One of the strongest broadcast journalism programs in the country is located at the University of Montana, and Professor Denise Dowling is one of the best instructors in the school. She gets students started on video storytelling by following a simple formula. “Begin and end every story with natural sound,” says Dowling, “include a nat …
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According to videographer Nathan Thompson, there are five essential elements to every good story. The former National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) Photographer of the Year thinks of them as puzzle pieces that the storyteller has to fit together. 1. The story open. Thompson says you need to grab the audiences’s attention, introduce them to characters …
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The first word in telling video stories efficiently is “focus,” according to videographer Lisa Berglund. The former National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) Photographer of the Year says your story assignment is a location, it’s up to you to find the actual story. “It’s not just shoot it,” said Berglund. ”Before you pick up your camera, be …
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So, it may seen a little arrogant to assume that our blog can act as a barometer of the journalism industry, but what the heck. If you look at the five most viewed posts of 2012, it seems reasonable to me to make the following assumptions: The fundamentals still matter. The No. 1 post on …
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Darren Durlach left television almost two years ago to try something new. He’d won two consecutive NPPA TV Photographer of the Year awards and, unbeknownst to him, was on the verge of winning a third. He’s now senior multimedia producer at the Boston Globe, where he shoots and edits stories both alone and in collaboration …
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NBC’s Bob Dotson says he sent out 525 resumes when he was first looking for a job. “I got three responses and two of them were no,” says Dotson. In the decades that followed, Dotson has produced thousands of stories and won dozens of awards. He’s also learned quite a few things about storytelling. “Start …
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I’m of the belief that planning makes stories stronger, and I often talk about planning as the step that comes between reporting and writing that is too often skipped. An outline like the one on the left–just a few words jotted down in a notebook–helps me stay on track. The longer the story I’m writing, …
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“It’s not about the beer,” says Boyd Huppert, describing an assignment to profile a successful local brewery. Instead, Huppert’s story focused on the family behind the business — tapping into a universal theme. “My goal is to go out and cover a story to make someone care about it,” says Huppert, “make you laugh or …
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Jason Lamb is a Murrow Award-winning TV news writer from Anchorage, AK. Earlier this week, he shared how meticulous logging of video is one of the building blocks of effective storytelling. Lamb says another key component is taking time to determine a story’s focus. “Beyond just the story ‘subject,’ a focus tells you what person, …
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One of the best things about awards season is the chance to see incredible work produced by some of the best reporters and photographers in the business. This year, the Sigma Delta Chi Award for large market TV feature reporting has gone to some old friends of Advancing the Story — Boyd Huppert, Jonathan Malat …
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