The hazards of our job

So I've always wanted to be a wartime journalist. Don't know why, never asked. It worries the hell out of my family and friends, and some have threatened to break my legs if I ever try to embed with a unit anywhere other than Antarctica. But the desire persists.

So here's a link to Reporters without Borders.

I was trying to find something specific on the site to write about, but the whole thing is interesting.

Use of Soundslides

Hey, I googled "multimedia journalism" today, and our blog comes up on the 4th page!

Anyway, I came across a set of soundslides by the Midland Daily News in Midland, MI. They have a lot of really great photos in these projects.

This project has an interesting use of black and white and color. What do you think about the usage?

Also, I found it interesting that the multimedia pages are very different in layout and design from the rest of the newspaper page. The layout for the multimedia is cleaner, but it doesn't really seem to connect to the homepage. What do you think of the different layouts?

Fail faster

You always tell us to


see more crazy cat pics

faster. Funny stuff aside, I found a Web site about the beginnings of online journalism. The site contains some charts and diagrams that help you compare different types of Web pages.

All out multimedia

This is a piece by the News & Observer out of North Carolina that talks about a serious issue through multiple venues. It starts out with a video, continues on with a photo gallery, and then moves into figures and research. I like the straightforward and direct design of the interface, and the sort of Soundslides-ish feel of it. It's easy to navigate, engaging and informative. I would give it my stamp of approval if such a thing meant anything at all.

Police Videos

Wow, the Greenville Online wasn't joking about getting news from the police cameras. In this video they are busting another set of troopers for playing favorites. What's with the police in South Carolina? Here is the link to all of their police videos.

Media Bistro - for finding jobs and other such things

I stumbled across an old e-mail about Media Bistro, a Web site that lists journalism jobs by date posted, sells tutorials and lists classes offered online and around the country regarding journalism. Some topics for the classes include:

The Future of Photojournalism in a Digital World

How Online Video Is Changing the Internet

Writing for the Web

There are even classes about book writing and how to get books published, writing for television, etc.

There is also an area of the website dedicated to listing freelancers by specialty.

The flu

I have been sick all week, so I decided to look up multimedia about the flu. Unfortunately for Ole Miss, the youtube framing covers up the nameplates they made on the video (one disadvantage to using free video hosting).

Soundslides

I have been looking at Soundslides presentations at various newspapers, and the Shelby County Reporter in Alabama has some kind of nice ones, but I thought they could use some improvements.

The Shelby Shufflers had some nice images, and some of the audio with the music is nice too. However, I think it gets too long and redundant.

The Blue Star Salute has some nice images and audio in parts, but the images do not always go along with the audio. The thing that bothered me most about this one was that all the pictures were up for the exact same amount of time and were not coordinated with the pauses or phrasing of the sentences in the audio. The part where the cannon is shot off is really nice though.

perverse and often baffling

Yay Friday. Today you will listen to the most recent episode of This American Life for free soon ("Tough Room"), or else soon it will not be free. Or just get the podcast. Beginning part is cool, about how writers at The Onion select their funniest stories. And then seriously you must listen to Act 4 about Malcolm Gladwell's first journalism job at the Washington Post.

After that you will read this post, "How to be Creative," written by this guy who runs a blog of cool doodles he makes on the backs of business cards. This list is helpful not just for elite hip creative types, but also maybe multimedia journalists. examples.
1. Ignore everybody
3. Put the hours in
16. The world is changing
36. Start blogging

Can one image tell a story?

I read a blog entry by Mindy McAdams about multimedia journalism. At first, McAdams says that an image in and of itself is not capable of telling a story without movement or words. What do you think of that?

Toward the end, seemingly a complete opposite idea, McAdams argues that as many words as possible should be cut because things tend to be too wordy.

Or is this to say that we should always pair words or audio with images, but that the words should be simple and important, only?

Also, just a little random piece of fun:

View the most EMAILED links for today from CNN.com:

1.
Surfing cat
2.
Defendant slugs lawyer
3.
Friendly moose raises eyebrows

Effective Journalism?

Mark's question in class about video footage, and what qualifies as being an effective means of journalism, really stuck with me. When I was looking at news about the recent storms that hit my hometown in the The Courier Journal, I came across this video. A reporter for the paper took a home video of the storm. Does this count as journalism?

For those interested in video production...

...here's a little wish list compiled by the TeleArts DV Rebellion just before the holidays last semester. In it, you'll find everything you need to produce some great video footage, all on a fairly shoe-string budget for those without deep pockets. Consider it a DV survival kit, if you will, perfect for the digital video rebel in all of us, or for the everyday multimedia journalist-whichever title you might prefer.

Source to practice video publishing

I searched YouTube for multimedia journalism and I found a multimedia journalism project that students in Texas did. The video will make you a little seasick, but it reminded me of our discussion about how the Red & Black is not doing video journlism yet. If UGA adopts a Web site based on the Tennessee Journalist site, this would be a great means of training students to do video and other multimedia work for the Red & Black. It was mentioned in class that the Red & Black is really good for students in the job market, and I think that the volunteer-run, anybody-can-do-it site would allow students to practice these skills, post them, and be able to learn the skills to apply to the Red & Black (especially if the Red & Black is worried that posting badly done videos may hinder its reputation).

As our guest speaker, Jim Stoval, said, some of the video content on the Tennessee Journalist site is just students experimenting. He even admitted that not everything was good, but that it was great that the students were at least trying and experimenting and figuring things out for themselves. The example he showed really conveys this point.

Rocky Top

So I was really impressed with what UT is doing online. For those of you who weren't at the presentation, it is called The Tennessee Journalist. I hoped we could start trying it this semester because I am graduating in May, but like Mark said there are still things that need to be figured out. Would people be interested in starting something like it, but not promoting it? I can't believe I am plugging something from UT. To make myself feel better I am going to end with a song my dad taught me at an early age. It is to the tune of...big surprise... "Rocky Top"

"Rocky Top you'll always be 3rd in the SEC, Screw you Rocky Top, WHeW! Go to hell Tennessee."

The "Screw" part has been known to vary on years where UT beats UK.

A gathering in yonder mountains ...

So, up in the mountains, every year, a big group of photographers, editors and videographers get together and learn from one another. This is the first year that multimedia journalism was included in the mix at the Mountain Workshop. I think some of the pieces are pretty cool, though my computer might not be cut out for the layout/design of the site.

I found this through the Mastering Multimedia blog that I tripped across a while ago. I haven't really had the time to fully explore the site, but all I know is that the guy who runs it, Colin Mulvany, is the multimedia editor for the Spokane, Washington, Web site spokesmanreview.com.

If Berkeley Can Do It, So Can We

So I was searching on Google and I happened to type in "multimedia journalism" into the search tool. A slew of pages popped up, but one of them that caught my eye was the Knight Digital Media Center Multimedia Workshop offered to graduate students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

The workshop offers several courses in subjects ranging from reporting to video to photography (eh, I think they meant photojournalism), even web design.

I thought you all would like to check out it, especially considering we're all undergrads and we're learning the same stuff.

Kind of makes you feel proud, right?