The project is hiring a professional staff but expects to involve students as well as faculty at Berkeley. The J-school already produces hyperlocal news sites in the Bay Area, including Mission Local and Oakland North, which presumably could provide some of the content for the new site.

This kind of collaboration makes a lot of sense for journalism schools and their students, and it could provide jobs for some laid-off journalists. In some ways, it’s similar to the New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University and the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, which also combine student input with professional supervision.

But let’s face it, these kinds of projects can’t begin to re-employ all of the reporters and editors who have lost their jobs in the last couple of years. The project’s Web site says that 500 professional journalists now cover the Bay Area, compared to 900 back then. Collaborative projects provide a great opportunity for students to build their resumes, but they probably won’t make it any easier for J-school graduates to find full-time jobs in the news business.

On AR&D consultant Bob Kaplitz’s blog, Scholett offers this advice to other multimedia journalists:

1.)   Don’t think of your video as an afterthought. Good video might save a story, but poorly shot wallpaper video will certainly ruin one.

2.)   Don’t complain about carrying gear. There are hundreds of darn good reporters out there who are carrying resumes right now who would kill to be carrying gear.

3.)   Don’t forget what it’s like to be a viewer. See each day’s story as if you were watching it from home. Did you get the take home message across? Did you like video? Did it all make sense? Would you want to watch it again? Would you need too?

4.)   Don’t rush the writing. That’s where real mistakes are made.

5.)   Don’t use being a one man band as a crutch or an excuse. It’s the wave of the future and a great skill to have.

You might also want to check out Schollett’s advice for managing time as an MMJ – anyone who can physically survive anchoring three shows and turning a story every day has got to know something about time management, right?

No, those letters are not the result of fingers run amok on a keyboard, they’re all now part of the multimedia journalist’s toolkit. 

An article from TVNewsCheck does a great job of describing how wireless broadband is changing news reporting, specifically what each option can and cannot do.

The trick to using wireless broadband is understanding its capabilities. It requires “a constant juggling between how much time you have and how much quality you can submit,” said Fred Fourcher, CEO of Bitcentral, a digital media management and content distribution management vendor.

Here are some highlights from the piece.

• 3G – Good for news stories that are not time sensitive because the upload time for a large video file could stretch into hours.  On the plus side, it’s available almost everywhere, even in a moving vehicle.  In addition, companies like LiveU have technology that can combine up to six 3G feeds to increase the bandwidth and upload speed.
• Wifi – Faster and potentially cheaper than 3G, but not always available.  Wifi can be tricky to use for a live shot since there’s often a lot of competition for bandwidth.
• 4G/WiMAX/LTE - coming soon, the article calls this “wireless nirvana.”  In theory, upload time is supposed to be up to five times faster than 3G.  The idea is that you could take a camera enabled with WiMax and use it to broadcast live.  But WiMax is public like Wifi, and without a dedicated link, it could be risky for a live shot.

For more on these technologies, LTE and Skype, check out the full article.

Chuck Fadely of the Miami Herald definitely subscribes to the “pay attention” school of interviewing. Here are a few of his best interviewing tips from an online discussion group:

* pay attention! You need to know what you’ve got on tape and what you still need for the story
* pay attention! You need to know what the story is and stay on track
* pay attention! You’ll need to go shoot b-roll of what they’re talking about

Photojournalist and teacher Cyndy Green reinforces that last point.

My #1 rule is to always listen to what the interview subject is saying and make mental notes about visuals that will tie in what they talk about. So if you’re doing a story about drug houses and they mention how run-down the yards look or how there is always someone on the lookout for cops…those are visuals you can try to get to enhance the story.

Green’s second rule is all about paying attention, too. “Keep eye contact with the interview subject…let them know you are interested in what they have to say.

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You’ll notice that both Green and Fadely expect you to interview first and shoot later. That’s generally good advice when you’re working alone, but only if you’re not covering breaking news. If you are, check these tips from WBFF’s Darren Durlach.

David Protess runs the school’s “Innocence Project” in which students investigate old crimes looking for wrongful convictions.  In the past decade, the school says, “[they] have uncovered evidence that freed 11 innocent men, five of them from death row.”

Protess and his students believe they’ve found another wrongful conviction and Northwestern’s legal clinic has filed a petition for a new trial. But local prosecutors are suggesting that the students may have been under pressure to prove the case in order to get a good grade in the class. As the Associated Press reports, the prosecutors have subpoenaed the students’ grades, private emails, notes, unpublished memos and expense claims. That kind of information would typically be protected by the state shield law but the prosecutors claim the students aren’t journalists, so they’re not covered.

The case raises concerns for all students who do “real world” journalism as part of their course work. And it underlines the need to bring shield laws up to date in today’s multimedia world when anyone can be a journalist. The latest draft of a federal shield law does just that, by covering anyone who does journalism, even if they don’t get paid for it.

College journalism teachers tell me their students often need remedial help with the basics because they never mastered grammar in high school. Even schools that require a passing grade on a grammar exam for admission to journalism school find they’re up against some deeply ingrained bad habits. And it’s tough to convince students they need to break those bad habits, especially broadcast students. We want them to write conversationally, of course, but we don’t really want them to write the way they would speak to a friend. If we did, we’d be okay with a script that reads, “Her and a friend arrived just before the shooting.”

It doesn’t do much good to suggest that people who speak this way consult a style guide when they write. If they don’t have a clue that what they’re saying is wrong, they probably won’t bother to look anything up.

Practice can help, and there are plenty of online resources available, like Newsroom 101, with free exercises in grammar, usage and style. But if those exercises feel like drudgery, take heart. The funny folks at The Oatmeal have come up with a guide to one of the most misused punctuation marks ever, the apostrophe. Check it out and never confuse it’s and its again.

That doesn’t sound much like the advice of a hard-hitting investigative reporter, but Steve Andrews has been righting wrongs in the Tampa Bay area since 1985.  The investigative reporter for WFLA has uncovered stories ranging from corruption at the courthouse to sub-standard bridge construction to critical failures within the state agency charged with protecting children and the elderly.

Now, with TV stations around the country cutting back on investigative units and letting veteran reporters go, Andrews has continued to work on holding the powerful accountable.

For example, Andrews learned that a major water reservoir in the Tampa area wasn’t built to plan specifications and the 3-year-old reservoir was developing huge cracks in the walls.

Andrew Fitzgerald oversees the online news efforts for Current TV. His view on video for the Web was echoed by the AP’s Kevin Roach and YouTube’s Olivia Ma. All three took part in RTDNA’s “Video-Free-For-All” webinar.

One of the fundamentals expressed is that the Web is changing audience expectations for video online or on the air. These days users and viewers seem to be more accepting of lower quality video, if it’s truly compelling. As one speaker put it, “It comes down to what camera you have in your hand at the time the news is happening.”

Case in point is the video shot by a bystander as demonstrators set up a barricade in Iran back in June.

Roach, who runs all U.S. based news operations for the AP, says they’ve found tremendous value in posting raw video online and says there’s no more waiting for the next newscast to get great video published.

“It’s really simple, first wins,” Roach said.

Camera quality

The panelists also reinforced the notion that inexpensive cameras are a major boon to news organizations, referring to $200 dollar Flip cams as “an insurance policy.”

Roach told the story of a “text-only” AP reporter who had the presence of mind to stop at a Radio Shack to buy a Flip camera on her way to track down South Carolina’s governor, Mark Sanford.

“Having a Flip cam in every reporter’s hands is not a bad idea,” Roach said. “And while you’re it, the GM and every engineer should have them, too.”

Roach says that if the subject matter is strong enough and you have “the only shot that exists, it’s acceptable.”

Cameras mentioned include:

• Flip camera      $150-$250
• Canon HV30    $1,000
• Sony Z1U           $3,500
• Sony EX1           $7,000

Sharing video

The speakers also questioned the wisdom of news organizations that refuse to share their video. 

“Right now, the AP video player is on 2,000 sites and that number continues to grow.  It’s not about getting people to your Web site,  it’s about discovery,” Roach said.  “A good chunk of our video is on YouTube.  We get more than 50 million streams a month, and the ads go with it.  Even if the video is streamed on another site, AP gets the ad revenue.”

News manager for YouTube, Olivia Ma, said local newsrooms that share their video on YouTube are also reaching audiences they ”might not otherwise have access to.”

In addition, Ma described a new service called YouTube Direct.  According to Ma, the service will provide local newsrooms an easy way to create assignments and solicit content from users.  No launch date was mentioned, but it sounds like something worth checking out.

Since we last wrote about new models for investigative journalism, the playing field has expanded. ProPublica is now well established as a non-profit news producer; their investigations have run on 60 Minutes and in major newspapers, including the the New York Times. They’re even looking to hire more reporters. And they’re not alone.

The Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative Reporting have been around even longer, producing national investigations with funding mainly from foundations. But this year, CIR launched California Watch to focus on state issues. Texas Watchdog and other regional groups have launched as well: The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, the New England Center for Investigative Reporting and American University’s Investigative Reporting Center are producing original projects using students as researchers, reporters or interns.

Stories from several of these non-profit groups are getting wide distribution thanks to a deal with the Associated Press, which may be revised soon to include even more sources. The groups themselves are discussing the formation of an investigative news network to support their work.

News organizations trying to operate with fewer staffers and produce news for more platforms obviously welcome the free content. But as a special report in Editor & Publisher asks, Is this the future of investigative reporting? And if so, what will be missed?

The report finds that few top editors will admit that investigative reporting is suffering at their papers. Some say they’ve put more emphasis on investigations even as they’ve had to cut staff. But others concede they are much more selective about the investigations they pursue and expect reporters to produce more stories. At the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for example, members of the “watchdog team” are “more tip-oriented and work sources better,” according to Managing Editor Bert Roughton Jr. “They come up with stories weekly instead of semi-annually.”

IRE president Alison Young tells E&P that what’s missing is easy to define:

It is becoming more difficult to do the longer-term, more complex investigative stories — the kind of stories that are six-month projects. The big multi-part series that requires lawsuits to get access to records, that requires travel. Those are much more difficult to do, and in some newsrooms impossible.

The non-profit investigative centers are filling some of that gap, but it’s unlikely they can do so at the local level. And while some major foundations have put a lot of money into these journalism projects lately,  it’s not unreasonable to ask how long their support will last.

Bob Noonan, assistant news director at WREG-TV in Memphis says producers are always in demand, even in these tough economic times.

“Right now in newsrooms producers, good producers, are hard to come by,”  Noonan said.  “If you’re a good writer, have good news judgment, this is your ticket to advance quickly in the industry.”

If you’re looking for more evidence to back that up, a check of the Hearst Television job posting site found 17 producer jobs open and just 10 reporter jobs.

Noonan, who was news director at WGNO in New Orleans before moving to Memphis, still thinks most producers will start their careers in small markets, but the rise to a big market can be very rapid.

“If I were starting school again, [producing is] absolutely where I’d go, that’s where I’m going to advise my daughter to go, but she wants to be a reporter,”  said Noonan with a smile.

One of the reasons some people used to favor reporting over producing was the salary discrepancy, but that’s clearly diminishing.  In the most recent RTDNA survey, the median salary for a news reporter ($26,000) was actually less than the median salary for a news producer ($28,500).  The highest paid reporters ($250,000) still make a great deal more than the highest paid producers ($110,000), but that may be changing as well.

So, what skills does a producer need to develop?  For Noonan, writing is critical – especially tease writing.  

“You have to be a good tease writer,”  Noonan said.  He points out that in metered markets, you won’t hold the audience through the quarter hours if you can’t write compelling teases.

For the personality of a producer, Noonan says you have to develop a thick skin.

“You have to be tough, you don’t have to be a jerk, but you’ve got to be tough,” Noonan said.  He says producers have to be able to stand firm when a reporter comes in with a story that’s too long.  “You have to be able to say ‘go back and take 15 seconds out of that.’”

So, how do you develop writing skills, creativity in crafting shows and the producer personality?  Noonan advises getting an internship to learn all you can about putting together a newscast.

“Find one producer that you might really hit it off with.  Producers are sometimes a strange lot; there are some that can be a little caustic and others who are very nice and will teach you the right way,” Noonan said. “Those are the ones to hang around with.  And I would just jump in and say, ‘Let me write;’ but be prepared to have it ripped apart.  This is not a business for the thin-skinned.”