Even a digital-first journalist such as myself has a few reservations, such as if the money used for the accompanying iPhone rig could have been better spent elsewhere. The allure of the iPhone is its portable, do-it-all nature … but hand a reporter the OWLE and a cheap tripod and suddenly the iPhone doesn’t feel like the freedom inspiring tool it is, and more like a ball-and-chain dragging slowing them down from the work they feel they should be doing.

In general though, I am all for our staff having smartphones. Reporters (hopefully) can begin to treat their Twitter account like their notepad, adding observations on the scene and returning to their stream when writing their stories (one of our reporters, Beth Miller, is already adept at this, and I hope that she can spread her knowledge to some of the more skeptical members of our newsroom). As a photographer/videographer, I can use the phone as a hotspot to send both video and photos back to the office wirelessly (currently I think we have two working wifi cards to spread among both reporters and photographers). And, as the main emphasis for this push seems to be a focus on breaking news, everyone can shoot video and upload it directly to our Brightcove account via a related app.

I have no idea just how this experiment will end … On it’s face, it seems like a no-brainer … replacing pen and paper with something smaller that can also act as a camera, video camera, audio recorder, radio scanner, etc. But perhaps it will end up as Gannett’s previous video initiative did, with only a few properties actively using smartphones. Follow-up to come in a few months…

“The reason it didn’t succeed was not for poor training. The training was very good. I wouldn’t be a multimedia journalism professor today without that first workshop from Lane and Harvey. They did a fine job, and taught us all of the best practices for video journalism.

But after Lane and Harvey packed up and left my newspaper, the message got muddled. It wasn’t a conscious muddling; more of a gradual decline. One photographer let go here, a writer there. Soon, all we had time for was run-and-gun junk.?”

Ahmad also wrote that only 5 to 10 Gannett papers stuck with video, and I happen to be working for one of those. Why does video work here when it has proven unsuccessful elsewhere. For starters, it doesn’t hurt that there is no Delaware-based television station. Aside from that though (because I run into news crews from Philly and Maryland all of the time), I think we do a good job of recognizing what videos play well and focusing on those. Sports, crime and weather … Those have always been the bread and butter of our video offerings and they continue to be what we push. That’s not to say that we don’t give 100% to in-depth reporting that we assume won’t get the type of traffic that it deserves. My own sleep-deprived face following two three-day investigative series (along with Hurricane Irene coverage) serves as proof that we focus on what we should be covering as well.

The mistake that photographers make most often when shooting video is that they try to be filmmakers. I hate to break it to you, but 99.99% of the time, you are a news videographer. Ahmad writes that “even the best editors spend about one hour on a polished minute of video.” Other photographers complain of spending hours to days editing and exporting a video piece. We can turn a crime video around in fifteen minutes, twenty if it needs a voiceover. During our hurricane coverage, I turned out ten videos in three days while editing on a laptop and sending through a cell phone.

We aren’t doing any Vincent Laforet stuff here, we are recording a scene and getting interviews, then turning around and laying that interview down and putting the b-roll over it. Working on a project for three days should serve as a sign that you need practice, not that the task itself is impossible. This seems to be most frustrating to photographers because the amount of post-production with their photographs is usually nowhere near the amount of work needed to edit a video (as opposed to writers, who perhaps are more used to sitting down after the fact and spending time crafting a piece).

Of course, video will always be better if shot and produced by someone whose sole job was to focus on that. When I shoot both stills and video (which has become more and more frequent) one or the other suffers … but the more you do both, the easier it is to recognize which moments are best suited for which medium. In the end, it is about meeting readers’ needs and expectations. As Miami Herald Managing Editor Rick Hirsch said in this Poynter article on video traffic, “This isn’t rocket science, but do video on the things that people come to your site for,” he said by phone. “You may think, ‘This would be a really great thing to do video on,’ but if it’s not on a topic or area where people are already consuming content, then it’s going to be hard to draw an audience.”

For what it’s worth, our highest video last year had just under 14,000 plays. This year, we have nine videos with play totals higher than that, with the most viewed having just under 100,000 plays in Brightcove. If you take into account Youtube plays, our most viewed video of this year has just over 500,000 views.

For me, the best way to learn something has been to find a project to work on. I learned html/css first through customizing my Blogger blog, and then by building my own website (the iteration before the current one). Most recently, I wanted to build something to help readers navigate our recently created financial literacy page. As it is now, stories are sorted based on the date they were published, even though they can be written for very distinct age-based audiences. I had recently read a tutorial on using jquery to show and hide content and utilize hover effects, and thought it could easily be translated to an interactive that allowed users to show and hide content after selecting a particular age range.

My advice if you want to learn a new skill. First, find a project that you know you want to work on and that will hold your attention through the distractions that are bound to come up. Then, determine what skills will be needed to complete that project and go from there. It has been much easier for myself to address a need that already exists as opposed to trying to create a need because someone has said this is a skill I should have.

The day after Hurricane Irene passed through Delaware, my photo editor and I went up to Lewes to survey homes damaged by a tornado and cover a press conference by Governor Markell. The event went as you would expect, a few quick interviews, shoot some b-roll, etc. Forty-five minutes later and we were back in the car, hopes of sleeping in my own bed for the first time in a week floating through my head. Just as I was about to drive off, I caught a cameraman walking up the street towards the damaged homes. “Poor guy,” was all I could think as he approached the governor’s SUV (just about to drive of as well).

What I saw next amazed me. Charlie, the cameraman, later told me that he asked if the governor had any time to jump out and say a quick sound bite. Instead, I saw Governor Markell and Senator (and former Governor) Tom Carper jump out of the vehicle and make their way back to the most damaged home.

The icing on the cake? Senator Carper was carrying Charlie’s tripod. Only in Delaware…

Just over a week ago, the Delaware Department of Transportation went out to the Radnor Green neighborhood in Claymont and began removing basketball hoops that were planted in the parkway facing the street. Apparently, a resident in the neighborhood lodged a complaint after his car was hit by an errant basketball, and the hoops were found to be in violation of a 2005 “clear zone” law that requires the area adjacent to pavements in residential developments to be free of obstructions such as basketball hoops and bushes.

One resident apparently was not having any of it, and climbed her basketball pole in protest, causing DelDOT and the police presence that arrived in response to leave one pole shy of their goal. The photographer on scene shot some great photos of her pole protest, but we did not have a staff videographer on site (though a freelancer did arrive later and shoot an interview).

I strolled into the office three hours later and was told to head back out, see if any state troopers were still around and basically feel out the situation. Not knowing exactly what the freelancer shot, I thought I would conduct an interview just to cover my bases (after all, there must have been some reason they sent me back out). As luck would have it, the Delaware State Police and DelDOT returned to retrieve the last pole during the middle of my interview, affording me the chance to film the drama as it unfolded.

While I’m sure the video would have gotten some play on Libertarian sites just because of the general theme of government taking away from private citizens, the video because a plain-clothed officer informed the homeowner he could keep his basketball hoop one minute, and then seemingly did a 180, telling him that it would be taken away the next.

The story hit the frontpage of Reddit two times, was listed on Youtube’s main page and was featured on a few prominent national blogs. Of course, as with any news organization, the first thing some editors thought was, “How can we capitalize on/emulate this?” Whenever something brings in a large amount of traffic, even if it is a one off, it becomes the next hot thing and everyone tries to recreate the same numbers. In St. Cloud, they found success in posting photo galleries from parades and graduations, and we would bend over backwards to ensure that not a single one went uncovered. In Des Moines, prom season was especially hectic and you could always find a Metromix gallery on the frontpage.

At The News Journal, the video’s initial success meant that Mr. McCafferty was our life for the next week. From following him to a meeting with the state police, to accompanying him to pick up his hoop. I will admit, while we did have our doubts as we waited outside of the New Castle County Public Works building for over an hour just to talk to Mr. McCafferty about filing a complaint, the story and accompanying video did generate far more page views than other daily content.

Lessons learned:

• Keep shooting (if it helps, turn off your tally light)
• Don’t underestimate the power of social sites such as Reddit and YouTube (far more views came from these two sources than any other … I’m still surprised more news sites don’t regularly submit things to Reddit. It’s not like this is a new phenomena, Digg has come and gone and Slashdot before it)
• Arrive early and stay late (It was always taught to me in j-school, yet I am constantly surprised at how many journalists show up late to assignments)
• If something works, be prepared for someone to try and milk it

Mary Hampson

Mary Hampson was unique for many reasons, the most obvious being her age. Most of the people we feature in the 50 Who Matter series are middle-aged, but Hampson began volunteering with the Freedom Outreach program at 17, and became its director at 21. She is also unique because she works directly in areas that are often skeptical of people from outside the community. One such area is Southbridge, which we focused on during a project on poverty and crime. Mary has been more than welcomed into Southbridge and Riverside, she is practically a member of everyone’s family. She checks up on schoolwork, knows when family members are in the hospital, drives kids to and from basketball practice and bakes and delivers over 100 birthday cakes a year.

Dolores Finger Wright

Dolores Finger Wright is an associate professor of social work at Delaware State University. Back when Ms. Finger Wright was attending Bennett College in Greensboro, N.C., she helped to plan and organize the Greensboro sit-ins which were a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights movement. In speaking with her she reminded me of how different life was for her growing up as compared to the youth today, and explained how she tries to instill the same passion for social change in her students today that she had as a college student.

This may have been the reality for many of last week’s participants (working in dedicated, albeit small, web/online teams) but it is not mine, and I doubt it is the reality for other Web editors in many small market, rural areas. So what do I do on a typical day at work?

From 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. my day usually involves pagination and copy editing.

Copy editing: The aspect of my work most foreign to me, I will typically read through all of the days stories at some point in the day for content and/or for grammar/spelling.

Pagination: This usually involves paginating two local pages and, at times, two or three wire pages.

After 1 p.m. (we are an afternoon paper) my days usually involves a mix of posting content to the Web, blogging/social media management, training, podcasts, a mix of either shooting stills, creating audio slideshows or video, and the ever-present meeting.

Posting to Web: Fairly straightforward and not much different than any other CMS I’ve used it in the past whether it be College Publisher, WordPress or SaxoTech. The new AP Marketplace does add a slight hiccup to my workflow and, on the off chance that some other Web editor reads this, if you know of a way to publish select content to Marketplace without auto publishing everything, but also without having to enter each field manually, I would love to hear it.

Blogging/Social Media Management: Upkeep of the Telegram’s photo blog (soon to be multimedia blog as soon as I finish this post). Keeping content fresh and interacting with users on Twitter, Facebook and our SWKTalk forums.

Training: Weekly new media training for reporters and photographers. I also maintain www.danielsato.com/gctelegram, where I recap our training sessions and provide links to other tutorials and examples.

Podcasts: I have even gotten in to the podcast world, hosting “Talk of the Town,” where I discuss some topic that is pertinent either to Garden City or southwest Kansas each Wednesday afternoon at our local coffee house.

Stephanie Cole, of the Kansas Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, discusses the organization’s view on the 895-megawatt coal-fired power plant that is proposed to be built in Holcomb.

Dave Sjeklocha, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine at the Haskell County Animal Hospital, discusses the use of antibiotics in feed animals.

USD 457 Board of Education president Mike Utz and board member Gloria Hopkins discuss the recent decision to join Schools for Fair Funding, which is considering the idea of suing the state for funding promised to schools. Schools for Fair Funding has since decided to proceed in its lawsuit with the state.

Photos, slideshows and video: Every now and again, I also get to go and play outside of the office.

The potential upside the amount and variety of work I do: I have experience in 9 of the top ten areas of expertise sought after by online media, and 17 of the 23 skills listed. Mark Shaver, who maintains the blog Depth Reporting, mentioned that his areas of expertise, computer programming and database management, were well down on the list, though I imagine they have gone up in demand since Serena Carpenter’s 2008 study, which the rankings originated from.

We all know the basics of what goes into a typical tv news piece:

• Interview and/or voice over narration
• Lots and lots of b-roll (footage to lay over interviews/narration)
  • Establishing shot
  • Medium shot
    
  • Detail shots (anything to do with hands, eyes, mouths talking, etc)

Some general rules of thumb for shooting (Again, these are just rules of thumb, and rules are made to be broken once you have a grasp of them):

• Use a tripod. Given the small size of our video camera, camera-shake while hand holding is almost guaranteed. Film your interview, establishing and medium shots and some details with the camera on the tripod. No one wants to feel like they are watching the Blair Witch Project. I can barely watch this video by ESPNwith commentators Michael Wilbon and Jon Barry (Apparently the video was so bad, they took it down)
• Take the camera off of the tripod. I know I just told you to keep it on the tripod. And you should, to gather all of the basic elements of your piece. For a photographer, this is similar to grabbing the shots you know will work in print. For reporters, I imagine it is getting the who, what, where, when and why in a story. Once that is done, you are free to get creative and find that well-composed shot.
• Change your angles. This applies mostly to when you take the camera off of the tripod. Place it up high, down low, frame your subject by shooting through something. Move back, get close. Try and avoid shooting from the same distance at the same height for each clip.
• When interviewing, control is key. As we discussed last week during the audio gathering training, you want to have control over your environment when conducting interviews. In the case of video interviews, whenever possible, you want both good sound and good light. Just as in audio gathering, this means moving your subject to a quiet location. As for light, window light works well indoors, shade outdoors.
• Avoid unnecessary zooming, panning and tilting. The most common culprit is the zoom while filming.
  
• Keep your shots static. Related to the last item, compose your shot as if you were taking a still photograph. Let your subject walk into and out of the frame, rather than following him/her around.
• Storyboard your video ahead of time. Just as you have a list of questions you plan to ask before heading in to an interview, you should have a sense of what shots you want before you start filming. This will be a great help when you are back in the office editing, which is the real time-intensive part of video production. Having to sort through and make clips of five to 10 minutes of footage is far easier than 30 minutes of footage.

Some video examples:

One of my favorite multimedia producers. Katy Newton, and her husband Sean Connelly used to work up in the Bay Area. This ongoing multimedia piece features profiles of people that Katy finds on the Missed Connections area of Craigslist. They also have done a great package for the Oakland Tribune called Not Just a Number, which puts a name, face and, at times, a story, to all of the murders that happen in Oakland and the surrounding area. It is an amazing piece as well.

Here is a recap of our first multimedia training session, which focused on audio gathering and editing:

• Though video is important, it is not the revenue generating magic bullet that many made it out to be a few years ago. Also, we only have one video camera as compared to three audio recorders and four cameras. That said, whenever possible, we will be deciding what media to use based on what best suits the story being told.
  • To get an idea of how to determine what will work best, please read this post I wrote today (it will take a mere three minutes)

• Audio gathering tips
  • Control is key. You want as much control over the conditions in which you gather audio as possible. Good sound in = good sound out.
  • Be aware of surrounding noise when conducting interviews. Alter your location or move if it is too noisy.
  • Do not be afraid to
    • Turn off computers
    • Unplug refrigerators
    • Turn off lights, especially large banks of fluorescent lights
    • MOVE
  • When outdoors, consider shielding yourself from the wind by:
    • Hiding between buildings
    • going into your car
    • using your body to block the wind
    • going inside

• Audio gathering is more than just conducting an interview
  • You want your audio piece to be strong enough to stand on its own without any visuals or print accompaniment.
  • Gather interviews, ambient sound and detail sounds
    • Interviews – Watch your levels and hold the mic approx. 4 inches from subject. Yes, that is close, but subjects will understand that you are doing your job and trying to make them sound as good as possible. Have your subject say the question in the answer and avoid yes or no questions.
    • Ambient – Turn recorder on at location and record 30 seconds to one minute of sound from the environment. This will serve as the base for your audio project.
    • Detail sounds – Often overlooked, these include things like typing on a keyboard, a coach yelling, shoes squeaking, etc.

• Examples – From traditional to artistic, a few examples to get your creativity flowing and expand what you may think of as newspaper multimedia.
  • A more traditional piece, as far as structure and content, by Renee Byer of the Sacramento Bee. This won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007.
  • A feature piece by Mercury News photographer Dai Sugano. Notice there are no voice over or interviews.
  • Another feature, this time by Roanoke Times photog Josh Meltzer. This is an example of how a stand alone in print can be turned into an engaging multimedia presentation online. Things like this can be done by our photographers.
  • Another example mainly for our photogs. This shows that you can be creative with how you use imagery in multimedia presentations. Consider stripping photos in, making cutouts, shooting sequences, juxtaposing images, etc.
  • Two examples of using typography/infographics to help drive your story. First example. Second example.
  • This last piece is most likely to be emulated by the reporters. It includes a voice over of a reporter likely reading the copy of the story, on camera interviews of subjects, pretty standard video shots (nothing too artsy) and some basic infographics.

• Learn by doing
  • The best way to learn how to both gather and edit audio is to do it. Luckily for you, two of your coworkers were nice enough to gather sample audio and images today in order to practice editing in Final Cut Express. These files, and other sample files, will be available online in the next day for you to experiment with.