Electric Fishwrap

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!

Lately I’ve been on a multimedia bent, but I promise that’s not everything I’ll write about.

Monday I went to a training sponsored by Western Washington SPJ about how to create compelling Soundsides presentations. For those not in the know, Soundslides is a flash-based program where you can combine audio and pictures into a melded project.

The talented Casey McNerthney of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer taught the group of us what goes into a great Soundslides.

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For a bit more than a year I’ve been obsessively tracking the movements in the Online reporting world. I consider myself a storyteller first and foremost, and I will do whatever I can do to help tell that story in the best possible way. That means using other technologies than just the printed word.

I’ve always been a gadget geek: I have owned my own digital recorder for nearly two years (and am considering an upgrade), a microphone (thinking of buying another two and a splitter), computer programs and other tools to help me learn, on my own, more about Online reporting.

But for those who are not tech-saavy, please read this great post by Mindy McAdams: First lesson in audio for journalists. This is a great summation of what you need to do to start collecting audio.

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