Electric Fishwrap has moved

Throughout October and November, Western Washington SPJ has been hosting its fall continuing education series. On Nov. 3, Seattle PI breaking news reporter Casey McNerthney taught the video workshop.

McNerthney went over some basic tips about video from his personal experience. It is worthy to note that he does not have any fancy equipment and all of the software he shared is free. In this realization lies the value of his training: You don’t need expensive equipment. Anyone can do this.

His equipment/tools:

• Canon Powershot
• Windows Movie Maker (WMM tutorials on YouTube, or iMovie)
• A computer for editing, nothing too fancy

Most importantly is the attitude he brings to every story. McNerthney said he bought his Powershot about a year ago. Since then he appears to interview most, if not all, of his subjects with his Powershot running. His reason for videoing everything: “Sometimes daily stories turn into something big.”

(Note: I record audio of almost every interview I conduct. Not only does it help me keep quotes straight, I also have the option of using the audio later for a multimedia project. Obtaining audio in this way requires no extra effort on my part and I can only imagine if I had a small video camera with me all of the time, it would be just as easy.)

He shared one particular example of video he shot recently, about a crane operator who helped police nab a fleeing fugitive:

McNerthney talked about what shots you need to get if you’re going to record your interviews. Check out the crane video. It only takes a few seconds to get b-roll (the flavor shots of the crane in the middle of the story).

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Our cops reporter, Tahlia Ganser, just returned from Florida after spending six weeks at Poynter’s summer fellowship (7/25: link changed, here’s a new one). She returned with many observations, exciting stories and a clear vision of the future.

For reporters, that includes video. To not study video journalism as a reporter is a death knell to your career. So where do we start?

(This video is Cyndy Green’s rebuttal to Andy Dickenson’s Quality and Quantity shorts)

Reporters cannot afford to wait for someone else to train us. No need to reinvent the wheel, there are plenty of training resources if you look in the right places.

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Ever run spell check to see what your sources’ names would look like afterward? I have, to hilarious result. I’m reserving the corrected names to protect the innocent, but try running your name through a spell checker to see what I mean.

In any case, the AP ran a story about spell-check gone wild in a high school yearbook.

Middletown Area High School’s yearbook listed Max Zupanovic as “Max Supernova,” Kathy Carbaugh as “Kathy Airbag” and Alessandra Ippolito as “Alexandria Impolite,” just to name a few.

Only four of the yearbook pages have those corrections on them.

Just goes to show that spell check is not a good backup system. That’s what good copy editors are for.