Briggs and strategy: an introduction to multimedia

I just finished my first read-through of Mark Briggs’ outstanding introduction to multimedia reporting, “Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive”

Katie Lohrenz, my often-quoted online producer, told me to read it (from a link via Mindy McAdams). Pretty much, whatever Mindy recommends and Katie tells me to do, I do.

Briggs, assistant managing editor at The News Tribune in Tacoma, WA, has written a good primer to journalism in the 21^st Century. It’s a beginners guide in a world where, except for a rare handful of us, we’re all beginners. Briggs’ engaging style makes the leap to multimedia journalism a little less intimidating.

Can you cut a word in your copy and paste it into a different location to help the sentence flow? Then you have what it takes to edit audio and video.

Can you send an attachment with an e-mail? Then you have what it takes to publish a blog with pictures.

Briggs goes on to write:

Go find someone who works on the Web site for a news company. Ask them how they learned to do what they do. In almost all cases I would wager that they are self-taught. It’s simply the result of wanting to learn something new.

That’s the secret: If you truly want to learn how to do digital journalism, you will. Remember, this is about people, not technology.

Briggs covers the basics, from how the web works to how to make your computer-assisted reporting sing on the web and adopting that wire-service mentality to effectively be a breaking on-line newsperson.

Mindy recommended this for students, and it would be a great classroom resource. I’m going to recommend it next month, when I start doing some newsroom training for those who aren’t jumping into the multimedia waters – which is just about everyone.

The guys out there pushing 50, like me, really can benefit from this.