Sona Patel’s Blog

Mark Hiland, senior director of digital operations for The Arizona Republic, held a session today on video storytelling.

I’ve learned a lot in the last year about how to shoot online video, but Mark had some great tips that should be used as guiding principles for shooting an interview:

S: Setting/quiet location

M: Microphone (keep it about four inches away from your subject)

A: Audio levels

C: Composition (have something in the foreground of your frame)

K: Keep monitoring audio levels. Wear headphones!

We spent two days discussing media ethics will Melissa McCoy, who was until this spring, a deputy managing editor of the LA Times. She was in charge of copy desks, standards and the editorial library.

She joined the Times in 1992 and worked as an assistant managing editor, copy desks, foreign desk copy chief, suburban assistant copy chief and metro copy editor.

It was definitely a comprehensive discussion that could have gone on for several hours. Unfortunately we had to stop at some point. We talked about ethical issues surrounding photos, headlines, social media, and terminology. Melissa raised some excellent points that I had never thought of when it comes to what we’re doing on the web.

And ethics isn’t just about what you’re putting in the paper. Employees should know what their internal ethics policies are. Are you familiar with yours? For instance, do you accept freebies? Can you give money to political candidates? There’s no right answer to these questions, just make sure you know what your company’s policy is  … and stick to it!

Keep in mind that the world of print and online really merge. Everything has to have standards, no matter what medium it’sin. Readers are counting on you to use good judgement.  And editing is nothing more than excercising good judgement, she said.

In any situation surrounding ethics, it’s important to remember that “going with you gut” won’t cut it, so you have to always think clearly.

Making good decisions involves a couple factors:

1. What’s my journalistic purpose? For example, would you run a photo of someone committing suicide?
2. What are my concerns?

Going back to to my point about ethics and the Web. The Web is a place where you get into the most trouble because you’re publishing in real time. I’d say things are taken more lightly when it comes to content being posted on the web. Stories go up unedited, headlines are sometimes not double-checked for errors, etc. I think online content producers have the mindset that anything on the web can be easily removed. That’s not necessarily the case, though. The best way to work around ethical questions is to involve others in the decision-making process. That’s difficult these days, mainly because everyone in the newsroom is already multitasking, but certain situations, if handled incorrectly, can hurt your news organization’s credibility.

As Melissa pointed out, credibility is everything.

Accuracy: The single most important application of ethics. Are all your facts correct? Is the story fair and balanced? Remember, if you lose your journalistic integrity, you’ve lost everything.

Tone: Do you use certain words that aren’t needed? For example, do you add unnecessary adjectives in your stories?

Balance: Are you doing enough reporting to ensure that all sides are being represented fairly?

Voice: Editors need to let reporters have a voice. But remember that too much voice = no balance.

Sometimes the best way to achieve transparency in your news organization is to be up front with your readers.

Think about being up front with your readers in the following situations:

1. Manipulating photographs: If you’ve manipulated an image, make sure to explain why. Several major news organizations sometimes use cropped images from several photographs and morph them into some sort of illustration. If you’re going to do that, again, be up front with your readers. You must be careful anytime you’re manipulating images.
2. Inappropriate photos: When might a photo be inappropriate for publication? What if you’re using file art from several years ago to illustrate something that’s happening now? How do you know if you’re crossing the line? (For more on photo ethics, see Maynard fellow Virginia Griffey’s blog post, Ethical use of photos.) She has a comprehensive list of ethical issues surrounding the use of images.

Finally, to the Web. This is an extensive topic that I’ll continue in another post, but for now, remember this: It’s way more important to be right then it is to be first. This is a basic but important concept that tends to be overlooked because the Web is sometimes treated like a mish-mash of content.

More later …

I asked my good friend Joe Ruiz to write a guest post about the benefits of attending local tweetups.  Joe and I were Chips Quinn Scholars in May 2006.  Joe is the nightside editor for KSAT.com in San Antonio, Texas.  Since joining KSAT, Joe has been instrumental in bolstering the station’s presence on Twitter.  He has attended several tweetups in the San Antonio area and has co-hosted a series of workshops on how social media can be used in the newsroom.

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One of the greatest benefits of attending tweetups, be they general or industry-specific, are the connections its possible to create based on common interests.

I was asked to write this guest post based on a tweet I wrote while involved in an argument about industry-specific tweetups and their usefulness.

Personally, I’ve been introduced to work colleagues who have since become friends. As a Web editor, I don’t make it out of the newsroom at all. I don’t think it’s ever a bad idea to know who your competition is, but despite different paychecks, it pays to have some common ground with which to come back. Professionally, I’ve met people who have helped us develop our social media presence in our newsroom with compliments and complaints. We’ve used the same connections to generate story ideas and find new sources for others. I would even count some of the people I’ve met via various tweetups as friends.

After a chance meeting with another presenter for a tweetup of sorts (the Social Media Breakfast of San Antonio), I co-founded a lunch tweetup group based primarily around media, public relations and business professionals, but the lessons and discussions have been for a general audience. In San Antonio, Texas, there’s a handful of standard tweetups (drinks, mingling, etc.) as well as those that offer some sort of lesson. At the San Antonio Media/PR/Business Lunch Tweetups (affectionately known as #SAMPRB), we’ve had such topics as the best tools for using Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools and are planning our next meeting around legal issues surrounding social media and policies in newsrooms, businesses and other places.

You can’t be afraid to give tweetups a try. They’re generally similar to any other social gathering, except this one will likely have a hashtag and people typing away on their phones more. You’ll meet some great people and some not-so-great, you’ll be pitched story ideas, you’ll find overly-confident people and you’ll find the jerks (hell, sometimes that’s me), but you will gain some benefit, even if it’s just meeting another person on any given evening.

One of the best social media-focused newsrooms around is the Austin American-Statesman. They’ve integrated Twitter and other social media tools into their reporting, they’re blogging and they’ve even hosted their own tweetups. I like to cite the Statesman as one of the best around because they’ve been willing to try new ideas and they produce some of the best content while establishing themselves online in a community widely-recognized as one of the most technologically adept cities in the nation. You don’t have to go all out and host tweetups with your organization’s branding, but if you and your newsroom are comfortable with setting one up, it could help establish your presence online and open your content up to an audience who consumes its information in a different form.

Joe Ruiz (@joeruiz on Twitter) is the nightside Web editor for KSAT.com in San Antonio, Texas. He is one of the new media track leaders for the upcoming National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and will serve as an instructor for conference classes on Twitter, livestreaming video for news coverage and other courses.

I keep hearing about how it’s important to brand your newspaper, it’s Web site and your personal image.  I’ve also heard that content is key, but that organization is equally as important.  Those were some of the topics covered by Amy Eisman, director of writing programs at American University in Washington D.C.

Eisman oversees all Writing for Mass Communication classes, according to AU’s Web site.  She teaches reporting, editing and writing for convergent media and created an online course called Media @ the Millenium, which explores the business, technology and audience on journalism.   She was an editor with Gannett for 17 years starting as a cover story editor for USA TODAY, according to her AU biography.

We spent a couple days discussing the Web landscape and how newspaper staffs are being forced to rethink their competition, especially in a converged media landscape.  For example, my newspaper’s competition isn’t just television, but radio, alternative weeklies, blogs, and other publications that offer news.

Eisman pointed out some key points about readers of online news:

1. Readers are “task-oriented” online
2. Content counts
3. Readers don’t mind scrolling if there is desired information down the page
4. “Hello” and “Please” are non-useful words (Avoid things like “please click here.”  You want to guide your user, but keep in mind a simple interface.)
5. The little things are the big things. Pay attention to detail (cutlines, images, design, usability, etc.)

For those who want to learn more about these topics, Eisman suggested the following reading list:

1. What Would Google Do? (By Jeff Jarvis)
2. The Long Tail (By Chris Anderson)
3. Here Comes Everybody (By Clay Shirky)
4. The Wikipedia Revolution (By Andrew Lih)
5. We the Media (By Dan Gillmor)

Eisman pointed out a series of expecations newspaper Web site producers should strive to accomplish and that it’s our responsibility to prioritize these expectations:

1. More visual, more video, better presentation
2. Search Engine Optimization is key (SEO)
3. Aggregation is expected (we as online producers and organizers are the “guides”)
4. Social networking is NOT a fad. Own your brand.
5. User-generated content is key.  Be a part of the conversation. Build on comments, forums, user blogs.
6. Frequent updates (breaking news updates)

She also touched on the importance of transparency between online producers and reporters.  Reporters should know about site metrics, comments and conversations swirling around their stories.  That information could help them determine whether to do a follow up and give them some overall guidance.

Is your news organization transparent with its readers?

I’ll never forget the first time I opened Flash.  It was about a year ago at a multimedia workshop in North Carolina.  For whatever reason I thought it wouldn’t be that difficult to learn.  I was wrong.  Very, very wrong.

It’s a great tool for designers and online storytellers, but the learning curve is incredibly steep.  After taking a gander at it once, I felt compelled to learn how to make a multimedia project.  So I spent a couple weeks teaching myself how to program in Action Script to create dialog boxes and markers on a Google map.  It took forever learning how to code every single detail of a simple dialog box.  ActionScript has to be on of the hardest programming languages out there.

But I still feel like it was worth learning so that I could at least understand how it’s used and what it’s used for.  I also learned how it’s not really worth it to use Flash to create a multimedia project unless you’re anticipating a high ROI.  At a time when newsrooms are struggling to do more with less, it’s always good to keep in mind the time it takes to complete a project.  Ask yourself “can I achieve the same goals by telling my story another way?”

Ever since I attended the Knight Digital Media Center’s Multimedia Training for Journalists in June 2008, I’ve only been able to produce three Flash applications for The Tribune. I’m trying to get into the habit of creating at least one a month so that I don’t forget how to use it and to show other reporters that there are ways to use multimedia to enhance their print stories.

Flash is a good tool to use to create interactive graphics.  But there are drawbacks, including its inability to be recognized by search engines. And you can’t track hits, unless you find a way to embed, let’s say, Omniture code into it.  So is it really worth it to try to teach journalists Flash?  It has its pros and cons, but for the most part, it’s good to at least have a working knowledge of it.  I would not recommend dedicating training sessions geared only towards Flash.  And these days it’s really easy to find great tutorials and programs that will help you achieve your Flash-based storytelling goals.

Here is a list of some great, easy-to-use Flash applications that will come in handy for any journalist. I encourage you to visit these Web sites and play around with the different tools each has to offer.  The best thing about most of these programs is that they’re user-friendly and for the most part, do not require a lot of ActionScript coding (except for AFComponents). By the way, the first Flash project I produced at The Tribune was based on staff photographer Joe Johnston’s one-month journey through India:

My top 5 favorite Flash tutorials and related sites:

1) Knight Digital Media Center’s training pages

Check out their tutorial pages on Flash, audio, video, photography and web design. They even provide downloadable templates which you can use to create your Flash projects. Best of all — it’s FREE!

2) Flash Den

FlasDen isn’t really tailored toward the average journalist, but it’s a great site to check out what you can do in Flash. I’ve come up with quite a few ideas for multimedia projects based off the components I’ve seen on this site.

3) SproutBuilder

SproutBuilder is an excellent program for making customizable widgets for your web page. You can even integrate audio, video, web polls, and other content to your Sprout widget. I’d suggest browsing through the “Recently Built Sprouts” section to get an idea of what you can do with SproutBuilder.

4) UMapper

This program allows you to create embeddable Flash maps for free. If you create a Google map in Flash you’ll have to use Action Script to program the points, dialogue boxes, and the ability to add links, video, and audio. UMapper does that for you and then generates embeddable code. You’ll have to tinker with the KML code and Google API keys (I think) but its doable. Check out some of the maps that have already been created and shared on UMapper. There are a bunch of big newspapers already using this program. I’ve had great success with it. Trust me, you won’t want to program your own map (I once spent five hours writing ActionScript to perfect a small Google map. I’ll never do that again!)

5) Advanced Flash Components

I’ve only used once component off this site, but it seems to have great little video players and cool components for interactive maps (I used the component GMap which is free.) Their customer service will also help you figure out how to work with KML code. They’re great at responding to e-mails.

I’ve used Soundslides Plus several times to make audio slideshows.  I’ve made slideshows using Flash, but after being introduced to SoundSlides from Tribune photographer David Middlecamp, I don’t think I’ll ever go back! We spent most of today practicing sound editing using Amadeus.  I’m used to using Adobe Soundbooth and Pro Tools for editing, so it was good to learn a new program.  Amadeus is free and relatively simple to use. Besides learning how to edit audio clips in Amadeus, Michelle talked about whether it’s OK to enhance audio and the rules on altering audio.  It’s an important detail that can be easily overlooked in the newsroom, especially when using high-end audio editing software that allow you to add scores of effects to your tracks.  Some of those features are tempting, especially when you want to clean up that perfect clip.  The Radio-Television News Directors Association published a series of guidelines to help determine whether you’re going too far with your editing. Here are a few tips for gathering audio out in the field and what you can do in case your audio doesn’t turn out as expected:

Location: Depending on what your story is about, choose a good location for capturing audio.  If you’re doing a man-on-the-street interview, make sure there’s not a truck roaring in the background or a train crossing.  If it happens during the middle of the interview, politely ask your subject to repeat his or her answer.

Microphone: Hold your microphone or audio recorder at a comfortable distance from your subject.  Don’t hold it up too close, but just enough so that your elbow is comfortable and you can still hear the audio at a decent volume level.  Make sure to watch your arm throughout the entire interview.  If you let it drop, you might not be able to hear your subject clearly.  Remember, try to wear headphones whenever possible!

Clean up static: It’s best practice to do whatever you can to capture good audio, but just in case you capture any annoying white noise in the background, there are features in Adobe Soundbooth, Audacity and Amadeus that allow you to clear it up to produce NPR-style audio (after all, that’s always the goal, right?)

After editing our audio tracks, we started assembling our Soundslides projects.  Michelle showed us a Web site that generates embed code for your Soundslides presentation so that you can post your project directly onto your blog or site.  I thought this would be a great tool for some of our Tribune bloggers such as Sarah Linn (who writes She Likes to Watch) and Pat Pemberton (author of Sidetracked) who might want to use Soundslides to create audio slideshows.  Note: your Soundslides project does not need to have audio, hence, a simple slideshow with the beauty of Flash effects.

*Here are a few Web sites for royalty-free music, in case you want to add music to your presentation. Be sure to credit whomever’s music you decide to use!  Most of these sites are based on Creative Commons licensing, which pretty much allows you to share audio selections in exchange for a credit.  However, these licenses allow creators to specify which rights they reserve, so be sure to read the legal terms on each site*

FreePlayMusic.com

FreeSound.org

CreativeCommons.org (I learned about this site after watching the farewell video that The Rocky Mountain News posted on its Web site.  They used music from CC.  The video is excellent because it, in my opinion, demonstrates powerful storytelling on an emotional issue.  You can check it out here.)

Here’s a short Soundslides project on my recent trip to the Pacific Northwest.  I love Seattle and Portland in the fall!

What are your tips for capturing good audio?

I asked my good friend and former colleague, Sarah Arnquist, to write a guest post for my blog based on what she’s learning from the social media/blogger/multimedia gurus at the New York Times where she works on the health desk.  Sarah graduated last month with a master’s in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.  She was The Tribune’s healthcare reporter until May 2008.  Before starting graduate school, Sarah traveled to India for two months to volunteer in a hospital in Hyderabad.  Sarah has dedicated most of her professional career as a journalist to advocating for social justice and healthcare reform.

On a different note, she has been learning about good blog practices from the new media desk at The Times.  Here she talks about linking in blogs and Web sites:

Link etiquette

Targeting your links to open in new tabs is poor web etiquette, according to the New York Times blogmaster.

When I first heard this, my initial reaction was disagreement.  I prefer to open links in separate tabs.  I’ve also seen people who aren’t so web-savvy, like my parents, get confused when they accidentally click out of a site. Finally, when I ran a site that benefited more the longer users stayed on the site, I didn’t want to send them away.

Jeremy Zilar said it’s rude to control your viewers Internet experience. It took me a minute to digest this, but once I heard his full argument, I came around to agree.

Your job as a Web content producer, Zilar said, is to aggregate good information for viewers but allow them stay in control over their web navigation. If you’ve bothered to add a link, it should be worth seeing. Sending viewers away to good sites is part of your job. If you do it well enough, other sites will send them back to you.

If the viewer wants to open it in a new tab, she can easily do that with a keyboard command. And let’s face it, most Internet users today are savvy enough to get back and forth between sites. I prefer to open links in new tabs as to not navigate away from my primary page or site of interest. But that’s my preference. The joy and utility of the Internet is that people determine what content they want, how they want it and when they want it based on their unique preferences. Who am I to impose my preferences on others?

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Sarah poses an interesting question, especially since we’re being taught to open links in a separate page.  What do you think?  How much control should we have over user experience?

<h4>It’s all about HTML</h4>

Week two at the Maynard Multimedia Editing Program is all about skills.  Today’s topic: HTML and Dreamweaver.  Michelle Johnson, journalist in residence at Emerson College in Boson, a former editor of the Boston Globe and boston.com has been teaching us the basics of both.

If you don’t work on your news organization’s Web site, then I think you have little reason to learn HTML, unless you want to build an online portfolio of sorts.  But for journalists and editors working within a Content Management System to post news, certain functions of HTML can be useful to the reader.

I’m writing this post based on what types of tags would be useful for stories posted on my newspaper’s Web site.  These tips can also be useful for creating widgets and breakout boxes within a story.

Creating a hyperlink is probably the most common tag you’ll use:

Then there’s creating an e-mail address.  If the user clicks on the e-mail address: Sona@SonaPatel.net their default e-mail client will open.

HTML can be used to create easy-to-read widgets and breakout boxes online.  We typically include information on directions, hours of operation and contact information in stories.  You can use HTML to create simple breakout boxes that will make the user experience a lot better.  Creating line breaks can be helpful in situations where you have one story with multiple updates.  I think it’s a good idea to separate updates by line breaks.

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There are ways to make bulleted lists, block quotes and numbered lists.  These are great features to use for breakout boxes.

There are other lesser known HTML tags (well, at least I didn’t know about them until today):

Abbreviations
Part of my beat includes covering the LOCSD, which has been in Chapter 9 bankruptcy since August 2006. Since then, they have been trying to building a community WWP.

The <abbr> tag is supported in all major browsers.

Note: The <abbr> tag is not supported in IE 6 or earlier versions.

Strikeout

This command could come in handy in case you want to correct a mistake that has been up on your Web site for awhile.

The robbery happened at 7:30 p.m. 8:30 p.m., according to police.

We wouldn’t necessarily use this in a news story (I prefer Editor’s notes explaining the mistake) but maybe it could come in handy for bloggers?

For tutorials on HTML and CSS, visit www.w3schools.com.

So our Tahoe trip has been postponed because of rain.  Unfortunately, it has been raining in Reno since we arrived last weekend.  Definitely wasn’t expecting that, but I guess we’ll figure out a way to work around it.

We were issued video cameras on Friday to use for our video projects.  I didn’t get a chance to test mine out because we don’t have tapes for them yet, but I’m guessing it’ll function similar to the Sony Hard Disk Drive camera I use at home.  That said, I don’t have a project idea yet.  If you have tips, please share!  I’ll probably do a tourist/destination piece on Lake Tahoe and the area where Bonanza! was filmed.  I’m looking to get more practice on lighting techniques, setting white balance and learning video settings rather than producing content.  Bottom line, I’m trying to get out of my comfort zone!

One of the Maynard Fellows, Henry Lopez, Web editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican, shared some tips on some of the key elements it takes to make a good video.  I learned a lot of those same tips from two multimedia training courses I attended last year: a multimedia bootcamp at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at the Knight Digital Media training at UC Berkeley. John W. Poole, a producer at NPR, taught us several solid techniques, many of which are included below.  As an aside, he is an incredible shooter!

Here’s a list of tips on how to shoot video for the web.  Henry wrote most of them, but I’ve tweaked them a little and added a few of my own points, most of which are in parenthesis.

Story idea: Have an idea of what you expect to get out of the project; be ready to change what you think you’re getting out of the project.  (You can also expect to be in a different setting than originally anticipated so be prepared for that.  Also, make sure to bring a camera cover in case of bad weather.  You don’t want to have to worry about whether you’re going to break your $5,000 camera because it’s getting wet!)

Details: Get close enough to your subject to see details. Remember, Web video requires lots of compression in which detail gets lost so get close enough to capture fine detail that survives compression.

Zooming: Don’t rely on zoom. Think positioning of your body first, zoom second.  (Also, don’t zoom unless you absolutely have to.  Same goes for panning.  Both techniques are used in the making home videos, not for work to be posted on your news organization’s Web site!  I was taught to do it if you have something to actually zoom on, i.e. don’t do it for the special effect.  If you’re going to pan, make sure you have a beginning and end point.)

Watch the sun: Don’t get it behind your subject or they’ll be nothing but a silhouette.  (Also, don’t underestimate the amount of light in a room.  Make sure to have the proper lighting!)

…Watch the sun: Get it behind your subject when you want to create a dramatic silhouette.

Sound: Hush! Nothing will frustrate you more than hearing uh-huh, mm-hmm and yeah on your audio track. (Also make sure to avoid unnecessary background noise.  If a car drives by, politely interject and ask the subject to repeat his or her answer.  If you’re interviewing inside a home, politely ask if the subject would be willing to turn off, let’s say, the refrigerator, to eliminate any humming, buzzing, or clicking in the background.  Also, lapel mics should be fed inside clothing.  It’s a bit of an inconvenience for your subject, but it looks so much better on the screen.)  Oh, and have a microphone.  You. must. have. an. external. microphone! The only thing worse than a bad video is bad audio.

Get comfortable with your subjects: Talk to your subjects before turning on the camera. Know what they’re going to say, then let them say it on camera. Then shut up! Let them talk until they’re done. (I’ve always politely asked my subjects to repeat the question when they give an answer so as to get a full sound byte I can use.  Some people may disagree, but it’s better than coming back with a good soundbyte that I can’t use because it has no context.)

Be upfront: Tell subjects why you’re making this video and where it will appear. Don’t ambush them and don’t assume they know anything about digital journalism. Unless you’re ambushing them. (Haha. This is a good point.  I always keep my biz card handy to distribute in situations like this.  Not only am I informing them, but I’m giving them a reason to go to my Web site!  This way, they also know you’re legit.)

Holding your camera: Use two hands to hold a camera. Small tripods work great. Turn with your body, not your hands. (Excellent point.  DO NOT use the strap on camcorders.  I guarantee you’ll return to the newsroom with home video-style footage.  Instead, hold the camera close to your body.  Yes, you might have to hold your breath if you’re trying to be extremely still, but in most cases, a tight grip should work.  And be prepared to stand, sit, squat in uncomfortable positions to capture several angles.  And don’t underestimate the value of a tripod.  You may think you’re holding the camera steady, but there’s always that slight shakiness!)

Headphones: Wear headphones to hear sound as you’re recording it. This might not be possible on a great many cameras. (This way you can hear whether you have the proper audio levels set on your camera.)

Practice: Make videos of your dogs and cats when you get home. They won’t judge you and they’ll give you lots of material to work with.  (Be sure to practice wide, medium and tight shots.  Film in different parts of your home to see how it sounds when the refridgerator is humming, the washing machine is vibrating and there are people talking in the background.  It’ll give you a sense of what you’ll need your room to sound like if you’re interviewing inside a home.)

… Relax: It’ll be OK (Best tip of all!)

For more great tips on shooting video, check out the Knight Digital Media Center’s online tutorials for purchasing video equipment, shooting and related links.  Feel free to share your favorite resources on shooting video for the web.