Back in July I asked for advice on how to make my commute more productive. I didn’t get many posts here, but I asked Wired Journalists and on other message boards where I am a member of the community.
Many people realize that commutes are boring, and nobody really wants to be there. But as much as the commuter wants to be elsewhere, safety is a factor.
Since my radio reception is less than optimal, others suggested satellite radio, learning a new language, buying an iPod and books on tape. When thinking about this during a commute recently, I realized my commute is not great for learning a new language. The road noise is terrible. If anyone calls me during my commute (don’t worry, I have an ear piece) they can’t hear me very well. It only stands to reason I might miss a key phrase if learning a new language (my language of choice would be Spanish).
There were a number of people who suggested to pay attention to the road (with varying levels of annoyance). Jason Molinet on Wired Journalists suggested carpooling and starting a commuter blog with a dash cam. Not a bad idea, but I don’t know if I have the personality to pull that off.
With few options left, I’ve decided to just think about my upcoming day and write stories in my head. If I come across a particularly good line, I’ll dictate it into my audio recorder. I’ve been practicing this for a week and I feel more focused. Anything helps.
His project, entitled “No Snitching,” is about the culture of a neighborhood in east Newport News, Va. This is a great project with lots of content. His project has a poignant beginning with tasteful music interspersed with snapshots of the 30 people who died in Newport News in the past year.
In Al’s interview, Wilson says he never picked up a camera or knew much about Web design until he attended the fellowship.
The technology in our field has always changed, he tells Al: “The skills you have as a journalist are what matters. The ability to put people at ease and have them talk with you. The ability to find and tell a compelling story.”
Wilson does have advice for the rest of us who can’t take a 24-week break from our jobs for a fellowship:
My advice to anyone who wants to learn multimedia skills is to start doing it. Make a small, one-minute movie a day. Figure out how to see in video. Watch lots of documentaries and see how a story is told visually. Check out all the Web sites that post multimedia stories. Find a class that will teach you video editing or Flash; there are lots of them online. But most of all don’t be afraid and get started.
The e-mails I get nearly on a daily basis should not faze me. People make stuff up all the time to smear one candidate and boost another. But I get these e-mails from my relatives, for whom I care deeply. I won’t say which two are the worst offenders. My purpose is not to make them look foolish.
I open the email, and read the first few lines, then check Snopes or PolitiFact immediately. Usually eye-rolling ensues, and I fire back an e-mail reminding them to check the two Web sites, knowing it will do no good anyway.
Today I’d had enough. I got the email about Obama and McCain’s tax policies (the copy of the e-mail I received had been further altered to make it less true). The person who sent it to me is married to an accountant.
I hit reply to all. I know that’s a bad idea in almost any case. I linked to Snopes and to PolitiFact, as usual. Does anyone believe these e-mails enough to the point where it changes opinion? Somehow I doubt that. For the most part, people vote the party, not the person.
Finally, I don’t favor either candidate or party, nor would I say if I did. I don’t think reporters of any stripe should tip their hat to anyone about what they believe or who they support. But I will always be annoyed when someone spreads a lie when a simple Internet search would reveal the truth.
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?
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.
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.) Read the rest of this entry »
I was checking my Web site on other browsers, and I realized my clips were not viewable. (Oops!) Well now they are. Click on the Clips tab at the top (or here) and browse away. I reorganized about 100 pages and hopefully got all of the links pointed in the right direction. Please let me know if you come across one that doesn’t work.
Anyway, some of my favorites from the past few months:
Nick’s editor, Steve Smith, said in his blog that this is not a plan. Smith said he thinks young journalists have fewer ties with the past and not as much loyalty to the way things have always been done. Why were older journalists not asked to participate?
The fact is there always have been opportunities for veterans to participate in such discussions. Too often it is the smart young journalists whose ideas are discounted.
I called it in and by the time I got back to the newspaper twenty minutes later the small brush fire had bloomed into a raging wild fire. I had already put in 12 hours on the maggot story, but that little voice told me this wildfire was going to be big news.
He put on his wild land firefighter gear (every reporter who expects to cover a fire someday should have some) and raced back to the scene. But he didn’t have a video camera with him (he’d left it at the office). Instead, he took a bunch of stills, one of which ran six columns across Friday’s front page.
I like how he thinks about all aspects of his job. Ideally if a reporter hears some great sound at their assignment, they could whip out their audio recorder, talk with the photographer (or take more photos if they are the photog) and lay the groundwork for Soundslides production.
I love the story behind the photo, which is not explained to the readers much in most newsrooms. He explains the composition and what makes the photo powerful. This gives the reader a deeper layer of understanding of what the photographer was thinking when shooting the photo or video.
I waste 100 minutes a day and I need your help to be more productive.
Everyone has this problem to some degree. My daily commute is roughly 45-50 minutes one way each day. Granted I am driving so I really can’t do much in my car. I just feel like I’m wasting time every day.
For the record, the reason I have such a long commute is because my husband attends the University of Washington and is studying graduate-level physics. I drive in the opposite direction to get to work. Moving closer to my work is not an option because it makes his commute longer (and he already spends roughly 60 hours a week on his studies and research). If anything we are considering moving closer to Seattle because he would have a better bus ride to school.
So let the suggestions flow. No idea is too silly or difficult for me to consider. Currently I listen to two NPR stations on the way to and from work (my commute straddles two station boundaries). Sometimes I call relatives or friends during my commute. It should be obvious that I should be able to retain my driving ability while doing whatever it is you suggest.
Cross posting to Wired Journalists, so you can comment either here or there. I’ll post a follow up with suggestions sometime next week.
The survey asked each journalists what took up the biggest percentage of their time out of 24 duties in the past three months.
Writing Original Stories - 16%
Other Duties - - 9%
Editing Text for Content - 6%
Project Management - 6%
Blogging - 6%
Photo/Image Editing - 6%
Staff organization/administration - 5%
Training or teaching other staff - 5%
Writing headlines or blurbs - 4%
Working on business issues - 4%
But if you look at the tasks as a measure of frequency:
Training or teaching others in their newsroom: 39 journalists said they’d done this at least once during the last three months.
Writing headlines or blurbs: 37 said they’d done this.
Photo/image editing: 36 journalists.
Editing text for content: 33.
Project Management: 32.
Editing for grammar/style: 32.
Hmm, looks pretty traditional to me. Here’s a table of the skills these journalists have. From the list you can see there’s a variety of expertise in various programs, from Soundslides, to audio and video editing and production, HTML, Photoshop, Flash programming and much more. Notice news judgment and grammar and style? Those are the highest rated of the whole bunch.Thornburg questions whether the results are skewed due to a high population of Gannet papers in North Carolina.
