There are many ways to tell a story and photography is only one. Photography is not the best medium for every task. Your story may be better told as an audio feature, a written account or a video. If you choose to tell the story with stills, make sure to use the medium for its strengths.
The Wall Street Journal has embraced video with gusto. The venerable paper is pumping out hours of live news clips and splashing them onto everything from the iPhone to the X-Box.
[...]
What this means in practice is that the Journal is showing over four hours a day of live video on devices like the iPad and also using that footage to place clips on platforms like Boxee, Roku and YouTube.
From interactive images to comics, an increasing number of journalists and news organizations are experimenting with new forms of illustrated journalism. And it’s no wonder: visual journalism can be shared, generate web traffic and provide a engaging entry point into complex stories. But a successful foray into illustrated storytelling requires smart teamwork and a keen editorial eye.
In this one-hour webinar,offered in partnership with Poynter’s NewsU, you will learn about the types of stories that can be effective illustrated journalism and you’ll see some concrete examples of successful (and not-so-successful) projects
What comes next for journalism in the social media? David Cohn has assembled a list of sites you need. He ends with a caution:
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 with this flow in the future. The best journalists will be problem solvers on the social web.
If you are a journalist your JOB is to understand and insert yourself into the flow of information. That’s what Google+ represents, the flow of information.
Meanwhile as to the branding of a journalist, here’s one successful case study, by Jennifer Gaie Hellum:
It takes extra effort to maintain an online presence as a journalist. And I admitted I couldn’t tell him which tweet would be the one that got him retweeted 25 times, which blog post would be shared around the world or which skill listed on his LinkedIn profile would make him rise to the top of a search.
Nonetheless, I assured him all that extra effort was worth it because each tweet, each blog post and each online profile defined his brand and provided a virtual trail for potential employers to find him. I told him I knew this personally because I’d sent tweets that got dozens of retweets, written a blog post that someone translated into Spanish and shared from Peru to Spain and been contacted for jobs via LinkedIn, all while I was still a grad student. And I said there was no reason he and his classmates couldn’t do the same.
Today’s j-school students have everything they need to start mapping out their careers. They can write niche blogs, create simple portfolios, connect with others doing the work they aspire to do and develop professional networks across the country before they’ve even begun their job searches.
“I want to know more. I always want to know who, when, and where. Always! For me this is part of authentication, which is part of what makes it journalism and not interpretive art. A photo without a caption is not journalism.”
A photo without a caption is far short of adequate reporting.
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks, of course. Here’s how the Wall Street Journal, headquartered across the street from the World Trade Center, published their Pulitzer Prize-winning Sept. 12, 2001 edition.
Here’s an image of their rare six-column headline. They hadn’t ran that style since Pearl Harbor was attacked. The headlines — how do you cover a story that everyone knows about? — are instructive.
Meanwhile, our shared experience is becoming history. Here a teacher tells of his students with no memory of Sept. 11th. Too young. That changes things, doesn’t it? If you’re in college today you were probably 8- to 12-years-old. How does your generation perceive Sept. 11th? How has that perception changed in the last decade?
You’re welcome for free the story idea.
Quick hits: TV in the cloud, which gets to the heart of something mentioned here previously. This, too, will become a stratified industry as executives retrenches online. Here’s a bit more on the shifts in television distribution.
Finally, Professor Dan Gillmor said two interesting things on Twitter yesterday:
More details here. Hard to imagine that happening in a lot of other countries. At the same time, I suspect that people on the rope line will be a little more thoroughly screened in the future. There are reasons campaigns and politicians like to work friendly crowds. But, still, how great that there is occasionally the opportunity to just maybe have a fleeting conversation on something of substance with which you disagree about your president.
And good for President Obama, too, in briefly engaging with the guy. He blows him off at the end — there are a lot of people there to meet and greet — but he didn’t ignore him like you might imagine a politician doing. That’s nice to see. Obama also reportedly said this, elsewhere in Iowa. Pretty sure everyone wishes he hadn’t
“Democracy is always a messy business in a big country like this,” Obama responded. “When you listen to what the federalists said about the anti-federalists … those guys were tough. Lincoln, they used to talk about him almost as bad as they talk about me.”
This was during a Q&A with an “invited guest” (See?) who asked how he deals with his congressional critics in the GOP. The writer’s of that story then gleefully called up every Lincoln scholar in their office that day to disabuse everyone of this notion. Sometimes ad libs are bad.
Here’s a tale designed to chill you. Should you see a traffic stop gone wrong, think twice about pulling out your camera. That video could get you sued
The amateur videographer with the colorful vocabulary who memorialized the alleged 2009 police beating of Melvin Jones III during a traffic stop may be charged with illegal wiretapping. One of four police officers disciplined for the incident on Nov. 27, 2009, Michael Sedergren, has filed an application for a criminal complaint against videographer Tyrisha Greene. Sedergren, who was suspended for 45 days, claims it was illegal for Greene to videotape him without his consent. Greene made a 20-minute film that included Jones, who is black, being struck repeatedly by a white officer with a flashlight while a group of other white officers stood by without intervening. The video also included an expletive-filled commentary by Greene, 29, who sounded alarmed by the scene that unfolded on Rifle Street.
The suspect who was beaten has a record and apparently went for one of the officers’ sidearms. So, yes, he was going to be stopped. The officer who lost his cool, and his colleagues who stood around, should have also stopped.
You’d think with dash-mounted cameras, and more than a few of these stories making the news every year or two the officers would do well to pull the guy off, but that didn’t happen here. The suspect’s mugshot — he was beaten badly — and the video are in that story, along with a thorough detailing of the legal aspects. The story comes down on the side of the videographer, who the plaintiff-officer claims “improper interception of wire and oral communication.” That makes no sense in this circumstance, as far as the stories go.
Oh look a newspaper stealing a photo from a casual photographer. A woman took a picture of mannequins at a clothing store, made a clever comment and that generated some interest from various publications. The Washington Post asked for permission to use it, and she gave them her approval. The Daily Mail asked and she turned them down.
In the comments, however, there is a great debate about copyright, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. If this were an issue in the U.S. you could say Daily Mail basically followed the guidelines and precedent in place, using a thumbnail, and that was after asking to use the private individual’s photo and being denied. Everyone is right, so everyone feels wronged.
The laws are a bit different in England, where this took place. How would you handle it here?
(Update: The story has been pulled altogether from the Daily Mail site, but the conversation on Boing Boing continues.)
About that Miami football scandal, here’s a nice look at the presentation from many of the online outlets, via the always outstanding MGoBlog and another site called Fear the Hat. Surprisingly ESPN’s site has been incredibly late to the party, as you’ll see in the screen caps. I took a look at the front page of the Miami Herald this morning. They ran the story as a lead piece on the front page, but there was no color and no art.
The local NBC station in Philadelphia has started reporting news on location-based social network Foursquare. Initially, NBC 10 will pick one lead story a day and have a reporter check in on Foursquare from relevant locations and leave text and photo news updates. Later, this will extend to multiple stories and individual Foursquare accounts for each reporter.
That’s a fine idea. And since the Poynter piece didn’t do it, I’ll add that in addition to working Foursquare, they should also run a similar program elsewhere.
You want to have some say in your distribution? You have to know, and go, where your audience is. Expand this program to Facebook Places, Gowalla, and, really, wherever their audience gathers.
Have you watched anything on Ledger Live yet? This is a daily video program — and blog, among other things — that they produce from their newsroom with highlights of the day’s coverage, promos of what to watch for and things you’ll find floating around the internet.
The program originated earlier this year, and the product has improved over time, but they started this on the strength of about a week of training time and have turned it into a nice convergence effort.
