Electric Fishwrap has moved

My persistent pleas to include audio with selected stories have been answered. Here is my second audio piece for the Skagit Valley Herald:

On their toes: One dance school’s desperate search for “The Nutcracker” Prince

Check out some of my old audio from my site (anything from my podcasts section, the further down the older it is page moved due to transition to Wordpress, 7-17-08, visit clips section instead and look for the audio icon). I’ve come a long way. The Western Washington SPJ group has held trainings throughout the fall here, and I’ve learned a lot by attending the sessions.

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So far I’m enjoying education reporting. But by far the hardest part is not dealing with picky parents or paranoid officials. No. The hardest part is the kids.

Of course, children are notoriously hard to interview. Younger children tend to clam up or just answer “yes,” “no” or shrug their shoulders to questions. But the hard part, for me, is who I don’t interview. Whenever I go on assignment many of the kids are excited that a reporter is in their midst. Some of them are shy (which is the hard to interview part) but a few come up to me and ask to be interviewed. Or, worse yet, I have a teacher or official who asks me to interview 10 students individually.

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Circulation is declining across the country. Craigslist is becoming the go-to place for classified advertising. And then there’s the Internet. It’s going to be the end of newspapers!

Or is it?

The National Newspaper Association asked 22 news professionals to write about the future of newspapers. The NNA serialized it in a blog, here. Granted, I have not read every post. I’ve skimmed a few, and what seems to be the common denominator is that newspapers, if they are to survive, must adapt to changing technology and demands by the audience.

In a nutshell, if we continue to do the same thing we are going to continue to get the same results. Circulation will continue to decline. Advertising revenues will continue to go to other areas.

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The Shelby Star in Cleveland County, N.C. is far ahead of the tech curve as far as most newspapers go. Their new gadget, the Star Car, is an amazing mobile newsroom.

What is the Star Car?
The Star Car is a mobile interactive newsroom. Reporters drive it to wherever something is happening that you need to know about, turn on the equipment, and they can report live online.

You can even track the Star Car and see where it’s been, and there’s an in-dash camera so you can watch the car as it’s on the way to news! How cool is that? How incredible and innovative!

The Wichita Eagle in Kansas also used some technology to blog about a murder trial — live from inside the courtroom. In this incredible post by the technolo-j blog, the reporter explains his work process during the trial.

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Here in Washington State, there was a ballot issue called 4204. Simply put, school district levy elections (to pay for operations and property maintenance) would pass with a simple majority (50 percent + 1) instead of a super majority (60 percent). In the past few years, many Washington school districts have had their levy elections pass the simple majority test but fall short of 60 percent.

On Election Day, results were tabulated across the state, and it appeared that 4204 was going down (roughly 48 percent to 52 percent). But a last-minute get-out-the-vote surge, continuing at this moment, seems to bring the election into the “too close to call” range (see the Secretary of State’s Web page for 4204). As you can see, only 2,620 votes separate the schools from a win here.

With more than 178,000 votes left to count, 58,000 of them in King County (where there’s a 50-percent approval rating) it doesn’t take a statistician to see where this is going.

Yes, Election Day is like the Super Bowl for journalists (well, except sports journalists). I’ve always loved the excitement of it. But here in Washington the results can trickle in until several days after Election Day, because you’re only required to have your ballot postmarked by then.

Decided to change the name of the blog from “The Snark Report” to “Electric Fishwrap.” There are several reasons for this, mainly because nobody at work seemed to know what “snark” meant (it’s a combination of cynicism and sarcasm). Also, this blog isn’t meant to be snarky, I just thought it was a clever name.

So welcome to Electric Fishwrap, a name that a friend of mine suggested (thanks Meddik). I thought it was highly appropriate, considering newspaper is often called (and used for) fishwrap. And it sounded better than “Daily Birdcage Liner.”

Last night was a letdown, not because a measure I was in favor of didn’t pass, but because voting is changing.

Snohomish County had an all mail-ballot election. I understand this saves lots of money over a polling place election. Call me old fashioned, I really, really like going to the polling place.

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Lately I’ve been on a multimedia bent, but I promise that’s not everything I’ll write about.

Monday I went to a training sponsored by Western Washington SPJ about how to create compelling Soundsides presentations. For those not in the know, Soundslides is a flash-based program where you can combine audio and pictures into a melded project.

The talented Casey McNerthney of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer taught the group of us what goes into a great Soundslides.

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To add to yesterday’s post, here’s a bit from Mindy McAdams’s blog about production times. Basically it all hinges on preparing the reporter adequately before the assignment. Know what you want to shoot and shoot very little and then you have less to go through when you’re in edit phase.

Two questions I am always asked about audio production:

1. Does recording audio interfere with reporting?
2. How long does it take?

First, a bit about my background. I started helping with audio podcasts at my last paper. I didn’t actually edit anything down, rather, I marked the clips I wanted and sent it to a Web editor, who then cut the clips out for me and sent it on to a special projects editor (who then collected it all into a podcast).

So technically, I never edited audio for any newspaper. I have, however, taken it upon myself to learn Audacity (a simple audio editor) on my own. After learning Audacity, I produced some podcasts for a video game fan site I visit (which I won’t post here, but everyone seemed happy with the quality).

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