Entries Tagged 'Journalists' ↓

There are some pretty good jobs up for grabs at News Digital Media at the moment.

Senior Video Journalist

Due to the growth of the business we are currently looking for a talented and passionate Senior Video Journalist to produce journalistic video and multimedia content…

Digital Media Designer-Mobile (Part time)

Due to the growth of the business we are currently looking for a talented and passionate Designer who will be responsible for the design of mobile sites and mobile advertising campaigns as well as online and print creative.

It’s good to see a growing awareness of the importance of user friendly mobile content.

I just sat in on a live blog using Cover It Live.

James Mowery from Performancing was demonstrating how it works.

A lot of bloggers on mainstream news sites already do ‘live blogging’, often on a regular day and at a regular time, and this tool could make their lives a little easier. Even if not working with an already clunky CMS, managing a live blog can be difficult at the best of times.

I like the ability to embed the live discussion within a blog’s post page - or on any page - and then easily manage things from the Cover It Live interface. A three-pane view shows additional functions (like inserting a poll), the content box, and incoming comments.

The Media Library is a great tool.  You can permanently store content in folders (audio, video, images, polls, links, ads and prewritten text), then drag relevant content for a specific live blogging session into a prepared show folder.  (see demo)

The benefit of this is preparing a live blog with what you already plan to say and present.  Many mainstream media blogs don’t really provide the functionality or interactivity of an actual live conversation.  A blog post is made, and then the live blogger takes and responds to comments, with no real further addition to their initial post it is essentially a statement up for discussion.  With Cover It Live, that can be spread out in real time, inviting more interactivity.

Image function could be improved.  During the live blog session you can  post images or video that the participants will be able to open and watch.  The way Cover It Live works, images at this stage can’t be too detailed as it looks like they’re restricted to about 330 x 220 px.   A full screenshot, for example, is difficult to view, whereas a portrait image of a person comes out looking fine.  In image selection, general web thumbnail standards should apply - crop tight.

Different templates can also be created that will show your branding before the blog goes live, while in progress, and once the live blog session has ended.

Cover It Live is probably best served covering a live event, and that was probably its intent.  I can see the downside for mainstream news bloggers who take the statement-response approach would be that newcomers to the conversation have to try and catch up with what has already been said.

On the standard static screen, they can at least read all the other comments and responses, easily, before choosing to engage themselves.
The live blog I sat in on, including a review of Cover It Live:
http://performancing.com/blogging/its-kinda-regular-blogging-its-live

And a review focused on live blogging news events using Cover It Live:
http://www.beatblogging.org/blog/2008/02/chating-live-wi.html

For people who want to upskill in journalism, or keep up with the advances and theories surrounding new media journalism, who has the time to study external extra-curricular courses, let alone attend classes?

Now you don’t have to. With the promotion of university lecture podcasts, you can get all your learning done in your own time, and for free. Staring out the bus or train window as the city passes you by on the way to work? Why not listen to some old Harvard grads from the class of 1955 talk about the changes in journalism in the last 50 years? 50 Years in Media: Changes in Journalism

Want something a bit more contemporary? Try Utah State’s Blogs, Wikis, New Media for Learning or Flash courses.

If you’re a visual learner and have a video iPod or other portable video player, try MIT’s Media, Education, and the Marketplace video lectures.

More podcasted courses available in the OEDB podcast directory, and also in iTunesU, university podcasts available directly from iTunes.

via New Media Bytes

Also from New Media Bytes: Ultimate guide to Twitter tools and resources for journalists

Can a single journalist really be a one-stop shop for all your online multimedia needs?

I like the thought of that future, but hadn’t been able to wrap my mind around the concept of how the journalist could record audio, video, get some stills and take a few handwritten notes all at the same time.

The picture I had was similar to that of the one-man band - bass drum strapped to back, harmonica brace, foot pedals, cymbals between the knees and a violin for some fast fiddling.

But for Jane Munro, one of the Radio Online producers for the ABC, it’s just part of the job.

‘When I am shooting a video story I use the camera to acquire everything I need to publish on a range of platforms.
‘I extract the audio from the video package, and sometimes broadcast that audio unchanged as a complete radio package. I then extract still images from the video to accompany a text article. That and a compressed version of the video is published on our local website.’

More available from Issue 48 of Inside the ABC

Some journalists can’t wrap their heads around more than asking questions and taking notes. It’s easy enough to set up and leave a small camera on a tripod while you interview someone, or record audio (which many do for personal record anyway), but the problem comes in the production process.

The editing and posting online of content is where more technical skills are needed. Journalists shouldn’t be expected to learn and do these things themselves, but those who can or want to should be given the opportunity, and this is where organisation-wide collaborative systems need to be in place to make it possible.

It requires just a little effort. If a stills photographer has been taking their own camcorder out on jobs years before newspapers - let alone video - went online, it would be unwise of the organisation to not recognise that persons worth, or encourage their efforts.

If you’re a journalism or communications student, blog and understand the importance of being web-literate if you want to get a job in the new media landscape.

From Shawn Smith at New Media Bytes - to journalism students, and by association journalists:

But the bottom line is this: If you’re a journalism student (or anyone looking to succeed in mass comm), you need a blog. You need to learn how to cover a beat and write for a niche. You need to learn how to write for an audience and tap them for information. You need to be able to understand the web, or at least show a willingness to learn.

You’ve shown some initiative and taught yourself a few skills.

Why is ‘blog’ still a four-letter word? | New Media Bytes | Online journalism, web production and promotion

Incredibly simple, but effective.

The Reuters mojo (Mobile Journalism) team has been field-testing the exclusive use of a Nokia N95 mobile phone for filing picture, video, and text content.

Tests have been conducted all over the world, and while the phone’s video quality isn’t great, it’s certainly a lot closer to the perfect mobile journalist than anyone else has effectively come.

See their mojo site, but the toolkit consists of the N95 phone, a collapsable keyboard with phone bracket, mini tripod for video use of phone, directional microphone and a solar charging mobile power source for the phone.

The solar power source is probably not necessary for your average city journo, but as their description says, the solar charger came in handy in Senegal. Fair enough.

Despite the 5MP still camera on the N95, I don’t think its video quality is equal to what you could expect from a comparable still camera. I’ve seen some excellent video taken on a lower-end consumer point-and-shoot digital camera (a $300 Canon Powershot SD800 IS)

It can be easy to screw up an interview. John Sawatsky trains ESPN staffers in the art of interviewing and says some of those considered the best in the business are making basic mistakes.

It all comes down to having a plan.  To paraphrase Sawatsky:

Have a strategy.  Use questions to build off questions to get more, to get your subject to go further than their normal cautious self would normally go

Any journalist, or journalism student, should know or have heard these simple rules.  They’re not exactly Sawatsky’s rules, but very basically: don’t ask yes-or-no questions, keep questions short and avoid charged words, which can distract people.

via NPR

When the local newspaper is sending out 26 print journalists and photographers with video cameras every day, where do you think people are going to go for their news?  Online, because no TV station can match that volume of local news coverage.

Local news stations, please take note.  As all media move to the web, the local paper is your direct video competitor - and doing a much better job.

via Rosenblumtv

I just noticed this post has been sitting in the DRAFT locker for a long time. It was starting to smell, so I thought I’d air it out for you with some linky goodness.

MediaShift . Digging Deeper::Your Guide to Citizen Journalism | PBS

It may not have an external microphone jack - which would make some interview situations difficult at times - but Mindy McAdams points to a video series following a Sports Illustrated photographer in Mexico.  The entire video series was shot on a Canon Powershot SD800 IS.

Teaching Online Journalism » Your $300 video camera

The quality is surprisingly good, and I think proves again you don’t need broadcast or film quality (size) vision to put video on the web.

Michael Rosenblum is certainly going to piss a few people off.  And why wouldn’t people get pissed off when you’re questioning the practicality of tradition?

The Future of Local TV News? « Rosenblumtv

Who would buy an edit suite today? Not in an era when you can edit just about anything on a laptop. Makes sense.

Extend that argument to cameras, satellite dishes, transmission towers in an era in which anyone can put video up online with a server and an online connection and suddenly the whole architecture of local tv news as we know it starts to collapse.

[…]

Go over the local University. Get yourself a dozen bright and eager young journalists. They all have their own cameras and laptops anyway. And start your own local news channel.

There is no ‘barrier to entry’ except your own anxiety.
Someone is going to do this. Why not you?

Amen.  And while not every university student has a video camera, even the movie mode of a half-decent point-and-shoot camera is going to yield a decent 320×240 video image - pretty much your standard online video viewing size.

If you don’t have a video camera but WANT one you can get some of the higher quality ones (HD, 3CCD and external microphone) on eBay, brand new, for much less than the retail. I link you here to pages that have a review (not in-depth), retail price and eBay prices of a couple of cameras.
JVC GZ HD7
Canon HV20
Sony HDR CX7K

In five days I will get results back on my final semester at university.

As long as everything has gone according to plan I will be Dave Earley, plus letters!

BA/BJ.

Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Journalism.

My smiling face will be knocking on your doors soon.

If you’re interested in video journalism, Mindy McAdams of tojou, or the Teaching Online Journalism blog, has a comprehensive list of gear for the multimedia reporter. 

I wish I’d known about her blog before now, because I think it’s going to be essential reading.

This is an email I recently sent to my internship coordinator at UQ’s School of Journalism and Communication, after he asked me if I had any VJ sites I could recommend. I spent some time looking for a few links for him and thought they might also be useful to others.

Email:
———-
To: Journalist-in-residence, UQ School of Journalism and Communication
From: Dave Earley

I haven’t kept up with video journalism (VJ) sites much, mainly because it usually requires high-speed internet when videos are involved, and I’m on free student dialup! I haven’t really found any VJ ‘forums’ either.

By the way, an example of a good university news site is Virginia Tech’s Collegiate Times.

Hope the following is helpful, and not link overload.

The only site I could recommend off the top of my head is Michael Rosenblum - but other than discuss theory, he doesn’t go into a lot of technicalities on his blog about how to do VJ. So I’ve put him in ‘interesting reading’ links. He runs training worldwide in VJ (including for the BBC), but perhaps the best start would be this page:

http://theconcentra.org/en/links/
It looks like it has some good links that could be helpful

After a bit of searching, you might also find these useful. I haven’t had time to look into them in-depth (as I said, dialup is not conducive to fast content viewing online):

http://www.onqco.com/
http://www.current.tv/make/training?section=editing
The CurrentTV guide is fairly basic, but provides some good information - I’ve looked at it before. Actually if you follow that link, at the bottom of the section there is a ‘Learn More’ button where you’ll find more links.

http://www.mrdot.co.uk/videojournalism_today.html

Interesting reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_journalism
http://rosenblumtv.com/index.shtml
http://www.integratedmedia.org/nav.cfm?cat=14&subcat=123&subsub=0
http://rosenblumtv.wordpress.com/
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/video_journalists/
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/video/
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/22/news/video.php?page=1
http://desktopvideo.about.com/od/videoblogging/p/journlismvlog.htm

Another report along the lines of the previous - Web revolution leaving newsgathering in a lurch

The problem with cutbacks media-wide, according to Tom Rosenstiel (director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, publishers of the State of the News Media report), is that in many communities, “people will suddenly discover that there hasn’t been a reporter at the city council meeting for weeks and that no one is checking the police blotter. It could happen little by little and be discovered after the fact.“

And with the reliance on newspaper journalism driving daily radio and TV stories (because of their own staff cutbacks), the loss of a newspaper or even just a diminished capacity to report as it once did, will have news coverage consequences for radio and TV also. Naturally this translates to a less-informed public because of a dearth of coverage media-wide.

There is an argument that online should be 24 hours, news straight to the web rather than waiting for the print run, hourly update or 6pm broadcast, but lack of resources, if only in staffing, presents the same problems for the online arm of newspapers.

“…most newspapers are ramping up their websites to stay relevant. But because online advertising lags in comparison to print, many newspapers can’t adequately staff their websites with reporters who gather news.