Tag Archives: Mindy McAdams

#Followjourn @macloo /journalist and trainer

Who? Mindy McAdams

Where? A journalist, journalism educator and  web developer, Mindy writes the blog Teaching Online Journalism. She has also the author of Flash Journalism, a book about making multimedia news packages.

Twitter? @macloo

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to sarah.booker at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

Reporter’s guide to multimedia proficiency – now available for download in PDF

Mindy McAdams’ comprehensive guide to multimedia proficiency is now available to download in PDF from her website.

The 42-page document is fully linked and usable online in most web browsers, Adobe Reader, or in Preview on the Mac OS, so there’s no need to waste trees in order to read it.

McAdams has licenced the entire document  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License so users are free to share, distribute, reuse and even remix it, in line with the CC conditions.

The booklet comes straight from a series of 15 blog posts, written as guidance to those who want to transform themselves into multimedia journalists. Her succinct guide includes tips on blogging, audio interviews, podcasts, photography, and video.

News numeracy: online tools for reporting numbers

Following on from Steve Harrison’s excellent two-part guide on news numeracy, ‘How to: get to grips with numbers as a journalist’, here’s a round-up of some of the best online tools and sites for journalists when reporting figures and stats:

  1. By uploading text or tables you can create simple piecharts to more complex maps or bubble charts. There are also options for text-based visualisations.
      • For creating charts try:
      1. Using a spreadsheet in Google Docs – you can highlight a table of data and select from a range of simple 2d and 3d graphs and charts.
      2. Online spreadsheet service Zoho Sheet (looks similar to Google Docs and requires registration, but claims to allow integration with Microsoft Powerpoint and Excel)
      3. Fusion Charts – for creating interactive, flash charts
      1. Everything you could ever want to know – and more – about using Excel spreadsheets for data analysis and number crunching.
      1. Can be used to track multiple sets of data and present them in a combination of charts, lists and graphics.
      • Helpful lists
      1. Journalism trainer Mindy McAdams has a great round-up of data visualisation resources, including this list of 175+ data and information visualization examples and resources.
      2. 10,000 words offers some inspirational infographics and a ‘how to’ on creating charts.

      Any other tools that you use? Let us know and we’ll add them to the list.

      Benazir Bhutto assassination: the citizen and pro photojournalist takes

      Mindy McAdams has highlighted some interesting pieces of photojournalism documenting the tragic events of last week when Benazir Bhutto was murdered after speaking at an election rally in Rawalpindi.

      Two pieces of work of the same event effectively sum up the citizen vs pro debate.

      The BBC has footage that it claimed shows the assassin firing shots into the back of Bhutto’s head before blowing himself up (effectively debunking the Pakistani authorities’ line that she broke her neck while trying to take cover and evade the bullets).

      As you’d expect it’s grainy, wobbly footage, but that’s not so important as it’s the event rather the quality of the craft that’s makes this compelling.

      Compare that with the professional slideshow put together for the New York Times by the Getty photographer John Moore who was covering the event.

      He gives a spoken first person account as his pictures show the rally, the brutal attack from further back in the crowd and the shocking fallout.

      Look at the video images from the amateur and the powerful stills from the pro, then if you can think of a better more succinct example of how citizen journalism and the work of pro-snappers complement one another, I’d love to hear about it.