It’s quite possible to find something useful and free online every day. Here are a few sites that might come in handy when you’re looking to send off big files, you need audio or images that won’t get you in copyright trouble or you’re looking to build a portfolio site quickly. 1. WeTransfer.com – a free Web-based …
Continue reading ‘More free Web tools’ »
Learning to write for the Web just got a little easier. Posting on the RTDNA site, reporter Lynn Walsh put together this terrific list of eight elements for online writing. 1. Keep it short and sweet. Keep sentences short. Omit unnecessary words. Only include one idea per paragraph. Keep paragraphs short: tell the reader to …
Continue reading ‘Online writing tip sheet’ »
Keeping an eye on Twitter is pretty much mandatory in most newsrooms–or at least it should be. Yes, there’s a lot of worthless chatter out there, but every so often you can find a pony. Take the story Kara Matuszewski, a Web producer at WBZ in Boston, turned up last week about schools in one local district …
Continue reading ‘Finding news on Twitter’ »
We’re happy to announce the publication of the second edition of our textbook, Advancing the Story: Broadcast Journalism in a Multimedia World. It’s available now from CQ Press or Amazon, and we hope you’ll check it out. What’s different this time around? The new edition includes substantial revisions but retains the essential strengths of the …
Continue reading ‘New edition now available’ »
Adam Westbrook recently wrote about his favorite freebie programs and the list is worth a look. Among his Top 10, are three of my own faves. 1. MPEG Streamclip What it does: Put simply, MPEG Streamclip is a video transcoder and compressor. It takes a video file and converts it into a smaller, bigger, different video file …
Continue reading ‘Ten free and legal Web tools for journalists’ »
With all the new demands on TV reporters these days, who would have thought that going live over the phone would be a challenge? Turns out that it is, at least for Marissa Pendergrass, a reporter at WHBF in Rock Island, Illinois, who started work there about six months ago. Writing on the RTDNA Rookie …
Continue reading ‘Going live via phone’ »
I’m a sucker for lists, especially lists for journalists. So I had to read the 25 commandments for journalists posted by a former editor of the Guardian. Tim Radford’s “manifesto” is a useful reminder of what really matters in journalism, and it’s not today’s cool tools, as much fun as they are. Radford reminds us all …
Continue reading ‘Handy rules for journalists’ »
TV photojournalist Anne Herbst does a lot more than shoot and edit. She writes a lot of stories, too, but unlike other solo journalists at KUSA in Denver, she doesn’t voice them. “My husband says I sound like Kermit the Frog,” Herbst told participants at the 2010 Northwest Video Workshop. So Herbst has found other …
Continue reading ‘Five tips from a TV video pro’ »