Entries from September 2007 ↓

Well, we’re a month into the semester now, and I’ve got a good grip on what each of my classes is trying to teach me.

Intro to Photographic Journalism is going very well. I still have to remind myself what settings (white balance, ISO, shutter speed, aperture) to mess with in order to make the photos come out as I imagine them, but my focus and composition are improving.

We have an interesting case study assignment for Ethics, otherwise the class is much like a philosophy course. I wish the class was smaller, say 15 people instead of 80-something. A good friend of mine is a philosophy major with a special interest in ethics, so I’m looking forward to some juicy discussions.

Reporting and Writing for the Web is giving me trouble in terms of the format and content of the course. Our first project is to do a Soundslides package, which while important for the students in the class with no previous multimedia experience to learn, is hard for me to sit still for after building an audio slide show in Flash by hand when I took Advanced Online Media Production. The end result of our work this semester is to create one big package.

Finally, Advanced Interactive Media Reporting is the most confusing and frustrating course, although it has gotten much better. Some of the students feel that the course should be teaching specific skills, as opposed to working towards a product: a converged newsroom. We’ve gone back and forth and around and around for the last few weeks, but I believe we have gotten past some of that.

I’m feeling fairly confident in my skill set as a result of the classes I’ve been taking. My weak spot right now is video, and I know absolutely nothing about databases. But these should be corrected before I graduate in the Spring. I’m looking forward to deciding which aspect of online journalism I really want to focus on.

I’m getting pretty close to graduating, and so have been trolling the journalism job sites looking at job descriptions and employers. One of the job titles I see pop up pretty often is that of “community journalist.”

Now hold on a second…isn’t a journalist supposed to report on the happenings of his or her community? Isn’t that the whole point?

From a job description:

We cover stories ranging from local government to business profiles, features and school news, all with an eye toward real people. Our style is to engage our readers in solving community problems.

Yup, that’s what journalists do.

Another one:

This newspaper’s award-winning staff has gained national attention during the past year for its commitment to putting “community” back into journalism, and building a newspaper that its customers consider a “must read.”

When did community ever leave journalism? Is this a reaction to the hyper-local discussion?
Every journalist is reporting on a community. Be it a neighborhood, a city, county, state, country, these are all communities.

Buzzwords are silly.

I first read “A Wrinkle in Time” in 5th grade. I don’t remember how much I understood, but I lay at the feet of Madeleine L’Engle my later ability to wrap my mind around theoretical math and space-time relationships despite an almost paralyzing dislike of manipulating numbers.

In tribute to L’Engle’s death over the weekend, NPR put together an amazing explanation of what physicists refer to as a four dimensional cube - a tesseract.

Mind-blowing.

One of the most important elements of Web design is typography. It’s hard to read any long block of text off a computer screen, so the text must be made as easy to read as possible. On the other hand, you want to have a little individuality and make the text attractive as well.

My favorite way to explain the importance of typography is through a few videos I’ve found in the past (and posted here) that use typography to convey emotions.

Today, via Information Aesthetics, I found a slew of such videos.

My favorite is the Bob Dylan video. Which is yours?

Starting today, every Monday I’m guest posting over at Angela Grant’s News Videographer.

I’ll be writing about video from the college perspective: jobs and internships, video on college media sites, interviews, j-school courses, etc.

So head on over and check it out! Feel free to drop comments and tips as well.

Man, this video rox my sox.

I found this checklist in my archives somewhere, but have no idea where it originated (Bryan, is this you again?). A lot of these things we aren’t doing or are just starting at The Alligator with our three-week-old CMS, but I thought a run-through the list now will make it that much more impressive when I check again in a few months.

Is your web team able to flex work hours, responsibilities and skills?

My team rocks! We have been putting in all kinds of crazy hours to get our new CMS running smoothly and get new articles up each day. We are an assorted bunch with varying skill sets, so we can handle just about anything that gets thrown our way.

Do you need freelancers or others in the newsroom that can sit in and help publish the massive stream of content you’ll have?
(I really shouldn’t need to say this in August 2007 but…) Is your newsroom logistically ready to file and edit for the web before print?

I really wish we had some more hands around the office. The Web site is up before the papers hit the streets each morning, but only just. I wish we could be updating all day, but as a student-run paper, it is difficult to work around classes and other schedules. This is an area we need to work really hard in.

Do you have some sort of tools (forums, message boards or databases) for family/friend contacts if people are missing, databasing opening/closings or any other searchable, community information opportunities?

Nothing yet. There’s only three of us working full-time, hopefully we can get started on some really cool projects soon.

Do you have a breaking news blog ready at the flick of a switch?

Our new blogs should be up next week, and will include a breaking news section.

Does your site have an ‘armageddon’ design? (So that you can drop a package above the fold for massive news with huge images and headline fonts?)

The top story on our front page always has a big headline and a photo, so this doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Is all of your reporting staff skilled in editing and filing remotely for stories, photos, audio and video? Do they regularly do it? (Believe me, working tech support remotely can sometimes be more frustrating that not having any extra multimedia content from the scene.)

Nope. We can do it, but reporters have not been trained yet.

Is your workflow streamlined and standardized so that turning multimedia content quickly is easy?

I’ve been really excited when a reporter or photographer takes the initiative to grab video, audio, or photos. But then my team has to go in early to edit and put things together.

Have you explored the social media tools already available out there so that you can use to connect people with information?

We are working on a Facebook application as well as a Google gadget, but these are not available yet. We do have article tools for sharing with Facebook, Digg, etc.

What about social contributions to maps? What about social sharing of news tips? What about social sharing of photos, video, audio? How are you going to solicit, retain and manage all that social stuff? (An email account and one body probably won’t cut it.)

No, no, no, and I have no idea. But someday…

Even tech issues like, do you have the bandwidth available to handle getting slammed? What can you jettison in times of emergency to make your site move faster? (For instance, Roanoke, cut some of their ad serving during the Virginia Tech shootings to keep the site trudging on.) Have you talked among department leaders about this plan? Who’s mission control? Who’s below that? Is this plan written down somewhere and reviewed occasionally among all the staff?

I’ve never seen the site go down due to bandwidth, though we have been having some other problems with the servers. But minimizing if a rush occurred should be pretty easy. We don’t have any formal plan, my staff and I would make a judgment call and implement it.

So, this checklist makes us seem kinda pathetic. I wish I could give long, glowing, positive answers to every question. I hope that when I go back through at the end of this semester, I can at least stop saying, “Well, no, but we’re working on it.”

Early this week I wrote about the progress of The Independent Florida Alligator as an online media site.

I left out something very important: Although our writers are not writing specifically for the Web, (and I’m not sure how this would work at other papers, are they writing two versions of the same article?) our Copy Desk Chiefs spend some time each night writing different headlines for online articles. Instead of being cute or clever, they try to get at what each article is about. And they try to apply some SEO principles. It’s very cool.

On another note, I just opened Google Reader. And oh, my god, it can count past 100. And it has a search box. I’m so happy!

I love lists. They give me direction, options, and when completed, a sense of accomplishment.

Bryan Murley recently reposted his checklist of things college media sites should consider. Of course my first thought was to see how my own college media outlet is doing:

* Have you got your news org. online?

The Alligator has been online for a while, although until recently the site left much to be desired.

* Do you have a content management system?

We just launched the new Alligator site with a content management system and a new design. Yay!

* Have you posted any videos online?

Yes we have. In fact, on Thursday two reporters handed me video - a first!

* Have you included any audio soundbites in a story?

I have the soundbites on my computer…they just haven’t made it to the correct format for the Web site yet.

* Have you done a photo slideshow?

Yes, several.

* Have you put up an audio slideshow (perhaps using Soundslides)?

Yes.

* Have you done a map?

Yes.

* Have you used weblogs on your site?

Like the soundbites, this is in the works.

* Have you uploaded source documents (PDFs, excel spreadsheets, etc.) to accompany a big story?

YES! Even on the old site, documents were often uploaded when provided by the reporters.

* Have you used social media (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube) to market your stories?

There is an Alligator Facebook group, and individual articles on the new site now feature sharing tools.

* Have you tracked what others are saying about you via Technorati or Google Blogsearch?

Nope.

* Have you used the web site to post breaking news online FIRST?

Still trying to figure this one out. We have put a couple f breaking sports stories up before they went to print though.

* Have you moved the online editor out of the back office and into a position of authority?

Well, I guess we kind of moved ourselves out of the back office.

* Have you allowed comments on your stories?

Yes. I have been pleasantly surprised with the intelligence of many of the comments posted to the site. We decided not to review comments and to remove them only if a complaint was lodged, or if we saw a “flame war” starting up.

* Have you encouraged writers to write for the Web and include hyperlinks in their stories?

I’m hoping this will go hand-in-hand with blogging. Right now, when we are putting up new stories, if we see an opportunity for a link, it goes in.

* Have you tried something experimental?

We’ve got a few projects in the works, but right now energy is tied up in making the workflow efficient and working the kinks out of the new site.

So far, I think we’re doing pretty good! Of course, in this case, the “checklist” is never really completed. But I’ll be happy if I can get out of the office by 1:30 a.m. every night instead of 3 a.m.

In response to my previous post, a reader sent in this:

Of course Megan Taylor becomes Monetary Gal.

Ha! I wish.