What exactly is the value of a journalism degree? Are J-schools really preparing students for the media jobs of the future? The questions aren’t new, but they’ve come up again in connection with the selection of a new dean for Columbia’s prestigious graduate school of journalism. If you haven’t read it, Michael Wolff’s take in …
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Expansive, interactive, engaging–the New York Times multimedia feature Snow Fall is all of that and more. The six-part online feature took more than six months to produce. Lead reporter John Branch worked with video journalist Catherine Spangler and a team of multimedia producers and graphic designers to develop one of the most talked-about online stories ever. More than …
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ProPublica has put up a new graphic that shows at a glance where members of Congress stand on gun rights and gun control. Using the now-standard red and blue tints to indicate party affiliation, Republican or Democrat, the graphic shows the NRA’s ratings for both Senate and House members, NRA contributions to each member, and …
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Few will argue with the statement that NPR journalists know how to use audio, so it’s no surprise that when they’re producing audio slide shows, they focus on sounds before pictures. Producer Andrea Hsu has worked on multiple projects and developed her own technique. “I took photos of everything and then figured out what fit …
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The Webby Awards are out and the top news sites probably won’t surprise anyone. Selected by members of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, here’s the full list of nominees and overall winners in the news category. The Daily Beast — Webby Award Winner BBC News website – People’s Choice Winner Huffington Post …
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Let’s start with the basics: What is SEO? Search engine optimization (SEO) can be defined as the process of improving the amount and quality of traffic from a search engine to a particular story or website. Daniel Petty of the Denver Post told a packed house at the SPJ/ONA JournCamp in Phoenix that most Web …
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Television news promotes itself better than any other form of journalism. TV stations routinely set aside valuable airtime to advertise stories set to appear on upcoming newscasts. Now, though, the most effective promotions may be airing on cellphones. “I believe the value of a tease on mobile is much more valuable than a video …
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It’s something we’ve been saying at Advancing the Story for a long time — multimedia allows you to tell more people more of your story. Now, Nielsen research finds that it might help TV stations make more money. Nielsen tracked total audience — both on air and online — for the ABC affiliates in Seattle …
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What are the skills most often used by online journalists? Topping the list in a recently published survey was…drum roll, please… writing or editing scripts. Yes, in a poll of 49 online journalists, researchers Ryan Thornburg and Ying Roselyn Du asked practitioners to rank their daily duties from a list of 26 possibilities. Here are …
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Should online video follow the same conventions as TV news? Adam Westbrook thinks not. In a provocative essay, he argues that several TV news conventions were developed to help journalists work faster and tell stories in less time–constraints that he believes do not apply to online video. That’s debatable, of course. I’m not sure most …
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