Author Archives: Lara King

Tips and thoughts for journalists from Bloomberg’s former multimedia editor

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Last week (Thursday May 28) Bloomberg’s former multimedia editor, Abhik Sen, spoke to journalism students at City University on a range of topics:

MPs’ expenses:
Revelations about MPs’ expenses would not have had as much impact if the story had been broken online, the former editor of multimedia at Bloomberg told students. “There are still some stories which work much better in traditional formats,” he said. “The MPs’ expenses story could have been broken in any format but it would not have had the same impact if it hadn’t been print.”

“The resulting chaos in Westminster probably would not have happened if it had broken on a blog or website. That medium just doesn’t have the same impact as the front page of a newspaper does.”

Sen added that the gradual ‘drip feed’ of information in the daily papers and sustained ‘wall-to-wall coverage’ in the Daily Telegraph allowed the story to build a momentum that would not have been possible in the rolling news environment of the web.

Where multimedia works best
He emphasised that online journalism continued to surpass traditional formats in  providing ‘more detailed, more thoughtful’ coverage and a ‘360 degree view’ of any story.

“For the swine flu story, for example, you get the headlines in the newspapers and the footage on the television channels, but for a comprehensive view you have to go online and look at videos, stories, first person pieces, interactive graphics, maps,” he said. “That rule holds true for pretty much every big story, from Obama to climate change.”

“TV and newspapers are the entry point for the news cycle,” he added. “Only people who are particularly interested in a story will then go digging for more stuff online. But that’s when they will expect comprehensive, meaty content.

“Then, multimedia journalists have to take the game to the next level: beyond the headline, beyond the immediate soundbite.”

Sen’s tips for journalists
“In tomorrow’s world, which is pretty much today’s world, there is no media organisation which is not thinking multiplatform,” the former multimedia editor at Bloomberg. “Everyone will have to be a multimedia journalist of some sort. The earlier you get familiar with the grammar of multimedia, the easier and better it will be.”

  • Planning is important. “Most bad multimedia pieces flounder because not enough thought has been put into what you are trying to communicate,” he warned. “Think about how your story could best be told and what sort of interactivity you want to offer.”
  • Get creative. The challenge for multimedia journalists covering diary stories, such as the G20 protests, is to find a way of reporting that is “original, refreshing, different from the newspapers and television, and yet complimentary,” said Sen. “You must build on what others have done, but also do what others cannot do.”
  • Think flavour, not just facts. “In a multimedia piece, you need to convey not just who was there and what happened, but what was it really like?” he said. “You need to capture things that make the piece alive. They might look small at production stage, but become really interesting and useful at the editing table.”
  • Less is more. “Five minutes is an eternity in news time,” he warned. “Most multimedia pieces won’t ever run for more than a few minutes.”
  • Always shoot action and emotion. “It doesn’t need to be someone fighting a war, but you need mobility or some dynamic element,” he advised. “It might be someone’s eyes floating from left to right, clinking glasses, natural sunlight.”
  • Develop skills beyond conventional journalism, or work with somebody who has. “A graphic designer is critical to a multimedia project,” said Sen. “It’s up to them to bring all the elements together and present them in a way that can either make or break a multimedia piece.”
  • Keep the big picture in mind. Remember that neither audio or visual will ever work alone in a final multimedia production. “They will be next to text, or on top of a picture, so always have an idea of the final product in mind,” said Sen. “Then you don’t always have to face the dilemma of dropping or cutting to fit.”
  • But if in doubt: “Shoot first, make up your mind later,” he advised.

Sen, who spent more than a decade as a television and newspaper journalist before joining Bloomberg, added that these skills should be developed in addition to, not at the expense of, the traditional journalist’s toolkit. “The nuts and bolts remain the same. Good journalism, solid reporting, news judgement and good writing skills are as important online as off,” he said.

Sen’s favourite multimedia packages:

  • Economy Tracker by CNN: “Somebody has done the hard work of crunching numbers and then somebody has made it into a really visual, interesting piece of work,” said Sen. “It’s a good example of telling a big story simply but effectively”.

Related link:

Alison Battisby’s report on her blog: ‘Everyone will be a multimedia journalist,’ says ex-Bloomberg editor.

Lara King is a freelance journalist and blogs on the media at www.lara-king.co.uk.

For @GuidoFawkes, Twitter is a fad that will disappear; for @MickFealty, it’s a valuable tool

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Twitter is a ‘fad that will soon disappear,’ political blogger Paul Staines said yesterday.

Staines, who blogs under the alias Guido Fawkes, told participants at the Voices Online Blogging conference at City University that he has ‘not got the time’ to monitor the 3,000 + followers of @guidofawkes.

“How profound can you be in 140 characters?” he said. “I use Twitter to broadcast, but I go to individual bloggers for information.”

Staines argued that the increasing popularity of the site, boosted by celebrity users such as Stephen Fry and Oprah Winfrey, meant that ‘overload is inevitable’.

However, Mick Fealty (@mickfealty) creator of the Slugger O’Toole blog, agreed that Twitter is a ‘nightmare’ but insisted it remained an ‘important tool’ for journalists.

“I used it on the day of the US elections last November, when I was writing a live blog on the Slugger site,” he explained. “I canvassed for US readers to be mini-bloggers for one day.

He used feeds from people who were watching three or four American television networks, he said. “Within about two minutes I knew what had gone out on ABC, Fox and CNN, and I could give a clear judgement about what was going on.”

Fealty added that the site was an effective tool to generate information about an area where he had ‘no local or native knowledge’.

Twitter’s usefulness was a result of the ‘very smart and intelligent’ contacts he has made using it, he said.

“The value of Twitter is the value of people I follow,” he explained.

Journalism.co.uk reported from the Voices Online Blogging conference 2009. Follow @journalism_live on Twitter for live updates from a wide array of media events.

Online commenters are like ‘particularly aggressive sub-editors’ says Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow

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Bloggers and journalists discussed their shifting roles and relationships in the context of online political blogging at Monday’s Voices Online blogging conference at City University, organised by the Next Century Foundation.

Blogging is improving the quality of journalism by forcing reporters to be more honest about their sources the Guardian’s senior political correspondent, Andrew Sparrow, said yesterday.

Sparrow said that traditional journalistic secrecy had become ‘hard to justify in the blogosphere’ because readers act as ‘particularly aggressive sub-editors’.

“There’s an expectation that you will be more upfront about your sources, and that’s a good thing,” he said.

“In a conventional news story, you can never own up to doubt. In a blog, it’s perfectly acceptable to say what you know and what you don’t know.”

Sparrow also suggested that political bloggers have raised the bar of competition for traditional news organisations.

“I don’t see myself as part of the blogging community in the way that Paul Staines or Nick Fielding are,” he said. “I view blogging as a tool that we use [at the Guardian] for our mainstream journalism. But I worry if the amateurs are doing it better than we are.”

However, in an earlier panel, Paul Staines questioned whether drawing a distinction between ‘journalist’ and ‘bloggers’ is still relevant.

“How long is it before we stop asking that question?” he said. “With converging digital platforms, there may no longer be a difference.”

Sparrow, who has previously reported on the political arena for the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, said that he had been frustrated by ‘the limited way you could tell stories’ in traditional print media.

“The internet has an immediacy that you don’t always get in mainstream media. I like the commentability, but it makes many journalists uncomfortable,” he said.

He added that digital media has improved the range of sources available to journalists. “Once, you might have had to spend the morning ringing ten people to find out what they thought about something, whereas now, you can subscribe to ten RSS feeds,” he said.

However, Sparrow also said that the Guardian ensures its blogs ‘report in accordance with its journalistic values and the public interest’, and acknowledged that the wider blogging community ‘survives on subjectivity’ which is at odd with traditional journalistic notions of balance.

But Mick Fealty, creator of the Slugger O’Toole blog and who also blogs at the Telegraph and the Guardian sites, insisted this did not compromise the quality and integrity of blogging. “The journalists who make good bloggers are the ones who know they’re only interjecting into a larger conversation. There is a value in being challenged,” he said.

“Truth is more useful than balance. One truth at a time is enough.”

Journalism.co.uk reported live from the Voices Online Blogging conference 2009. Follow @journalism_live on Twitter for updates from a wide array of media events.