Posted on August 30th, 2008 by Deb Wenger
Photojournalist Joe Mahoney has been telling stories with pictures for decades, but it’s only been fairly recently that he’s begun producing audio slide shows for the Richmond Times Dispatch. During a training session for graduate students in Virginia Commonwealth University’s multimedia journalism program, Mahoney shared some of what he’s learned about taking good photos, [...]
Filed under: 03. Multimedia Newsgathering, 06. Visual Storytelling, 08. Producing for the Web | 3 Comments »
Posted on August 27th, 2008 by Deborah Potter
You know the old saying: A picture is worth a thousand words. How about a picture of a thousand words (or more)? That’s basically what you get from a “word cloud”–a visual representation of text, with the most frequently used terms getting the most real estate. Here’s what Advancing the Story looks like in “word [...]
Filed under: 05. Writing the Story | No Comments »
Posted on August 26th, 2008 by Deborah Potter
CBS News has broken new ground both behind the scenes and on the air in collaborating with local TV journalists. For the first time, the network enlisted the help of reporters at local affiliates in reporting an investigative story and featured those reporters on the CBS Evening News.
The story about gas pump rip-offs that aired [...]
Filed under: 04. Reporting in Depth, 06. Visual Storytelling | No Comments »
Posted on August 26th, 2008 by Deb Wenger
Whether it’s a blog, reader reaction link or online forum, news organizations have been struggling with the issue of user comments. To moderate or not to moderate, that is generally the question.
Recently, Editor & Publisher’s Ernest Wiggins surveyed the 10 largest circulation newspapers in the country to find out how they handle online feedback.
All of the papers reviewed — [...]
Filed under: 08. Producing for the Web | No Comments »
Posted on August 25th, 2008 by Deborah Potter
What kind of video will online users actually watch? To find out, Cyndy Green tried a small experiment this summer at the Lodi News Sentinel. The results are interesting, if not terribly surprising.
Her working assumption was that viewers will watch “stupid and sports.” Turns out they do gravitate to offbeat stuff–the most-viewed video in July [...]
Filed under: 06. Visual Storytelling, 08. Producing for the Web | 1 Comment »
Posted on August 24th, 2008 by Deborah Potter
The latest entry in the online news aggregator market offers a new twist on story rankings. Unlike other social media sites, NewsCred doesn’t rank stories by popularity. Instead, it asks users to judge whether stories, authors and publications are credible, and sorts them accordingly.
Anyone can customize a news feed by selecting sources to monitor. The [...]
Filed under: 11. Multimedia Ethics | No Comments »
Posted on August 23rd, 2008 by Deborah Potter
Yes, it’s a multimedia world. But the most important skill any journalist brings to the job is the ability to write, says Geoff Dankert, assistant news director at the Fox station in Chicago, WFLD-TV. At this week’s NLGJA conference in Washington, I asked him what advice he has for young journalists looking for jobs:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/DV6-QE7tYPI&hl]
The blog [...]
Filed under: 05. Writing the Story, 12. Getting Ready for the Real World | No Comments »
Posted on August 21st, 2008 by Deborah Potter
Americans still turn to television as their main source for news, but online news consumption continues to grow while newspaper readership plummets. That’s the headline from the Pew Research Center’s latest survey on U.S. news habits.
After years of decline, the TV news audience may finally have bottomed out. Overall viewership numbers were basically unchanged from [...]
Filed under: 01. The Multimedia Mindset | No Comments »
Posted on August 20th, 2008 by Deborah Potter
Despite all the changes in the newspaper business, top editors say the most important skill for journalists is still good writing. A survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 88% of editors ranked writing skills as “very essential,” while only 39% put multimedia skills in that same category.
But multimedia skills were rated [...]
Filed under: 03. Multimedia Newsgathering, 12. Getting Ready for the Real World | No Comments »
Posted on August 14th, 2008 by Deb Wenger
In our text, Advancing the Story, we talk about some of the ethical issues raised in the digital age of newsgathering. One newsgathering technique that’s becoming increasingly popular is the use of email to conduct interviews. So, what is your responsibility for telling the audience about the way in which you gathered the information? Here’s a [...]
Filed under: 03. Multimedia Newsgathering, 11. Multimedia Ethics | 1 Comment »