Some outtakes from the High-Plains League basketball tournament, held this past weekend at Garden City Community College.
Left: Kid on the left: Mmmmm brains! Brains…. brains! Hand from the right: Brains! Must get brains!
Right: High-five FAIL.
This post was written for an internal blog that I have been keeping for my work:
Multimedia is a relatively new endeavor for newspapers, and The Telegram is no exception. As an industry, we are still feeling our way around in the dark, trying to find what works and what does not work. What was once the golden bullet can quickly turn in to a resource black hole.
Here at The Telegram, there has been an emphasis on shooting video when possible, however, according to Richard Koci Hernandez, founder of Multimediashooter.com and current Ford Foundation Multimedia Fellow at UC Berkeley:
Unless your org has advertising dollars waiting for video content, then stick with the marriage of audio and still images.
first, research shows a bigger *bang* in terms of hits and time on site for, let’s call them *soundslides* on news sites over video. video itself gets better number on the web, but not on newsites. the public doesn’t traditionally come to news sites for video anyway.
second the ROI return on investment is very minimal for video. the $$$ and time to produce and train is never made back in terms of revenue. this is why you see most papers beginning to scale back. Not the biggies like Wapo and NYT, because they have the advertising dollars waiting for content.
At The Telegram, we will not be shooting video for video’s sake. Nor will we shun the medium as time and resource intensive. Instead, we should evaluate what media we choose based on what the story lends itself best to.
I will use two examples. Currently, I get the sense that video is associated with sporting events. However, many sports are about peak action. It is about moments such as a spectacular catch, exuberant celebration, or painful collisin … moments which have a far greater impact frozen in time for viewers to digest, as opposed to played through in a video.
I think the best example of this is the great Neil Leifer photo of Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston.
Most certainly this is an iconic image but, in reality, the moment itself lasted less than a second. Watch this YouTube clip below and you will see what I mean. Pay close attention at two seconds in.
Did you catch it? That was how quickly that iconic moment was over. In video, it doesn’t even feel memorable.
That being said. There are times when video works far better than stills. Rachael’s Culling the Herd video comes to mind. Even with audio and a sequence of shots, video of the bull struggling in the chute is much stronger than and stills.
When deciding what media you want to use for your story, ask yourself, How is this story best told? What effect will telling it with stills have? With video? What images/clips can you expect to get each way and which produces a greater variety of content and/or stronger content? On the news side, we should be concerning ourselves with providing the best content to our readers in the most appropriate ways, not with what the magic bullet of the day is, because that will no doubt change.
As a child growing up in Los Angeles, I was only vaguely aware of the Rafu Shimpo. It was that paper that my grandmother would cut box scores out of after my Crescent Bay Optimist basketball games. It was not until college, when I took my first photo internship at the paper and took an asian american studies course that touched on the paper and its role in the community prior to and after internment during World War II, that I got a a greater sense of the importance that the Rafu has had in the history of the community.
Now, like so many print media organizations, especially ethnic media, they are in danger of being shut down. The Nichi Bei Times, the Japanese/English newspaper in northern California, was closed on Sept. 30 of last year, after 63 years of operation. The Rafu Shimpo began printing in 1903, ceasing operations from 1942 to 1946 before starting up again.
Nichi Bei Times from New America Media on Vimeo.
Recently the Rafu announced that they will be holding a town hall forum to discuss ways to renew interest in the product:
To Rafu Supporters: “Save the Rafu” Town Hall Forum
===
If you’re reading this “first-hand,” you may think this does not apply to
you. However, it does. Your opinions and suggestions to keep The Rafu
Shimpo from following the path of so many print media, both mainstream
and vernaculars, into extinction are very much needed.Equally-and maybe more so-input from the non-reading and non-subscribing
population is vital. Answers to such questions as:What would encourage you to subscribe? Does the **Rafu** address your
interest areas? If not, and if they did, what kinds of news would bring
you in to the readership? If your local organizations’ newsletters keep
you informed of local community news, would you see the value to the
greater community to send articles to the Rafu?To subscribers, do you have issues you would like to dialogue with the
Rafu staff to improve your reading enjoyment? Have you said to yourself
and family and friends, “I wish the Rafu would…” ”Why do they…?” “Why
don’t they…?” What do you see for the future of the Rafu?On Sunday, Jan. 17, these and any other comments, questions, and points of
information will be aired at the “Save the Rafu” Town Hall Forum, from 2
to 4 p.m., at the Gardena Valley Japanese Cultural Institute (GV JCI),
Veterans Hall, 1964 West 162nd Street, Gardena 90247.Rest assured: this is NOT a fundraiser. Also, you will NOT be given “the
evil eye” if you’re not a subscriber.For questions, please email/call Iku Kiriyama, (310) 326-0608,
goiku@sbcglobal.net or George Yoshinaga, horsesmouth2000@hotmail.com
I still believe that one of the Rafu’s greatest strengths is in the recognition of its name and that they can use their name to maintain a bit of unity in a community spread out across LA county and with no main hub (Little Tokyo is only a few blocks across, and, except for Nisei Week, I rarely venture there) and grow online into a hub for the entire southern California JA community, from community centers and martial arts clubs to temples and Boy and Girl Scout troops.
Already, there is a page on the Rafu Web site that tries to compile useful community links and organizations. Rather than going to the Rafu and then pointing users out, the Rafu could become the home for many JA community organizations.
In its most simple form, a Ning group could mean that sports leagues could form a group to upload photos and maintain scores and schedules, JA churches/temples could form a group to keep each other updated of upcoming events and people outside of the southern California (such as myself, in Kansas) could remain connected to all aspects of the community on one Web site.
No, this would not automatically equate to advertising dollars and no, traffic would not immediately start pouring in. It would take a good deal of time and effort to build the community site into something that people check on a regular basis. But I think that it fits in well with the purpose of the Rafu Shimpo, and could be a positive step in any web effort taken by the company.
In the beginning of December, I wrote a short post on some of the realities of working in a small newsroom. Today was the first day of work for our new paginator/copy editor and, in many ways, marked the first day of my real job as well. As such, I thought I would share a couple of thoughts on doing multimedia in a small newsroom.
You can’t just focus on those that are interested. Yes, this goes against most posts on the subject of multimedia training by people that matter. Perhaps this is possible in a larger newsroom, where it one is more likely to find at least a few journalists in each area of the newsroom that have already hopped aboard the multimedia express. However, if I were to work with ONLY the people that have shown a strong interest in multimedia, I would have no photographer and no one in sports. Don’t get me wrong. I do encourage those that are interested. I try to let them be as creative as they want to be, share multimedia others have done that is related to their beat, produce their work when they are writing on deadline, etc.
In the end though, it seems to me that it is those that are currently uninterested that will hold the key to whether or not multimedia truly takes off here. Perhaps it is overly optimistic of me, perhaps naive, but whether they are afraid of technology, beaten down by the daily grind or unhappy with putting out work that does not meet their standards of quality, the passion that brought them into the field is still there. It my job then, to find the right inspiration/motivation to get them excited about multimedia. The good thing is, once the ball starts rolling, things snowball.
Pick your battles. This one practically goes without saying, and I am sure is something that we all have run in to at some point in our lives. Back in journalism school, I remember a time when the photojournalism students were upset with just about everything that was going on in the department. At some point, we realized that clamoring for a suitable (and permanent) photo professor and keeping our program alive was more important than whether or not he had access to the lights in the gym or that the photo studio was converted into a lounge (I am actually unsure that current students even know there are lights in the gym or that the lounge is a photo studio).
Along the same lines, you can only do so much, especially at a smaller newspaper. If I am managing social media accounts, moderating forums, posting content, training staff and producing multimedia, it is likely that I will not have time to sit down and become an expert in database journalism (however much I want to) or fully versed in Flash. People have asked me how I like using Vuvox, or why I keep going back to it. It is obviously not a perfect multimedia platform, but, as with Soundslides, it allows me to build projects that have the basic functionality I am looking for, while still leaving me with the time to do the daily aspects of my job.
There will be naysayers. In our newsroom, it is the one who says not to try anything new because what was done before did not work. Ignore them.
Lead by example. I think I first REALLY learned this in hearing how Richard and Dai first built mercurynewsphoto.com, spending hours after work, at times even sleeping under the desk (or so the story goes). As Seth Godin recently wrote, “In my experience, once it’s clear you’re willing (not just willing, but itching, moving, and yes, implementing) without them, things start to happen. People are rarely willing to step up and stop you, and often just waiting to follow someone crazy enough to actually do something.”
Next,
