Electric Fishwrap

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.)
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Colin Mulvany was undoubtedly tired after filming 12 hours of footage driving 300 miles to film a piece on a maggot farm for the Spokesman Review. But on the way back home, he spotted a plume of smoke.

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.

Good job, Colin!

Cyberjournalist pointed me to a study that University of North Carolina professor Ryan Thornburg completed about the values of online journalists.

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.

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If your news organization has not produced video much, or sold video ads, the Newspaper Association of America is here to help.

Check out the new online primer for video production. It’s got advice from B roll footage to equipment purchasing guides to how to promote your online video. There is even a guide on how to market video ads (because, face it, news is a business in most places in the country).

“Zooming In on Online Video: A Development & Growth Guide for Newspaper Web Sites” is intended to help newspapers of any size develop profitable video applications. As competition heats up for online video mindshare, newspapers have an excellent opportunity to leverage their skills and content and capture an even larger share of online advertising spending.

Also from the ad front, what makes an online video ad less annoying? Read what Mark Glaser wrote on MediaShift (hint: keep it short, silly).

There is so much information here that I’ll likely spend several hours surfing the links. I am glad to see a news tutorial that applies to the ad department.

Thanks to Beth Lawton on Wired Journalists for the heads up on the NAA video training site.

Check out this amazing multimedia presentation by the Des Moines Register.

Two weeks ago an EF-5 tornado, the biggest possible on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, ripped through the southern half of Parkersburg, Iowa. Like most communities after tragedy, the town pulled together. Neighbors searched for each other among the wreckage. People pitched in together and cleaned up the roads. So far, eight people have died from their injuries.

The Register’s multimedia presentation merges an attractive flash interface with user-submitted stories, photographer-shot video and it combines before images from the county assessor database with images photographers took after the storm.

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A couple of years ago I went to a narrative writing workshop with Tom Hallman, a Pulitzer-prizewinning reporter from the Oregonian. Just like anything else, narrative writing takes time to learn. (There is a form to narrative writing. Just read “Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction” by Jon Franklin and you’ll see what I mean.)

Reporters asked how they would ever find the time to learn this new style when many of them have story quotas. The short answer was prioritize your work and realize that not every story deserves your full attention. The long answer was learn at home, read books, try new things with your copy on your own time.

The same can be said for multimedia. I know a number of reporters who want to wait on the company to teach them multimedia skills.

Colin Mulvany, the multimedia editor at the Spokesman Review, says reporters should train themselves on their own time.

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This Sunday my paper published its first ever video on our Web site. It was for my graduation package (see the main piece and video here, and student introductions and favorite teacher here). [As an aside if you cannot view the video let me know. I can’t on my computer at home, nor on the computer at work. It just flat out won’t load. Our IT guys are trying to figure out why.]

[EDIT: IT guys say if you cannot view the video you need to download Flash 9.]

Years ago, my paper used to cover every graduation. Since there are more than 14 in the area (including alternative schools) it was an onerous task. The entire staff was involved. The editors scaled it down to one profile per school. The whole staff was still involved, but it did not include racing from one graduation to another, or sending four reporters out on a Friday night to cover each graduation.

My task when I came here was to pare down our coverage. We were short-staffed throughout the spring due to inevitable turnover, and editors thought graduation took up too many resources. So I had this crazy idea to invite one student from every school that we had previously covered to a panel discussion. We sat down with the seniors and started asking them questions. Are they ready for graduation? Do they want to keep living in Skagit Valley? Will global warming impact your life? How about the Iraq war?

I asked most of the questions with county reporter Ralph Schwartz helping to moderate. City editor Colette Weeks and reporter Aaron Burkhalter recorded the video.

We got some great answers, and I definitely want to do this again. But because this was my paper’s very first try with video, here’s what we would do differently.

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First off, I am very relieved that my former colleagues at the Loveland Reporter-Herald in Colorado are safe. A half-mile-wide wedge tornado bore down on the town of Windsor, Colo. Thursday morning and carved a wide swath of damage. Only one person was killed and it’s a miracle more were not taken. I believe this is a testament to the strength of our early warning systems and to the construction quality of our buildings.

Stormtrack storm chasers (here and here) had been watching the supercell (posts include technical jargon, also with great pics of radar with the hook echo visible), which had a rare northwest track, since it formed. It put on quite a show, gouging a path through Windsor and then headed toward Fort Collins.

Loveland was also under tornado warning for some time, and staff at the Reporter-Herald huddled in the downstairs hallway for about 15-20 minutes. (Guys, I hate to say it, but if that tornado was anything above an EF-3 that hallway isn’t going to cut it.)

—EDIT: Adding info from Jeff Masters’ Wunderblog. Masters says the damage appeared to be at least EF-3. Check out the great pictures and explanations of the hook echo on his site (animation of reflectivity here).—

Based on the damage from aerial shots from the Rocky Mountain News, Windsor has a long road to recovery ahead of them.

Some incredible video from KUSA is posted on the CNN site. Halfway through the video you can see egg-sized hail pelting the reporter, who is on an overpass of US 34 west of Greeley (I think?). Check out the other videos on that page as well. Just watching the video gives me chills and makes me thankful that Loveland didn’t sustain a direct hit from this monster.

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Also filed under “Stuff I Can’t Afford”

Reuters apparently sends its reporters out with this combo:

• Nokia N95 phone ~$580: Acts as 5 megapixel video camera, music player, email device and GPS mapper.
• Nokia Wireless Keyboard SU-8W, ~$110: Bluetooth capable to type up reports. Folds down to an easy-to-use size.
• Power Monkey charger ~$120: Uses our mortal enemy, the sun, to charge our electronic devices. For those times when we’re reporting from a very remote location, like Senegal.
• Tripod and mic for the camera, and assorted cords, ~$200

I could definitely see a need for the phone + keyboard in, say, a prominent murder trial. Imagine live blogging the trial, as Ron Sylvester did at his paper last year (link to blog post of his work last year. Sylvester blogs at Technolo-J. His old blog remains a treasure trove of good information).

Tip of the hat to AndyDickenson.net for the heads up. He also links a video on his site.

Yellow pages listings are down, so are newspaper revenues. Enter BizFinderNW.com, an online solution to the yellow pages, by the Spokesman Review.

The Spokane newspaper, which continues to win awards for the dead-tree and online divisions, added another trophy to the case with the first prize for innovation from the International Newspaper Marketing Association.

This couldn’t come at a better time (well, except a few years ago. That would’ve been a better time). Read Poynter’s writeup on the award and the S-R.com.

The twist at Spokane’s BizFinderNW.com, is to offer a listing with address, store hours, a map and a photo for free. Businesses can amplify on the listing or buy a display position if they wish. Like most local search ventures, there is room for user comments, though no news content per se.

This is a great way for newspapers to capitalize on community connections and remain afloat while offering advertising at competitive rates. I hope more news organizations take this approach.