Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Multimedia

Freelance Unbound: ‘How the social web has changed the journalist’s working day’

Judith Townend — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:38:20 +0000

Freelance Unbound has published a video of Reed Business Information editorial development director Karl Schneider talking to journalism students at UCA Farnham about the changes in a journalist’s working day. Schneider said:

“As they [journalists] come across pieces of information, if they think it would be useful for the audience to hear it, it’s trivially easy – you can do it in seconds. If they’ve got a bit of information, why hold on to it – why wait until they’ve got five more bits and constructed it into a complete story? Why not publish the bit of information now?”

Full post at this link…

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Brian Stelter: News sites switching from print to TV look

Laura Oliver — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:34:51 +0000

The New York Times’ Brian Stelter takes a look at the growth of video on newspaper websites and how this trend is affecting consumers and journalists.

“The attention to video mirrors changes in how consumers are experiencing news. Major events – be it the presidential election or the death of Michael Jackson – bring a surge in video stream viewings by new users, and each time some of them stick around,” he writes.

Full article at this link…

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NYTimes.com: New York Times presents its ‘Innovation Portfolio’

Laura Oliver — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:52:49 +0000

Journalism.co.uk has reported on many of the New York Times’ developments with data journalism, interactive features and graphics. Now the title has group together all its experiments in interactive design and infographics – from multimedia timelines to those submitted by users – in a beautifully designed web portfolio.

Full portfolio at this link…

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Mediabistro: New Gawker.TV powered by interns; hopes site will sell ads

Laura Oliver — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:39:01 +0000

Mediabistro.com reports on the launch of a new spin-off site for Gawker – a video website, Gawker.TV, manned by around 16 interns working under a video editor.

Videos are a big traffic driver for Gawker and founder Nick Denton has admitted that selling ads will be easier on a site with a less specific focus, according to Mediabistro.

Full post at this link…

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David McCandless: Odds of dying from blogging?

Laura Oliver — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:59:30 +0000

It’s 35,000,000 to 1, according to set of graphics from InformationIsBeautiful.net (hat tip to @fionacullinan).

While the blogging comparison might be slightly irreverent (and viewed alongside the very real threat to bloggers in countries with limited press freedom), Google is cited as the source for this stat and the whole set gives some interesting ideas for visualising data.

Full graphics at this link…

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MSNBC’s Charlie Tillinghast: ‘There are no TV journalists anymore. There are videojournalists’

Judith Townend — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:49:59 +0000

HuffPost’s ‘Game Changers’ feature is selecting 100 ‘innovators, visionaries, and leaders’ who are ‘harnessing the power of new media to reshape their fields and change the world’.

One of its picks is Charlie Tillinghast, president and publisher of MSNBC.com; HuffPo picked out this quote of his:

“There are no TV journalists anymore. There are videojournalists. When somebody from NBC News goes out in the field (…) they’re shooting a piece that will show up on ‘Nightly,’ on MSNBC cable, on MSNBC.com, on a mobile device. The point is it’s all about video and all the places that people can watch video.”

Via LostRemote.com.

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#Outlook2010: Germany’s WAZ media – learning from bigger players and going open source

Laura Oliver — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:16:08 +0000

Last week Journalism.co.uk attended the INMA and Online Publishers Association (OPA) Europe’s annual conference Outlook 2010 – the event focused on innovation, transformation and making money for media businesses. Follow our coverage at this link.

Regional newspaper WAZ Media has learned to punch above its weight online by looking at what bigger publishers are doing digitally and seeking out free and open source software and platforms to use, explains the outgoing CEO of its new media Katharina Borchert.

Starting with video the group supplied reporters with Flip cameras to capture original video news and began using a bank of freelancers to edit the footage.

The group has also joined forces with another regional publisher to create The Media Lab – a small company that invests at a really early stage in local online start-ups that add something interesting to the market, explains Borchert.

This has already spawned an online-to-print publishing solution for printed user-generated papers in areas not covered by WAZ’s titles – after a year-and-a-half the group expects this project to be in profit by next year.

Listen to Borchert’s talk on video, Twitter and regional media innovation online below:

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Jon Bernstein to join New Statesman as deputy editor

Judith Townend — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:24:24 +0000

Jon Bernstein, former multimedia editor at Channel 4 is to join the New Statesman as deputy editor, replacing Emily Mann.

Writing on his blog, Bernstein announced that from November 12 he will be joining the New Statesman as deputy editor.

“I’ll be working under Jason Cowley and alongside his very talented team. And I’m pretty excited about it,” said Bernstein.

Jon joined ITN in 2005 as editor of the Channel 4 FactCheck website. Prior to that he was editor-in-chief of the DirectGov website, then editor-in-chief at silicon.com.

He was a founding blogger on TheMediaBlog.co.uk and writes guest posts for the very blog you’re reading, the Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog.

More information:

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Videojournalist David Dunkley Gyimah named Southbank artist in residence

Laura Oliver — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:57:38 +0000

Videojournalist and Westminster University lecturer David Dunkley Gyimah has been made an artist in residence at London’s Southbank Centre.

During his 2009-10 residency, Dunkley Gyimah will work on a new form of artistic film, mixing documentary style with a new response to the film format – he’s already begun working on projects for his residency on his site viewmagazine.tv.

“As a deep reservoir of knowledge, arts and cultures it would be my wish to find new discourses for creating arts reportage, but also to work alongside other artists and, through the style of solo videojournalism I have practised for the last 16 years, continue to develop styles and manners in which we can exploit new and digital media forms to both tell stories and create our own visual and literary footprints,” said Dunkley Gyimah in a statement.

Related reading on Journalism.co.uk: Comment from Dunkley Gyimah – ‘Videojournalism is not a one-size-fits-all medium’

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Camp VJ London – Day 2: Filming interviews

Laura Oliver — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:02:16 +0000

Yesterday I attended day two of the Visual Editors’ videojournalism training in London. The four-day course covers the fundamentals of videojournalism with proceeds going to not-for-profit news project Beamups.

You can read my report on day one of the course – an introduction to the basics of videojournalism in this post.

Below are some introductory tips to filming interviews learned from the course.

There are still places available on Thursday’s (October 29) programme, which will focus on selling your videos.

As day two was to focus on filming interviews, I spent most of it getting to grips with my tripod. I wanted to be confident with my kit so I could gain confidence of my interview subject; not look like a complete novice while struggling to get my camera to sit straight.

We learned about basic framing for a shot; where to stand to allow you to maintain eye contact and yet monitor your camera; and tips on getting your subject to relax and open up.

But my main lesson of the day went back to confidence: try to anticipate problems that might arise when you’re filming, before you’re doing it, advised our tutor Robb.

Good advice:

Prepare your tripod and camera as far as possible (e.g. check your battery’s charge).
Avoid one word or yes/no answers by giving your subject commands rather than asking questions e.g. “Tell me….”, “Describe to me….” – you need longer answers so you can get the worthwhile soundbites to edit.
Take headphones with you so (if your camera allows it) you can monitor how the footage sounds on location.
Take plenty of natural sound – you may need this if editing shots together.

Sent out on our lunch hour to find willing interview subjects, I convinced a local businessman to let me film in his shop. A hairdresser for 45 years, he was animated and engaging.

Some things I learned:

Don’t be afraid to move your camera if you want to change the framing during an interview. I needed to step a little closer to improve the frame and give louder audio. Just make sure you let your subject know what you are doing.
If your subject is sitting and you’re standing, this doesn’t matter, so long as the camera is at eye-level with the interviewee rather than the camera looking down on them.
Asking some initial throwaway questions helps your interviewee relax and gives you time to adjust your camera if needs be.

Editing my footage (around 10 minutes including cutaway shots) was much quicker today – less than an hour for three minutes, including work on audio and splicing together different answers with cutaways.

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