Megan Taylor

I should say, I re-caught the bug.

From September 19 - 25, I spent most of my time volunteering for MediaStorm's Advanced Multimedia Reporting Workshop.

I teamed up with Paolo Black, Melissa Pracht, Scott Lituchy and MediaStorm Producer Bob Sacha to tell a story about two young men who have made a career out of street entertainment. My role was to transcribe all the audio that was collected during shows and interviews.

I got to sit in on training sessions and lectures, and watch the MediaStorm team work their magic. And it was absolutely magical.

Talking the story over with the team showed me exactly how powerful a story like this can be and how we can learn from each other during its production. We all had our strengths and points of view, which contributed to a stronger piece than any of us could have produced individually.

I got home each day ranting about some new insight: interviewing techniques that get the subject to respond in complete sentences or the beauty of the extreme close-up. I looked at other MediaStorm projects, watching for the details we had talked about.

When I saw that my name was going in the credits for the project, and that I made a cameo in the Behind the Scenes production (at about 8:08) the grin on my face was big enough to fit an XL pizza.

There are parts of the experience I don't want to remember. The ringing in my ears and the ache in my neck after transcribing for hours at a time. The frustration I felt as I watched the other members of the team working with high-end gear I can't even dream of having. That doesn't mean I won't volunteer again. But next time, I'm taking a bottle of Aleve with me. And a point-and-shoot.

I started taking photos and shooting amateur videos long before I fell in love with journalism. In college, I took photography classes, including a study abroad trip to Berlin. I also did some independent study and in-class work with videography. Not to mention my work with both mediums at The Independent Florida Alligator, as I struggled to get reporters to get video and create audio slideshows along with their text articles.

So I caught the multimedia bug long ago. But once I lost access to the SLR and HD cameras, it got harder to be interested. I'd see a cool photo opportunity, but I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't afford to buy my own gear.

During this time, I turned to programming. I became more interested in data and applications and code than I had been with framing and sequences and lighting. Programming is a cheaper pursuit, and I've always been geeky enough to find the resources and teach myself.

Now, though, I catch myself walking around and seeing everything through a camera lens again. I wish I could afford even some low-end gear, because I know that otherwise, my interest will wane again. I will miss out on an aspect of storytelling every bit as important as programming or writing.

And although all the industry advice, including what I learned at MediaStorm, pushes specialization, I still want to know how to do it all.

On Wednesday evening I spoke to a group of five students who are taking part in the Bronx Youth Journalism Initiative.

I've mentioned BYJI here before, mostly begging for help with my public speaking anxiety.

To my surprise, the whole thing went pretty well. The kids were Web-savvy enough to have uploaded a few videos to YouTube, and knew of Twitter, though none are using it yet.

I talked about the "newspaper crisis" caused by lack of innovation, an old business model and the problems with advertising and paywalls. (The kids' immediate reaction to paywalls: "That won't work." Out of the mouths...) I went over the basics of online journalism: blogs, social networks, multimedia. I also talked about citizen journalism a little bit, in terms of how everyone can have a voice in their communities, which is a big problem in the Bronx. They really liked the concepts of "Not Just a Number," which I showed them, along with the Las Vegas Sun Web site.

One student asked me how he could learn to code, and I directed him to the W3Schools site. Another asked about the future of news on e-readers like the Kindle. And of course the final question was "Where are we going?"

Thanks to Mindy McAdams, Craig Lee, and Tracy Boyer for their advice and inspiration. I've uploaded a powerpoint presentation to Slideshare which I used as a guide for my presentation, although it was really more a conversation than a speech.

So I made some resolutions in January, and two months into the new year I guess it's about time to see how I've been doing.

One of the things I wanted to work on was posting to my blog more often. I did well in January, with 24 posts. But not so much this month, with one week left and only seven posts. Clearly, I'm going to have to work on plan to find, think or do more interesting things to write about.

As for learning Javascript...I've written a few simple scripts for pop-up windows and the like at work, but I haven't been making progress with my Lynda.com videos. I'm thinking about finding a text resource; the Lynda.com videos go really slowly for me.

I have been making some progress on PHP, mostly through more advanced manipulations of WordPress. Haven't started any formal learning though. Should wait until I'm done with Javascript.

Although I have not been writing for BrightHub once a week, and I've been neglecting NewsVideographer as well, I have been writing a whole lot for my Innovation Spotlight series at MediaShift. I had so many projects for January and February that I wrote mini-spotlights on the off-weeks. I'm looking for new projects now though...

I said in my resolutions post that I would produce one multimedia or web development project each month. I haven't really kept up with that, mostly because every time I turn around, I get in my own way. Right now I'm dealing with some PostgreSQL issues on my Mac. However, I did edit this video for Quinn and Co., Public Relations.

My last resolution was about getting involved in my community. I got in touch with the West Bronx Youth Journalism Initiative a few weeks ago and I will be helping them out with a new Web site and hopefully a guest lecture.

Today I found out that the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) holds a monthly multimedia contest (and has since 2006).

Over the last year, multimedia storytelling at newspapers has dramatically increased. Software programs like SoundSlides and Audacity have helped simplify the production of audio slideshows for online. Web-based video journalism is also gaining momentum. Many photojournalists are being asked (or told) to add video to their storytelling arsenals. In the midst of all this change, it became clear to many that a contest was needed to showcase this new work being produced by NPPA members. More importantly, I believe this multimedia contest will become a great learning tool for our members. Being able to see and judge everyone else’s entries will hopefully spur innovation and inspiration.

The contest is only for NPPA members, a tradition of industry associations that I'm getting really tired of. I know you want to recruit members and you need people to pay dues, but in the tradition of free web tools, I'll bet you make more friends by providing services first.

Luckily, you don't ahve to be a member to see the list of winners. There were a lot of projects that I haven't seen, which makes this a good resources for rounding up examples. I usually keep track of multimedia projects via Multimedia Shooter and Interactive Narratives, among other sites.

I was very surprised to see that Zach Wise's Thirst in the Mojave got second place for its category. It's definitely one of the best examples of multimedia storytelling I've seen recently.

Go check out January's winners, and if you're a NPPA member, don't forget to submit your projects for February.

Hat tip to Innovative Interactivity for writing about the contest.

A few weeks ago I started following a NY listserve for Flash. I've gathered a good number of snippets and learned a lot so far, although I'm still just a lurker. I'm hoping to make it to a meet-up soon.

In any case, an item came in about the relationship between Actionscript and Javascript, which really inspired me to finish up my formal education in Javascript so that I can jump head-first into heavier Actionscript.

The e-mail was about a series of lectures hosted on the Yahoo Developer Network by Douglas Crockford. Crockford is Yahoo's Javascript Architect and author of "Javascript: The Good Parts."

Because Actionscript 1 was based heavily on Javascript, and AS3 hasn't changed that much, these lectures are applicable to both languages.

Mentioned specifically were "The Javascript Programming Language" and "Advanced Javascript."

I haven't worked my way through all the lectures yet (they are segmented into three and four parts) but what I've seen so far is really helping me wrap my head around some of the language theory.

I haven't decided yet whether I like learning programming from a video. In some cases, it's the best option for a clean, class-style experience. Otherwise I'd be reading a bunch of articles all over the place with no real connection, and missing out on important information in the process. But I've been watching Lynda.com videos on Javascript and it's kind of tedious. I can read a lot faster, and I feel like I assimilate information better by reading.

Poynter is hosting another conference in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Journalism That Matters: Adapting Journalism to the New News Ecology

The conference will take place March 1 - 4, 2009.

The New News Ecology means new jobs, new tools, new relationships, new
businesses.

But journalism's very survival -- at least its values and functions -- depends
on the ability of news organizations -- and citizens -- to adapt to a
dramatically evolving landscape.

Where, now, does the news industry end, and begin? As some newsrooms shrink and
morph, what -- and where -- are the new roles for journalists -- and journalism --
in a broader civic sphere? How do we match journalism with the work of
non-profit organizations, government, civic and even advocacy groups . . .
without abandoning its core values and functions to democracy? Is it time for a
national journalism service corp?

Links:
Media Giraffe Project - Newsecology
Register
Slideshow

I really miss going to conferences. Hopefully soon I'll be able to afford them again.

Sunlight Labs recently announced Apps for America, a mashup contest to create applications using Sunlight data to "make Congress more accountable, interactive and transparent."

Sunlight is offering $15,000 as the first prize, and scaled prizes to second, third and honorable mentions.

Entries must be applications that use a host of government information APIs or datasets, including the Sunlight Labs API, OpenSecrets.org API, the FollowtheMoney.org API, the Capitol Words API and other Sunlight APIs and datasets. We also encourage you to use Sunlight's code libraries, which the Labs recently open sourced.

Adrian Holovaty - Founder, Everyblock.com, Django Project, Aaron Swartz - Director, Watchdog.net, Peter Corbett - iStrategyLabs, Xeni Jardin - BoingBoing.net and Clay Johnson - Director, Sunlight Labs will judge the entries.

Submissions are due on March 31st. Winners will be announced on April 7th.

Somehow, not being in school anymore just makes me more interested in the evolution of curriculum at journalism schools.

No, it's not a subconscious desire to teach. I've not the temperament for that.

But I've been collecting information about what's being taught, perhaps in the hopes that they'll teach something I don't know, thereby giving me an excuse to go back to school.

My, that sounds arrogant. But I only mean that I've been through the traditional journalism curriculum, took some online media courses and taught myself a hell of a lot in my spare time.

Bryan Murley updated his syllabus for the multimedia course he teaches at Eastern Illinois University.

Most of the syllabus is the same as it was during the last semester, however, I’m spending much more time on audio and video, with lots of repetition and building upon core concepts.

Also, I should note that we’re using Final Cut Express this semester instead of iMovie. I’m done with iMovie until it is more stable and edits audio easier.

Andrew Dunn reports changes to the curriculum at the University of North Carolina, which now requires a class called "Audio-Video Information Gathering." The UNC curriculum includes specializations choices of Multimedia and Electronic Communication (whatever that is).

Through University of Florida fact-finding professor Cory Armstrong, I found out about a new course at UNC: Public Affairs Reporting For New Media.

As near as I can tell, students in the course pick a topic for the semester and do some in-depth research, including multi-media elements, to develop a package.

The professor, Ryan Thornburg, is blogging about the class.

This is one that I'm really interested in, since I did something similar as an independent study with Professor Armstrong.

Fred Stutzman, also at UNC, has been teaching Online Social Networks for several semesters now.

This course is a primer on the study of online social networks. We will explore the theory, methods and findings of a growing literature on the topic. We will also explore applications and use cases, particularly in the context of education and library/information services. While online social networks are but a subset of social software, this course should provide you a strong set of fundamentals for exploring the multiple facets of our pervasive online sociality.

Mindy McAdams is teaching a new multimedia reporting class at UF as well as updating her Flash class (Advanced Online Media Production).

Students taking Multimedia Reporting will learn to:

• Gather digital audio and upload it to a computer
• Edit digital audio and produce an MP3 file
• Edit, crop and resize photos; optimize photos for online use
• Create an audio slideshow using Soundslides
• Shoot simple video suitable for online distribution
• Edit video with a simple editing program
• Prepare video for online distribution

Lastly, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, changes are planned.

The new, proposed curriculum shift places a deeper, more thorough emphasis on awareness, understanding and application of online journalism skills and the training begins in the freshman year.

Stories CoJMC students write, photographs, advertising, marketing campaigns, video news reports and documentaries will be produced by hundreds of CoJMC students for the NewsNetNebraska Web site.

For those of us no longer in school and feeling left out, Dave Lee wrote about how journalists can continue their online education, well, online.

YouTube recently collaborated with the Pulitzer Center to produce Project: Report, a journalism contest focusing on important stories that don't get the attention they deserve.

The winners have been announced, chosen through three rounds of competition, voting by the YouTube Community, and a panel of journalists from the Pulitzer Center.

The winner is Californian Arturo Perez, Jr., who reported on Camphill California, a community where adults with developmental disabilities live, learn and work together. He will receive $10,000 to travel and do a story in conjunction with the Pulitzer Center.

Check out the finalists, stories produced by the Pulitzer Center and production tips from Sony and Intel.

I'm confused. I feel out of the loop.

I get that Obama is the first black president.

I get that he represents a new era in our history.

I get that he represents changes that a lot of people want to see.

I get that his use of social media and technology during his campaign implies some very cool things during his presidency.

But why is everyone going apes**t!?

Why do I keep seeing articles about what the Obamas ate for lunch, or the kids' first day at school or his physical appeal?

Why did a whole bunch of people stand around in the freezing cold to listen to other people talk, and musicians with numb hands try to play?

Why are there iPhone applications devoted to this man and his inauguration?

I remember Bush's inauguration as a bad day, because my family disagrees with his beliefs and policies. I don't remember Clinton's. And before that, I wasn't paying attention to anything other than my skinned knees.

But I've asked around, and no other inauguration has been compared to Woodstock.

I really don't get it. Do you?

Yesterday was the last day to rate entries for Publish2's “I Am the Future of Journalism” Contest.

Congratulations to the 10 highest ranked, from which one wil be selected for the prize of a job and $1,000.

Scott Lunt Ranking: 3.7

Greg Linch Ranking: 3.62

Ned Resnikoff Ranking: 3.27

Andrew Dunn Ranking: 3.26

Daniel Bachhuber Ranking: 3.2

Mark Abouzeid Ranking: 3.14

Wendy Parker Ranking: 2.94

Brittany Wilmes Ranking: 2.93

Jessica Estepa Ranking: 2.88

Will Sommer Ranking: 2.87

I came in 11th, with a ranking of 2.86. But I'm not upset. It was a fun challenge, and a good way to find new journalists to get in touch with.

Today is the last day to rate entries in Publish2's “I Am the Future of Journalism” Contest.

Ten finalists will be chosen based on the highest ratings, and one will be awarded a job with Publish2 and a $1,000 signing bonus.

Even though I graduated from college in May, I have trouble with the concept of not being in school. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but I love school, and I miss all the things that come with it: being a part of a community, constantly learning new things, the surety of having something to work toward for the next few years.

Obviously, these are all part of living in the real world as well, but they seem harder and less tangible. I've lived in the Bronx for three months now, and I still only know the building super and the guy at the convenience store down the street. I'm so busy trying to make rent that I'm not learning the way I was in school. Sure, I learn new things on the job, but it's very different. As for goals to work toward, instead of aiming for a degree I know I can get, I'm working toward a career in an industry that's too busy trying to land on its feet to notice my efforts.

There's no despair in this. Just readjustment. And resolutions.

I don't need to be in school or have my dream job to learn new things or to be a journalist. I just have to carve out the time to do what needs doing.

So here's a list of things I want to learn or do, regardless of jobs.

1. Formally learn Javascript. I have some experience, but mostly in the vein of searching for the code that will do what I want, and implementing it. I'd like to be able to write a little on my own.
2. Learn PHP. Like Javascript, I know quite a bit just from fiddling with websites (especially WordPress). But I'd like the formal knowledge that would allow me to manipulate databases without have to do a Google search every ten minutes.
3. Write. I recently signed up at BrightHub, a science and technology site. I'd like to write at least one article a week. In addition, I want to try some pitching for publications. I think that my deficiency in published writing (due to a proficiency in multimedia and programming) has been detrimental to my career goals.
4. Produce multimedia and web development projects. I want to keep my skills fresh, even if I'm not using them in day-to-day work. So each month I'll come up some sort of project to work on, be it video, photography, data analysis...just something to keep me from getting rusty.
5. Find a way to participate in my new community. I've been poking around community boards for the Bronx, and have also found some interesting groups in Manhattan. I want to get involved. There are also a few online communities that I'm a part of that I'd like to be more involved in.

I think these are good ways to be a journalist without the benefits of working for a publication. I'm still busting my butt to get a job in news, but until then, this is a good simulation.

What else can I do to be a journalist without the framework? What tips or advice can you give me for fulfilling these resolutions?

I submitted this for my entry to Publish2's “I Am the Future of Journalism” Contest:

I have the will and the adaptability to be the future of journalism.

It's not that I know how to write stories, use a video camera and write code.

Those are secondary qualities.

I am passionate about news. Passionate enough to learn new skills, to experiment with technology, to challenge myself to tell stories in multiple dimensions.

The power of news is change. It's a cliche, but knowledge really is power, and journalists are the disseminators of information.

In journalism school they say "Show, don't tell." Somewhat ironically, print stories are limited in this capacity. Radio and television are better at showing.

But the mediums are merging. The buzzword is "convergence," but what it means is that the media is catching up with technology.

A story is no longer a block of text. It is more than the sum of it's parts; it includes video, links, databases, infographics and audio. A story is an experience. And when forced to acknowledge wrongness on such a level, how can people but work to change it?

Journalism makes an idealist out of me.

I've worked in a cramped college newsroom and a spacious metro daily. But the job was the same: What is the best way to make this information meaningful?

To that end, I've used Flash, Twitter, maps, video, podcasts. I'm learning more programming languages, exploring social media and experimenting with the possibilities introduced by the Internet.

Abraham Maslow, a psychologist in the early 20th century, said "He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail." The more tools we have, the better our stories become, because there isn't just one way to do it.

I'm going to need a ginormous toolbox.

I don't dream of working in a smoke-filled newsroom, surrounded by press hats and old coffee. I dream of the day when the world is my newsroom. I'll work from the streets or my living room, and the physical state of the newsroom will be a server.

Last night was one of most exciting of my life. I got to watch America do something special.

I got home around 6:30, right after the first polls closed. I stayed hooked to television and computer until just after President-elect Barack Obama's acceptance speech. It was an amazing experience.

During past elections, information was sought largely from television news. This time, I paid more attention to a large selection of Web sites than to the obnoxious commentary of political analysts. Apparently, so did a lot of other people:

According to Akamai, which is the content delivery network for most major news sites including CNN (which had a record day on its own), NBC, Reuters, and the BBC, global visitors to news sites peaked last night at 11 PM with 8,572,042 visitors per minute.
That is double the normal traffic level, and 18 percent above the previous peak of 7.3 million visitors per minute achieved during the World Cup back in June, 2006. (The third biggest peak to news sites was last March during the first day of the U.S. college basketball playoffs when it hit 7 million visitors per minute).(TechCrunch)

Most of the links below aren't to news sites, though. These are passionate and creative people who found different ways to reflect on what we all saw last night. A little bit of meta-coverage, if you will.

Mark Luckie put together a time-lapse video of the NYTimes home page from last night. It starts while voters are still at the polls and ends with Obama's victory. "In the Hall of the Mountain King" was an inspired musical choice.

Mark Newman and his cartogram software showed how skewing the normal red/blue map according to population or electoral votes is a better graphical representation of how America voted.

Daily Kos collected headlines and newspaper front pages in the US and elsewhere. Excellent collection with some really creative designs.

My friend Matthew Gonzalez grabbed some screen shots from news Web sites' home pages. I really love the NYTimes treatment.

Designer Robb Montgomery collects his best picks of front pages. I have to agree, the Chicago Sun-Times front is amazingly powerful. He also brings us "a video tour and spot critique of top U.S. media Web sites and their election graphics at the moment when Sen. Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election."

ReadWriteWeb put together a really cool slideshow of election coverage online, showing resources from Twitter to Ustream, news sites and more.

Mindy McAdams put together her own slideshow of voting maps and home pages.

I recently joined the Spot.us group on Facebook. I've met David Cohn and heard him talk about Spot.us as well as following his blog for quite some time now. His idea is intriguing, and I've been pretty excited to see how things might work out for him.

From his message to the group, here are three successfully funded stories:

The first example of Community Funded Reporting came from a fantastic reporter Alexis Madrigal who examined the infrastructure of ethanol in the state of California. I feel confident that it is the most exhaustive look at the subject to date.

The second example is ongoing: The SF Election Truthiness Campaign. We raised $2,500 from 74 small donations (average $33) to fact-check political advertisements for the upcoming SF Election.
Just today PBS' MediaShift blog wrote about it.

Our most recent success story is underway right now: Chris Amico will look into the environmental concerns of cement kilns in the Bay Area.

Sounds like things are going really well for David so far, (congrats!) and I hope to see the project grow and even expand to other areas!

When I set out to learn a new programming language, I usually take baby steps:

• Read as much as possible about the language
• Find the experts online and see what they're saying/doing
• Find and work through beginner tutorials
• Come up with an idea to build something on my own

It usually takes a good 3 months or so before I get to that last step.

I didn't get that luxury with AS3. A few weeks ago, I started watching the AS3 tutorials at Lynda.com. I had been assigned to rebuild The Miami Herald's 60 Seconds project.
The current project is written in AS2. All the bits and pieces are internal. My mission was to rebuild it in AS3 and make it load information from an XML file so that it could be updated easily.

I started out with a series of classes: one to load the XML, one to parse it, one to define the thumbnails, etc. These classes were refined and rewritten until I got the thumbnails to load into the screen, much as they do in the original version.

It's taken me 3 weeks to get that far. Google is my best friend. The next few steps:

• fix interface so that when more videos are added, the screen will scroll left and right to show the additional videos
• clicking on a thumbnail will go to large version of video with description etc, pulled from XML
• add commenting, feedback and rating functionality

Right now, I can't even begin to figure out how that's going to get done. But it will, and I'll learn a lot from the experience.

Check my Del.icio.us bookmarks for AS3 resources.

This week I've been thinking about restructuring some areas of this site, as well as getting into a more stable posting schedule.

The first area of concern is the sidebar of this blog. I've already started messing with a few things, for example the blogroll. I had the blogroll pulling automatically from a folder in Google Reader. But I think its more serviceable to have links to things I've read or bookmarked recently, instead of a list of sites I may or may not have updated in months. What do you think?

What items are actually useful in a blog sidebar? What should go higher or lower? What do you look for?

I'm also going to change the postings from Delicious. I've been having problems with their auto-posting service for my bookmarks, and I'd rather have real content on here and put bookmarks in the sidebar. Besides, you can always grab the feed from my Delicious page or add me to your network.

My Twitter account is basically my "lifestream," and I don't want to duplicate that too much here. But I still want to provide easy access to all that information. Maybe a separate page that displays that?

I also need to update the Clips section. I want to provide a little more context, maybe break it up into sections for text, video, programming, etc.

I'd love any suggestions, and you'll notice a few changes as I figure out what I want to do this week.

City of Memory

This is such a beautiful package.

"City of Memory is an online community map of personal stories and memories organized on a physical geographical map of New York City."

People can add their own stories, including video, audio and photos.

The project is "Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and The Rockefeller Foundation."

In May announced its intention to build an Application Programming Interface for its data. MediaBistro quoted Aron Pilhofer:

The goal, according to Aron Pilhofer, editor of interactive news, is to "make the NYT programmable. Everything we produce should be organized data."

More details, if they can be called that:

Once the API is complete, the Times' internal developers will use it to build platforms to organize all the structured data such as events listings, restaurants reviews, recipes, etc. They will offer a key to programmers, developers and others who are interested in mashing-up various data sets on the site. "The plan is definitely to open [the code] up," Frons said. "How far we don't know."

I haven't heard anything since then, although the article mentioned that something would be ready "in a matter of weeks."

Today I spent some time reading the API documentation for National Public Radio.

That's right, NPR has an API. (mmm, I love my alphabet soup.)

NPR's API provides a flexible, powerful way to access your favorite NPR content, including audio from most NPR programs dating back to 1995 as well as text, images and other web-only content from NPR and NPR member stations. This archive consists of over 250,000 stories that are grouped into more than 5,000 different aggregations.

You can get results from Topics, Music Genres, Programs, Bios, Music Artists, Columns and Series in XML, RSS, MediaRSS, JSON, and Atom or through HTML and JavaScript widgets.

Now, I'm a bit of an NPR junkie, so I'm thinking of ways to access all this information for my personal use. And I can see how it could be useful as an internal product for NPR.

But how would another news organization use this? Oh wait, they can't:

The API is for personal, non-commercial use, or for noncommercial online use by a nonprofit corporation which is exempt from federal income taxes under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

This one doesn't make sense either:

Content from the API must be used for non-promotional, internet-based purposes only. Uses can include desktop gadgets, blog posts and widgets, but must not include e-newsletters.

And way down at the bottom of the page is a huge block of text describing excluded content. Boooo.

Check out these blog posts from Inside NPR.org, where they explain some of their decisions.

I think this was a great first step, but if you're gonna jump on the bandwagon, make sure you don't miss and land on the hitch.

Further, really understand what purpose this bandwagon has. If you're going to free your data, free it! Let people and news organizations use it (always with a link back) for all kinds of crazy things. Remember kids, sharing is caring!