Missed it! It’s an awful feeling. You’ve been waiting and waiting for a specific shot for a story and when it finally happens, you hit record just a wee bit too late. Maybe you’ve captured some of what you need, but it’s going to be hard to edit. If only you could turn back time. …
Continue reading ‘A video camera that turns back time’ »
Sometimes you’re just stuck conducting an interview by phone. Many of the same rules of interviewing apply, but if you want to use the audio for a story, you’ll need to handle some aspects of the the conversation a little differently. 1. First, be sure the person you’re interviewing knows you’re recording the conversation. In …
Continue reading ‘Ten tips for recording audio interviews by phone’ »
Advancing the Story recently introduced you to Matt Augustine, a multimedia journalist at WOKV Radio in Jacksonville, Fla., who talked about the power of mobile devices in the field. Augustine was also kind enough to share his advice for those just getting into the smartphone as a newsgathering tool. “Start trying to use it in …
Continue reading ‘How to begin with mobile journalism’ »
“I doubt I’ll ever buy a live truck again,” says Jeff Houston, news director for WTVA in Tupelo, Miss. Houston’s station just recently aired its first live shot using a TVUPack. The system uses multiple wireless modems to put out live or video feeds of higher quality than what you can do with a typical …
Continue reading ‘Backpack live technology a TV news game changer’ »
Remember the Flip cam? Those smaller cameras put news gathering capabilities in the hands of anyone with a desire to do it. To maximize the quality of the video, a list of best practices in video news gathering was developed. Now that smartphones with video capability are everywhere, it’s worth talking again about techniques that …
Continue reading ‘How to shoot news with a smartphone’ »
Media Shift’s Idea Lab said it well. You should be on these sites to understand how people are communicating and the vocabulary of this communication. If you ignore these sites, you will fail to understand how a growing portion of the population deals with the flow of information, and inevitably how more people will deal …
Continue reading ‘Why journalists should check out Google+’ »
Whether you work for a TV station on a budget or you’re still involved in a college broadcast, a new type of converter is making it easier and less expensive than ever to go live, air video from YouTube, even pull graphics from a PC screen to incorporate into a show. TV News Check does …
Continue reading ‘Better Skype live shots’ »
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’ »
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’ »
One possible consequence of staff cuts in newsrooms is more collaboration between and among journalists. While it’s always been possible for people in the same news organization to work on a story on a shared computer system, it’s not so easy to include someone from outside. Remote desktop apps can be cumbersome and freelancers working …
Continue reading ‘Collaboration tools for journalists’ »