Electric Fishwrap

Our paper just bought three audio recorders. In the waning days of 2007, the managing editor walked up to me and handed me the company credit card with orders to buy audio recorders and microphones and not to go too much over $300. I pushed it to $400 and we got some nice stuff. (Edit: I got three Olympus DS-20 for the newsroom.)

But who is going to use them? When I got here I was the only one who recorded and edited audio. After I bought my Olympus DS-40 I sold my two-year-old WS-100 to a coworker, and she’s been playing with it for a couple of months. I don’t know if anything has been put on the Web yet, but she’s learning and so far very enthusiastic about it.

Anyway, the paper has held one audio training to get reporters and photographers used to the new devices. Only two people showed for the first training, a photog and a sports reporter who already has his own recorder. The second training was postponed due to lack of reporters.

Mindy McAdams has some great suggestions on how to get reporters used to new recorders and also the editing process. I’ve been asked to lead the reporters through the learning process in the next to-be-scheduled audio session with the recorders and I think I’ll try to use this tutorial to ease them along.

(more…)

Monday, my paper published the longest story I’ve ever written. It was longer than the 30th anniversary piece on Colorado’s most deadly natural disaster, the Big Thompson flood, and longer still than the longest piece I’ve ever written about a woman with West Nile paralysis. I followed her around for five months to treatments and therapy, on several occasions I drove to her house an hour away from the newsroom and attended church with her and her family.

The story I wrote about the upcoming Anacortes School Bond stands at about 67 inches. Initially the story was in the 90+ inch category, but my two editors brought it within reason. And while the story is not filled with emotion and drama as the other two are, the story serves one of the most important roles of a journalist: the government watchdog.

(more…)

Google engineers spend 80 percent of their time working on assigned projects and 20 percent of their time on their own projects. Is it any wonder that Google is such a good company?

What if reporters did it too? What if reporters devoted 10 percent of their paid time to their own projects?

That’s the question Mindy McAdams asks in her Teaching Online Journalism blog. Mindy points us to the Fleet Street blog, where the blogger reports that the BBC is already doing 10 percent time in newsrooms:

All of the designers, developers, project managers at BBC Audio and Music Interactive are allowed to spend 10 per cent of their time working on their own pet projects — anything they like as long as it is work-related and benefits the Beeb.

(more…)

Yesterday I went to speak at a high school journalism class at Sedro-Woolley High School. First off I really hate public speaking but I also like spreading what I know and helping when I can. So when the journalism teacher there, Bridget Heffele, asked me to come in, I felt I had to. I don’t know many people in every district so I figure it’s good to get in some face time when I can.

I introduced myself and gave a bit of my background, and then I asked how many of them read a daily newspaper, either online or in print.

Nothing. Not a one. One girl asked if MSNBC.com counted. I revised my question and asked if any of them read news sources. Only about five in a class of 15, and four of them read MSNBC.com (for story ideas for their paper) to the BBC (one student seemed to want a world perspective).

(more…)