Multimedia roll out at Skagit Valley Herald
Two weeks ago, Skagit Valley Herald editor in chief Don Nelson sat down with the reporting staff and told us about some upcoming changes in the newsroom. (For the curious, I asked Don permission if I could blog about this and he gave me the green light.)
Reporters were handed a four-page outline of how we can incorporate the Web into our daily reporting.
Here’s a brief outline of the new Web strategy. If you want to read the entire four-page handout (culled to three pages with my excellent paper-folding-and-taping skills), read the PDF here (includes bonus doodles).
- Editors will select which stories have the best potential for multimedia during their weekly editors meeting. At least two stories per week will be assigned for “multi-platform” presentation.
- Editors are responsible for coordinating the production and editing of the multimedia.
- Photographers must “think video” for breaking news.
- Photographers are a “first priority” to train in video production and editing. Editors and interested reporters come after the photogs are trained. Training will come from in-house or online sources.
- Reporters are responsible for audio recording and editing, including narration and interviews with subjects.
Reporters seemed skeptical and skittish because of the layoffs around the country. Even our own newsroom is not immune from this recent trend. Our business reporter position is frozen. Someone mumbled “do more with less,” which earned a funny statement from Don Nelson:
“I hate the phrase ‘More with less.’ It’s a despicable lie,” Don said. “I prefer ‘Different and better.’”
(For the record, I hate “more with less” with a passion, and Don’s comment has to be the most awesome comeback to it that I’ve ever heard. Cynical journalists are free to disagree, but I still love my job.)
To bring you all up to speed on the history of the SVH, the Web has been secondary to the dead-tree edition for some time now. Last July, the SVH rolled out its new Web site, www.goskagit.com. Before that, the Web site hosted only one story per day, and had a two-sentence description of other stories that were in the paper. If you wanted to view the other stories, you had to buy a paper or subscribe online. We still don’t publish every story online. The reasoning is “why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”
I really love our new Web plan, which states that reporters should write for the Web before the paper if it is breaking news (see examples on page 3 in the PDF). One editor said “it doesn’t matter if it starts online or in the paper anymore.”
If a reporter finds herself swamped, she is to go to her editor and ask for a triage of duties. If a story doesn’t get covered, the reporter should try not to worry about it (though the ones who care about their beats do anyway). Editors also stressed that reporters would be trained on company time and that it would happen fairly soon.
The only barrier to our strategy is our Web site, which is currently unable to display SoundSlides presentations. I’ve been creating audio for some time now, and there are some unpublished SoundSlides in a folder just waiting for the Web site to be ready. A minor hitch, I’m sure, but if anyone has suggestions I’m happy to forward them to an editor.
I’ll post updates on this transition whenever I’m allowed.
July 20th, 2008 at 6:22 am
Sounds like a great plan!
On the Soundslides issue: In Santa Cruz, faced with a Web platform that consisted of static HTML pages that we could only edit by FTP, we launched a Multimedia blog where we hosted all our video and Soundslides.
We built it in WordPress, using plugins like SWFObject to get Soundslides into posts.
Obvious advantages: Great SEO, searchable archives of video and slideshows, and relatively easy to use.
Big disadvantage: No automatic tie-in to stories on the news site, which meant we would often hardcode an image and links by FTP to tease the story.
July 20th, 2008 at 6:29 am
Great idea on the blog. I’ll pass it on to the editors. It’s a temporary fix, but at least we’d get that stuff up on the Web!
July 25th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
It’s nice having an editor allowing you to write about this.
I’ve been excited by the change, and I’m skimming through all my story ideas trying to figure out which ones could have video on them.
But I’m most excited about the immediate change of getting news stories up on the web quickly. The short stories I write for the web on a breaking news story during the day actually help with my print story the next day.
July 30th, 2008 at 6:20 am
As the Skagit Valley Herald reporter who mumbled something at that newsroom meeting about “more with less,” I wanted to set the record straight. (I also want to vow to speak more distinctly at newsroom meetings from now on.)
While Kate’s blog entry creates the impression that the mumbler is a cynical reporter who doesn’t love his job, I want to let it be known that neither is true in my case. My statement may have appeared cynical to those who overheard it, but I was trying in vain to make a pop-culture reference.
I was cribbing a line from season 5 of the HBO series “The Wire,” which is set, in part, in a fictional Baltimore Sun newsroom. I should have realized the HBO series, now off the air, is too obscure to be a legitimate pop-culture reference.
Anyway, in the show, the unheroic editor of the paper calls the newsroom staff together for an impromptu meeting and announces immediate layoffs and buyouts. He’s the one who makes the quip about doing more with less, which generates quite a bit of eye-rolling from the staff.
At the SVH meeting, I was only trying to bring levity to what was a fairly serious discussion. But I’m not guilty of cynicism.
If you want to hear cynicism, ask me about politics.
July 30th, 2008 at 7:37 am
Ralph, I’m sorry it came out that way but that was not my intent, honest. Everyone at our shop does what they can in the time they have to do it.
I haven’t owned a television since 2004 and I don’t subscribe to cable, so I didn’t know this was a reference to “The Wire.” But I have worked alongside competing reporters from Gannett papers at previous jobs and they’ve said “more with less” came from their manager’s mouths.
My “more with less” statement in the post was really just a setup to Don Nelson’s comment, because I thought it summed up exactly what I think about the issue.
August 13th, 2008 at 6:27 am
Apology accepted, but not really necessary. I respect what you’re doing, chronicling the change in our media environment. I believe it was an appropriate literary device, to set up my offhand comment as a foil for Don.
I’ll be interested to follow your reporting on this blog and on MediaShift.