers invited. There is a $129 pre-convention workshop fee required for enrollment. Participants will work in teams and be provided video cameras and accessories, audio recorders and access to Apple laptop computers with necessary software. Participants are encouraged to bring a personal digital still camera and are encouraged to bring other personal gear, though it’s not required.
This workshop will fill up quickly, so immediate registration is recommended. Registration will be available within a couple of weeks at the Associated Collegiate Press web site. If you want the best and most challenging ACP/CMA/CBI conference experience, you’ve found it.
March 1, 2010 in career talk, Conferences, hope for the future
Rob Curley (file photo)
Rob Curley spoke this weekend at the Associated Collegiate Press gathering in Phoenix. It was the first time he’s spoken in public in 18 months, he said. His keynote speech was interesting, but the better session was a Q&A that followed. During that time, he talked about some of the plans the Las Vegas Sun has for the future, and some of the ways they are leveraging a small staff (about 20 writers) to cover Las Vegas.
Toward the end, a student asked Curley how to best prepare for the future of journalism. Curley’s answer was interesting: Learn to write well.
You can listen to the full answer below. It’s about 4 minutes long.
January 21, 2010 in Conferences, industry news
Here are some notes from the New Media panel at the Natural Selection CUP conference. The quotes that do not have identification next to them are mine. The other panelists were: Matthew Ingram, now of GigaOm, Jacques Poitras of the CBC, Matt Frehner of the Globe & Mail, and Jeffery Simpson, a freelance writer.
During the introductions, I moved that we kill the term “new media,” since it’s really not that new. The panel and audience agreed. Yet we talked about “new media” the whole time. Maybe next year.
What can new media learn from traditional media?
Verification and editing can help.
Ingram: New media can learn from traditional media to do those things. Esp. retweets can be a challenge (ex. Steve Jobs heart attack)
Q. Student journalists trying to establish newspaper brands, recommendations for student newspapers?
Ingram: power of social media is very personal. The more personal your twitter, facebook, whatever, the more impact it’s going to have. Individuals within your organization who can carry off a brand, they can be a trailblazer. Their positive feedback will rub off on your organization.
Poitras: create twitter accounts with name of reporter and name of paper, so the reporter is reminded of their ethical, other obligations when posting to twitter. (For Poitras) the Twitter account is professional – work only. Facebook is only for personal things.
Simpson: Make sure to have a way to get your content, things that go away – Think about how to get your content off of a service if it goes away. Keep a backup.
Q. Very difficult to figure out what’s going to need to be on mobile devices.
Poitras: learn to put audio – podcasts – because people will always be listening
Ingram: If you want to be successful, you need to be a personal brand.
simpson: The internet is very confusing for old people – if your name is your web site, your mother can find it.
Q. What are some negative aspects of social media?
Poitras: checking out internet rumors, more information, I’m sifting through it so you don’t have to.
Ingram: evelop better filters for yourself as to what are quality sources.
Simpson: Negatives about the internet – a lot more people writing for free. It’s hard to compete with free when you’re doing this for money and not just because you like video games. You’re expected to write a lot more than just what they’re paying you for. You need to produce all this additional content, but you’re not getting paid for it. You’re competing with people who don’t get paid.
Q. How do you manage your time?
Poitras: Twitter takes just a few seconds.
I pointed out that the time that it takes to work on these different formats is greatly reduced from what it was even a few years ago. Editing video, audio, twittering, etc. still take time, but not nearly as much as when you had to actually cut tape.
There was a great deal more to the discussion, and as is usually the case, about halfway in, I became much more interested in what was being said, and promptly forgot about my notes. I’ll look around for others who were in the room and provide links as able.
