Multimedia Reporter

How a teenager's tweet turned on our newsroom to Storify

2012-01-14T10:21:00.000-08:00

When I first began this journey into multimedia journalism, I wanted to use a combination of text and video to tell stories. My goal was to create a text story that would replace printed quotes with videos, so people could actually watch and hear soundbites from courtroom testimony, attorney arguments or judges' rulings. I never got around to it, for one because it was too time consuming, and I

Summer multimedia lessons: coming full circle

2011-07-27T18:32:00.000-07:00

It's really been an incredible summer. Amid 10 days of triple-digit heat in Kansas, I've received a few signs that maybe I'm starting to do things right. Like video. When I started this blog in 2007, there were few places to learn how to add multimedia to your work day. I searched the web to learn video and found Angela Grant's News Videographer blog. I sent Angela my videos and she critiqued

What to do when your boss hands you a flip cam

2011-02-23T18:56:00.000-08:00

It’s going to happen eventually, if it hasn’t already. Newsrooms are going to start handing out flip cameras to reporters. It doesn’t have to be an actual Flip cam. Hopefully, it will be a Kodak Zi8 or something else with an audio input, where you can connect a microphone and get decent sound. There will be snickers from some in what was formerly known as the photo department. People will

Planning an investigative project for the home page, not just the front page

2011-02-17T10:12:00.000-08:00

At 3 a.m. last Sunday, I put the final touches on the multimedia project I’d been working on for months, squeezing it between daily assignments. “Presumed Guilty,” was live on the web. It’s about Ronnie Rhodes, who’s spent 30 years in prison for a crime he says he didn’t commit, and the disturbing nationwide exposure of wrongful convictions. For the first time, I had spent more than a year

Creating video out of little more than audio

2011-01-04T18:55:00.000-08:00

Over at my work blog, I've been working on this investigative report of a 30-year-old murder that has sent a man to prison for a crime he claims he didn't commit. In the course of those posts, I've been using multimedia to tell the story, but it's produced its own particular challenges. There aren't a lot of visuals left from a crime that happened in 1981. But I did land a phone interview from

Outside the job: multimedia for fun

2010-11-08T07:26:00.000-08:00

My colleague Jaime Green has inspired and encouraged me in my pursuit of multimedia storytelling over the past several years. Jaime does videos for work at the Eagle, but she also does them for fun, to document her life. So when she suggested I do a video for the craziness that is Halloween on the street where I live, I took her up on it. Note: We have about 3,000 trick-or-treaters on our

Two news comment policies to enhance the dialogue

2010-10-18T10:11:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, my old employer and hometown news source instituted a new policy on comments -- for its staff. I thought it odd that in 2010, editors would have to encourage reporters to monitor the comments on their stories. We should be doing that already. But working in a newsroom in a city roughly twice the size of my hometown, I'm one of the few reporters who actively comment on their

The ultimate in mobile: Multimedia with an I-Phone

2010-10-11T08:53:00.000-07:00

Andy Bull has set up a course on producing multimedia reports with an I-Phone. It begins Oct. 15. Andy said it will cover both the tools and apps with the I-Phone as well as creating a platform to showcase your work. (via Sonya Smith at Mojos Unite!) Get a good head start on hardware and apps to turn your I-Phone into an essential multimedia tool, courtesy of Multimedia Shooter.

Hot links: the journalism sessions I couldn't attend in Vegas

2010-10-08T21:02:00.000-07:00

NO PLACE LIKE HOME, KS -- The SPJ Convention has been over for days but people are still talking and blogging about what they learned. And we can catch up on the sessions we missed. Among them: Deb Wenger reports on a talk by CNN International's Etan Horowitz: Used to be, broadcasters tried to put TV on the web. Now they put social media on the air. Wenger also adds info on Victor Hernandez’s

This is also CNN: getting out of the way of innovation

2010-10-06T21:08:00.000-07:00

LAS VEGAS -- After blowing up their silos, CNN began hiring All-Platform Journalists, or APJs. They do about everything, but don't call them one-man bands. That'll just rile up Victor Hernandez, who thinks it makes them sound like a carnival act, instead of the innovative, hard-working reporters they really are. Hernandez talked a lot about being "platform agnostic" at the SPJ National

How CNN rethinks its newsroom

2010-10-06T09:01:00.000-07:00

Updated LAS VEGAS -- The struggle is one felt in newsrooms across the nation. The demand to change is there. We hear it from our audience. They consume news differently than they did. They want more. They want different. But newsroom structures and old habits are difficult to overcome. “We’ve always done it this way,” becomes a mantra. Those who try to innovate may face hurdles from their own

Journalists' signal to noise ratio for Twitter

2010-10-04T12:35:00.000-07:00

LAS VEGAS -- Even as Twitter becomes more popular among journalists, a lot of people still have problems figuring out just how they should use it. Some insist on posting only links and pushing out information, not engaging in the conversation. Others have questions about including both professional and personal information. In his session this morning on social engagement for journalists at the

What happens in Vegas gets blogged

2010-10-03T08:13:00.000-07:00

I'm headed to Las Vegas today for the Society of Professional Journalists National Convention. I'll blog what I'm learning, and I always pick up some valuable tips. SPJ provides some cutting edge sessions. You can also follow the #spj10 hashtag on Twitter to see what everyone is talking about. If you're in Vegas, send me a message on Twitter or stop by the 60 Sites in 60 Minutes session I'm

Make an editor happy: take a picture with your phone

2010-10-02T13:30:00.000-07:00

Today, I covered a drowning in the river that runs through our downtown. I did the normal coverage of an event. I sent updates to the web and tweeted it. Our photographer had a good vantage point on the other side of the river, but I knew he had no way to post. I held up my Blackberry and took a picture, then sent it to our online team. It wasn't a great photo, and I couldn't crop it on my

Getting to the source documents

2010-10-01T12:07:00.000-07:00

It started out as the easiest "web extra." That's what our bosses used to call it in the ol' days of the 1990s. What can you put on the news web site that increased the value of the print story? Links and source documents, of course. Links to relevant material and .pdfs of research documents to show people we just weren't making all this up. The links caught on. People made careers of compiling

Tangled up in multimedia blues

2010-09-27T13:00:00.000-07:00

I used to have to have only a notebook and pen. Now, I need a video camera, an audio recorder, Blackberry, and various headphones and battery chargers. My desk is a mess, and I sometimes find myself tripping over wires and tangled up amid the mess that is my desk. Shuffling papers is one thing. Untangling wires consumes my time. Anyone have ideas for controlling my tangled life?

Taking a chance: recording audio and video separately

2010-09-24T16:31:00.000-07:00

For the past year, I've been trying to find the best way to get decent audio from the courtroom for my video blog. I thought I'd get a free lesson earlier this year, when the murder trial of a local abortion doctor drew national attention. I asked the audio experts on the production crew for CNN/Court TV their secret. The answer: they wire the courtroom with a dozen microphones. So much for

The technology of storytelling

2010-08-18T16:26:00.000-07:00

I’m really not one to talk about staying with the basics. As this blog shows, I love new tools. I love the gadgets available to us as journalists. But one piece of this I haven’t lost is the love of reporting and telling a good story. That transcends technology, whether scrawling pictures on a cave wall or putting together a multimedia package. Marc Cooper makes the point again that, as this

Rolling out the investigative blog

2010-07-07T12:31:00.000-07:00

After using twitter to cover live events, such as trials, I’d been thinking about what it would be like to have an investigative report unfold online as it happened. Those kinds of reports take time, however, and you can go weeks and months with nothing happening. Sometimes, it takes months of pre-reporting in your spare time to find out if a story is even worth pursuing. Banging it out 140

Quick lessons in newsroom geek speak

2010-06-29T19:43:00.000-07:00

Ever see Twitter posting minutes after you’ve tweeted? May be something with the API. Hear folks talking about cloud computing and not sure what they mean? Create a Google Doc, and you’re doing it. Wonder what the hell I’m talking about? Poynter has the answers with a “Digital Journalist Survival Guide: A Glossary of Tech Terms You Should Know.” It will help you understand what your web team.

Ways to use Tumblr for journalism

2010-06-26T13:15:00.000-07:00

I signed up for Tumblr about the same time I signed up for Twitter three years ago. But basically I’ve just used the tumblelog for personal musings. It’s another great platform for microblogging, including photos, videos and short text posts, and people can comment quickly, “liking” your post, as on Facebook, or “reblogging” it to others. Now, Chris Cameron reports, larger news outlets are

Of video blogging and emerging narratives

2010-06-11T12:49:00.000-07:00

I participated community session on blogging with colleague Carrie Rengers and Bobby Rozzell. Bobby has a great project, where he's indexed our city's blogs. I've posted the slides from my slice of the presentation, with links and videos to the multimedia approach I used with the development "Common Law" video series of our court system. The slides include various links and examples used in the

'Link journalism' means remembering the links

2010-06-07T19:01:00.000-07:00

Reading Danny Sullivan’s “How the Mainstream Media Stole Our News Story Without Credit,” my first thought was: “Dude, I feel you pain: about 30 years of it.” I can’t count the number of times I’ve busted my butt to turn out an exclusive story, only to see a broadcast outlet swipe my hard-earned facts, with no new reporting, and use it as their own. Without credit. Then there’s the age-old

A pocketful of software just for journalists

2010-04-13T12:15:00.000-07:00

Here’s a useful new tool that fits in your pocket: a USB loaded with software you may need while working on computers in other places. Josh Sprague, writing for Mediactive, has compiled an interesting list of applications for both consuming and producing media, that fits on a USB drive, and he shows you how to load up your own. An interesting workaround to problems you might encounter working

Multimedia workflow presentation for SPJ Regional

2010-04-11T10:40:00.000-07:00

Below is a copy of my presentation weekend at the Society of Professional Journalists Region 7 conference in Omaha, NE, One thing about PowerPoint: it’s easy to share them later, via SlideShare. All the links work. The videos don't, although I was able to upload the one about the lawyer searching for witnesses in Africa. It will play if you click past the slide to the next slide. Here is the

Why I love my Twitter followers

2010-03-31T12:30:00.000-07:00

I’ve been drawing a paycheck as a journalist for 33 years now, and for all of the past three I never knew if anyone really read anything I’d reported unless they were angry. That changed the past three years, when I began reporting via Twitter. Until then, the only feedback journalists got were usually a letter to the editor or a short, terse phone call. Over the phone, you could hear them

Photo galleries show cool way to display writing, too

2010-03-11T12:15:00.000-08:00

Photographers love photo galleries. It really shows off their work. Online editors love photo galleries, because it builds up page views with each click. Now writers can use galleries to great effect. See what MSNBC did with a gallery in telling the narrative of one of the richest, and most reclusive, women in the America. The photos themselves may not have been strong enough to stand lone

The new front pages, going viral and the myth of the nut graph

2010-03-09T08:30:00.000-08:00

The story of the 102-year-old judge was almost an after-thought. The goal was to get U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown on video. But what happened from that exploded on our web site. I’d first interviewed Brown when he was a spry 93. No one at my news organization had ever profiled the judge appointed for a life term by President John F. Kennedy. Judge Brown still worked full-time, took the

Banned in Baltimore: Some thoughts on social media and a free press

2010-03-01T10:37:00.000-08:00

I’ve been getting phones calls lately asking what I think about the decision by a Baltimore judge to ban cell phones and social networking from the courtroom. As I recently told a reporter from the Baltimore Sun, Twitter and other social networks have broadened public access trials, and that’s a good thing. More people now are getting their news on their cell phones, and they’re getting it

Why I was the only reporter allowed to tweet from the courtroom during the Roeder trial

2010-02-04T20:57:00.000-08:00

From the World Series to murder trials, the bigger the event, the tougher it is to cover. I’ve done both a seven-game World Series and murder cases drawing national attention. You always have to find space to operate between all the reporters, and in both events, everyone is seeing the same thing and it’s tough to come up with a fresh angle. As the reporter pool grows, there are more

Textual healing: The Roeder trial ends with a shot for out web site

2010-02-01T22:21:00.000-08:00

Covering a murder trial can be as invigorating as it is grueling. The pressure increases when that trial becomes a national story, as it did with Scott Roeder, convicted of murdering Wichita abortion provider George Tiller. As I said last week, I was assigned to report for web only. Another reporter took care of the print story. I did what I had been doing for the past two years of court

Reporting for web only during the Scott Roeder murder trial

2010-01-24T11:12:00.000-08:00

My first day as a web-only reporter ended promptly at 5 p.m. – a rarity in my three decades of journalism. That’s when court let out in the Scott Roeder murder trial in the shooting of a Wichita abortion doctor. It has been receiving national coverage. I had been accustomed to staying late after court to rewrite the day’s events on the web for print. But for this trial another reporter is

Don't wait until the end of the reporting to think multimedia

2010-01-19T19:35:00.000-08:00

When it comes to multimedia, journalists should think out a story in an inverted pyramid. But we don’t, especially in investigative or enterprise stories. We’re used to digging for the story over days, weeks, and months. Yes, some of have spent years on a story. We’ve got piles of documents, stacks of notebooks, and we’re ready to write. Then the online producer asks, “What else have you got?”

Prying the print byline from the hands of an old newspaper reporter

2010-01-18T09:28:00.000-08:00

Last week began the trial of Scott Roeder, the accused killer of a Wichita abortion doctor. It’s the latest story I’ve covered through my courts beat that has gained national attention (strange how many national crime stories have come out of Wichita). The trial is still in jury selection so the true onslaught of national media has not yet arrived, but we’ve already been

Using Google Wave as an interview tool

2009-10-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

Last week, I may have conducted the first ever news interview using Google Wave. At least the first interview in Wichita, KS. Google Wave is currently being tested and accounts are available by invitation. No, I can't send you an invitation, because I wasn't one of the cool kids first invited to use it. I believe most were web developers. They got the invitations to distribute, and local web

Communication Week: Surfing the government online

2009-10-13T19:48:00.000-07:00

There's a ton of information on the web about how your government works, if you know where to look. To guide you, here are some links presented in a panel Wednesday at Wichita State University during its Communication Week. National Centers for Disease Control Library of Congress Census Bureau CIA Library Bureau of Labor Statistics Bureau of Justice Statistics Drug Enforcement

Links for WSU Class

2009-09-22T07:11:00.001-07:00

Today I'm speaking to two journalism classes at Wichita State University about multimedia journalism, what I'm doing and ideas about what they should explore. Here's the list of links I'm using for future reference. The basics Print? Broadcast? Social Media Journalism Student blogs and pages My Kansas.com blog Example of a personal site Linked-In Some hot journalism tools (of the moment)

Size doesn't matter: Why metrics are no longer important to my beat blog

2009-09-17T19:03:00.000-07:00

John Ensslin and I were talking over lunch at the National Journalism Conference last month in Indianapolis, pondering why the numbers on our news blogs weren't soaring as they did on the daily stories we posted off the crime beat. We're both courthouse reporters. John produces " for the Colorado Springs Gazette. I do "What the Judge Ate for Breakfast for the Wichita Eagle. Like most news sites

Getting videos even your photographer buddies will think is cool

2009-09-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

Face it, as reporters we are still on the low end of priorities when it comes to video. Yes, it's now a requirement for us to know how to shoot, capture and edit video stories in a multimedia world. But try arm-wrestling for equipment, and you're going to lose to the real photographers in the newsroom, whose jobs are increasingly dependent on video expertise. And they should. I'm not one to

So then I started this video series to expand the coverage of my beat

2009-09-14T10:08:00.000-07:00

After the Twitter experiment worked, I began searching for other ways to expand my court beat online. What I really wanted to do is reach past the types of cases that usually made news. There's so much that goes on in the courthouse everyday, you can't cover it all. But I figured the web enabled me to go beyond what I used to do when I only had the newspaper, and its limited space, as a venue.

60 sites in 60 minutes: stampeding the SPJ Convention

2009-09-01T00:16:00.000-07:00

Jeff Cutler and I were overwhelmed by the response to our session Saturday at the SPJ National Convention. "Site Stampede: 60 web sites in 60 minutes" drew a large, lively crowd anxious to learn what we'd linked to around the web. You can download a copy of the links (.doc) and Mitch Davis posted a series of videos, for those who couldn't attend. We're hoping to do it again next year in Vegas.

And now I return to where I started as a multimedia reporter

2009-09-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

I come back to this blog, and really I realize I never should have left. This is where I started my journey into a new era of journalism that many my age found frightening. I feel like I've come a long way in the past two years. I made many new friends. I discovered Twitter, which brought me to a new level of reporting and may have saved my career. I've talked to journalists around the country

Pushing Twitter trial coverage a step forward: federal court

2009-02-26T03:48:00.000-08:00

In less than a year, covering trials via Twitter has gone from an experiment to one of my regular reporting tools. With each new trial, I've gained about 100 followers - both locally and even from other countries - and that doesn't count the people who watch it from our news web site or on my work blog. The reaction has been stunning at times. Other news sites, notably the Orange County

To be a journalist: to publish, to benefit a community

2009-01-22T23:18:00.000-08:00

Used to be, we needed people who owned big printing presses or big towers in order to be journalists. But today, when most people are getting their information online, anyone can publish content. The business of big media is watching their stocks fall, while watching the rise of citizen journalists. But what is a citizen journalist, and what makes them different from professional journalists.

Seeing the future of journalism, and trying to save it, in Denver

2008-12-16T10:30:00.000-08:00

The Denver Press Club recently invited me to participate in a weekend workshop looking at the future, and the precarious present, of journalism. Denver Channel 8 taped my presentation and put it online. My wife found it stunning that, 1) anyone would invite me to visit their city to talk about Twitter and 2) broadcast it on TV. I also got a chance to talk to newsrooms of both the Denver Post

Jon Stewart asks his "depressing riddle" about newspapers

2008-12-10T21:22:00.000-08:00

"What's black and white and completely over?" Jon Stewart asked last night on the "Daily Show." We knew the answer before he said it. Here's the video. It smarts. But good satire is that way. That's why we're learning these skills for online. But still, it smarts.

The rise of social media and the demise of newspapers

2008-12-05T06:23:00.000-08:00

I remember a kind of panic going through the newspaper industry -- around 1989. Young people weren't reading newspapers, and there was a great amount of money being spent trying to figure out how to change that. "How are we going to get the next generation to read the newspaper?" publishers asked. They spent a lot of money making youth-oriented sections for newspapers that went unread. Now we

The big digital news of today: Spot.us launches

2008-11-10T22:23:00.000-08:00

Just in case you haven't seen it yet, the non-profit Spot.us launched this week - the very definition of civic journalism. Brought to you by David Cohn, a.k.a "DigiDave," he describes the idea behind it this way: "Journalism is a process not a product, but that process takes time and people who do it professionally need to be compensated. The process of journalism should be participatory - and

Who are we trying to reach by video: journalism, the audience or ourselves

2008-10-30T16:12:00.000-07:00

As journalists, we sometimes let a good story get in the way of the news. That tendency has plagued us, as we’ve moved to multimedia platforms. Fortunately, the people we are trying to serve with information have a way of keeping us grounded. Remember a few years ago, when everybody was preaching narrative writing? The inverted pyramid was declared dead, a relic of the past. Then something

Journalists' should make sure their voices are heard in community conversations

2008-10-25T15:51:00.000-07:00

I'm catching up on reading, and blogging, after knee surgery. Still a little loopy on the pain meds, but I'll see if I can patch together some coherent sentences. I watched this video interview with social media guru Howard Rheingold. He's talking about libraries here, but what he says about their mission is much the same, I believe, as journalists. Journalism is more than a TV clip or

Talking Twitter with BeatBlogger about microblogging the news

2008-09-28T19:48:00.000-07:00

Patrick Thornton of Beatblogging.org called last week to talk about how I use Twitter to cover trials. It resulted in this post and podcast. Also look up Patrick on Twitter @jionoclast.

Hot links this week on online journalism

2008-09-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

Jack Lail says "We'd get more readers if we gave them less frickin' news to read": “The news junkies, however, are the users that move the metrics and we focus even more on what they want because they are generating more pageviews and longer times on site. And thus we have less of what more casual news consumers want. Sort of like drinking ourselves to death?” "We Were Print" – the blog of “

Best of online journalism: from D.C. to Middletown

2008-09-16T23:19:00.000-07:00

"Fixing D.C. Schools" is the kind of project I still remember seeing for the first time on Washington Post.com. It covered every aspect of the public schools in D.C., from the maintenance of the school halls to student scores. It told stories across the multimedia platforms. No surprise it won the Knight Award for Public Service during the Online Journalism Awards. See the awards site for

SPJ Convention all a-Twitter with new media and online journalism learning

2008-09-09T03:29:00.000-07:00

Random notes from the SPJ National Convention which ending Sunday … Some SPJ members may see the organization as still being for a bunch of old newspaper dudes. You may think curmudgeons rule, but you couldn’t tell that by attending the workshops and sessions in Atlanta. “People are getting new media here and loving it,” Molly McDonough said. “I don’t get that back in my newsroom.” I would agree

I'm moving

2007-09-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

The Society of Professional Journalists asked me recently if I'd consider moving my posts over to its blogosphere. As a national board member of SPJ and a longtime member, I jumped at my friend Chrisine Tatum's invitation.A couple of other reporters are joining me at Technolo-J. The content will be the same, but with three of us posting, hopefully there will be more information and more

For anyone who has had to sit through a bad PowerPoint

2007-09-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

Here's one to enjoy over the long weekend (via Cyberjournalist.net)

It's all about content

2007-08-27T20:28:00.000-07:00

One of the ways I’ve continued to learn about multimedia is through the comments people leave on this blog about their own experiences. Robert Cronkleton of the Kansas City Star is the latest to share his early ventures into multimedia reporting. Robert collected audio of candidates for fire chief in Kansas City,

Deciding what to show and what to tell

2007-08-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

When I’m taking a new path, it’s helpful for me to find one that's comfortable. The first computer-assisted reporting project I tried 10 years ago analyzed restaurant health inspections – along with about every other CAR newbie in the country. I’d written about the so-called “CSI Effect” from a courtroom perspective. But I’d always wanted to shadow a crime scene investigator and show, not

Staring down the deadline

2007-08-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

Today, I filed. Not that my project is completely finished. There’s still the usual work, such as answering editors’ endless questions and endlessly debating whether the nut graph really exists or is just a figment of their imaginations. This was an attempt at putting together a multimedia package.

Failure is just a state of mind

2007-08-20T20:15:00.000-07:00

I didn’t want to listen to the nearly four hours of audio and video I’d recorded for my most ambitious multimedia project yet. After all, I hadn’t even listened to myself. I had learned the rules dutifully, and I had passed them through this blog and to colleagues. I’d just finished a brownbag

Quit fretting and just push 'record' already

2007-08-09T20:19:00.000-07:00

“What do we do now?” That was the question after I gave my first audio training to reporters at The Eagle today. We started with audio, because I continue to read and believe, it's the first and most important skill we can develop. People may forgive bad video, some dangling participles, average photos. But hurt their ears and they will turn

Almost live from Wichita

2007-07-31T19:44:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Ryan Sholin’s running commentary, I thought trying to cover something live looked fun. So I gave it a shot. Armed with my new smart phone, I figured I do what I could to cover a news conference this morning as live as possible. My foldable bluetooth keyboard was still on order, so I typed out a few paragraphs with my thumbs and

Briggs and strategy: an introduction to multimedia

2007-07-25T18:11:00.000-07:00

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. I was glad that I had been packing my briefcase over the past several months with microphones and at least a cheap digital

Breaking news without video, and still drawing hits

2007-07-18T21:41:00.000-07:00

I returned from vacation to one of those two-week periods where the news broke at such a hectic pace that the days ran together, prompting calls from the copy desk late on a Monday night asking “Ron, did you really mean to say Friday, or did you mean Monday?” Two local stories kept me on Page 1 and too damned tired at the end of each day to write

The way it ought to work

2007-07-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

I'm on vacation this week, kicking back at a lake in the beautiful hills of Arkansas, with my wife and the five children in our extended family. But I didn't want the blog to go neglected too long ...On my last assignment before vacation, I covered a celebration U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown, who is still active at age 100. Judge Brown is quite a character and still well respected withing

No comment, please, thank you, no comment, no...

2007-06-29T22:21:00.000-07:00

There was no video or audio, because the judge in juvenile court decided it was better to sentence the 16-year-old girl who killed her father without pictures and sound. I covered the story as I had other court stories for years.It was one of those stories, that after you were through, your stomach hurt. I should have taken time to ask myself: "Could that story turn

Quest for maps

2007-06-22T17:53:00.000-07:00

It’s easy to be seduced by video and audio slide shows. They are like magic to print reporters who, until now, have been confined to words and the dreaded “info” boxes to relay information. But multimedia isn’t just about pictures that move or fade, zoom or pan. We now have all sorts of tools to convey a story. We don’t have to do this all by

Meanwhile, back in video class

2007-06-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

Whenever I hear about basic video shots, I think of the old television show “Dragnet.” I brought this up in our video training class the other day, and Stacey, our instructor, and everyone else looked at me strange – except for our photo editor Brian Corn, who has been around as long as I have. Not that I remember the first-run “Dragnet.” I did

A wicked, cool, awesome, video

2007-06-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

If you haven't checked out the "On Being" series at the Washington Post, it's a very cool project.And this one in particular is one you should watch:Of course, I'm biased. Jessica is my stepdaughter. I had nothing to do with any of this, except that I was smart enough to marry her mother. Still, we're all very proud.Oh, and to make this a tiny bit instructive, Jessica said she spent about two

We've got training

2007-06-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

The problem is not that we aren’t eager. People are begging to learn about multimedia, especially video, as Angela Grant pointed out recently. What they're not receiving is training. Although decision makers in newsrooms move more slowly, we're scrambling to learn as much as we can as quickly as we can. I’m not talking about federal prosecutors in California – I’m talking about sports brass. One of the most hit-on news briefs at Kansas.com this past Sunday

You mean, people actually watch this stuff?

2007-06-09T10:54:00.000-07:00

Starting out in multimedia, especially at a newspaper that is just beginning to dabble in it, can be a humbling experience. Since I’ve been concentrating on learning how to add audio slide shows and video to my reporting, I’ve written shorter stories for the print newspaper, or helped other reporters produce segments for their stories. Others may

"The Pulitzers are history"

2007-06-07T08:30:00.000-07:00

From Salon, that was our favorite acceptance speech from the 11th Annual Webby Awards this week. All speeches are limited to five words.I’ve always thought that we should compare oursevles to the best. I’m always looking to see who's excelling in what I want to do, so I pass along inspiration from the Webbys.Salon shared best magazine honors with the always inspirational MediaStorm (Speech: "

They call me MISTER tripod

2007-06-06T05:22:00.000-07:00

Hillman Curtis predicts in his book “On Creating Short Films for the Web” that video will take over from Flash as the main tool for driving on-line media. Curtis was one of the developers of Flash and one of the top web designers, doing little sites like Yahoo! I didn’t learn Flash. Maybe I should learn video. I am, after all, a storyteller, a reporter, so I should at least become familiar

Bringing it into autofocus

2007-06-04T14:23:00.000-07:00

Angela Grant alertly saw where I was heading with this thread, and as usual is a step or two ahead of me, aptly asking: “But what were you thinking of using that audio for?” I have been harping on audio from the outset of this young blog, because I was most comfortable wading into multimedia by collecting source documents and audio. Reporters have been recording interviews for years, and with

Talk dirty to me

2007-06-02T14:49:00.000-07:00

Face it, some days you just can’t get out of the office. These days of cell phones and BlackBerries make it easier to stay connected, but sometimes more difficult to set up that face-to-face interview. And if we’re out to get good audio for our multimedia reports, it helps to be able to set up your microphone in a quiet, almost studio-like environment and get a pristine voice from an expert

Hard day's night

2007-06-01T16:58:00.000-07:00

I wrote a 27-inch story and cut five related audio slide shows this week. Then I gladly took some vacation days I’d scheduled to go out of town with my family. I needed it. I’ve spent some amount of time asking myself if it was worth it, as others in newsrooms across the country, sit happily, as they always have, writing print stories and not worrying about audio, video and other such geekdom.

Be patient: The future isn't coming so fast you can't catch up

2007-05-30T05:56:00.000-07:00

There are some days I yearn for the days of a notebook and a pen. Those days were relatively easy: jot down notes, write a story. Well, writing is never easy. “Just sit down at a typewriter and open a vein,” said Red Smith. Producing multimedia projects some days, I would say, would be like

Our first multimedia project

2007-05-26T16:48:00.000-07:00

I learn by example and improve through feedback. I’m getting much of the former but too little of the latter, since I ventured into an emphasis on multimedia journalism. When writing stories for 1A, I could get feedback by going out for breakfast. People would be talking about the story at the diner. Readers would e-mail me. A teenager had fallen into a river outside Wichita, and emergency crews staged a daring rescue amid a raging undertow, worsened by the high waters from this spring’s notorious Kansas storms. An alert

Way-cool tool

2007-05-23T18:49:00.000-07:00

Here’s something that fits everything multimedia into your back pocket with all the convenience of a notebook.It’s the Nokia 93I: the latest generation of smartphone. I don’t have one, yet, but it looks impressiveThe N93i has a screen that flips 160 degrees and gives you a viewfinder for a video camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, which is what comes with the Sony camcorders.Pair it with a bluetooth

Put down the notebook, step away slowly and no one will get hurt

2007-05-22T20:01:00.000-07:00

A reporter frantically runs up to the on-line news desk.“My editor just asked me: What’s the online component for my story?” the reporter gasps. As the reporter shakes, eyes shut, clicking heels together and muttering “There’s no place like home...” we say, take a deep breath; this is going to be easy. Or so we think. “First,” we say, “record

Docs to go

2007-05-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

Wear a flash drive around your neck.That's the great advice of Mike McGraw, a Pulitzer-winning special projects reporter with the Kansas City Star. He stopped by Wichita for the National Writers Workshop here this past weekend, then gave another ses-sion Monday for staffers here at The Eagle.The reporting veteran of 35 years said he often finds himself talking to a source who says, “Well, I have

Is "text" a verb?

2007-05-21T21:49:00.000-07:00

My wife and I use text messages all the time. She’s a lawyer. I cover courts. One of us is usually in a courtroom. We coordinate schedules, pick up kids, make plans. Did I mention we use them all the time? Then we got our monthly bill. I had 500 text messages. Gaye had 500. Garrett, the high school senior, had 3,500 - more than 100 a day. Thankfully, we have unlimited use of text

Having the time of my life

2007-05-20T12:39:00.000-07:00

The edict came down at The Wichita Eagle, as it did , or will, in newsrooms across the country: you will be concentrating more on-line the coming year. As the announcement was made this past November, I saw my colleagues around me, their eyes either glazing over or their faces turning ashen.No one really knew what it meant. Would everyone be required to learn to shoot and edit video? Sound? What