Better late than never....Flash!

Even as someone who's almost totally computer illiterate, I can see all kinds of benefits to Flash journalism. When we learned about the process of creating Flash in class, it became very obvious that these methods of portraying information are the most effective in terms of interaction, which is a major bonus. Flash allows the reader to pick and choose what information they want, what they want expanded on, and what they'd rather not bother with reading. This sort of flexibility is the focus of 21st century journalism. When readers are pressed for time, they want the option of only reading the parts of the story that interest them most, and being able to roll over areas of interest for more information or click on certain places to view relevant links is ideal. Although it's tricky to create (at least for a beginner like me!) I can definitely see the benefits of Flash journalism

Design

As someone who is not exactly what one would call "technically inclined," I have never tried to create a website. Reading these hints were really helpful to me, since I've never really thought about even basic design elements. I really liked how the authors of the design book made everything so user-simple and avoided confusing terminology: nothing hard to understand about contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. I thought the focus on alignment was especially helpful, since I probably would have done exactly the wrong thing and centered the whole website if I hadn't read these chapters. Looking at the before/after examples really helped show how much better simple left alignments look. The authors also explained this is an easy way to convey information more simply, which is very important. Other important tips I gained were to avoid using borders around text, something else I would have been tempted to do, and how to manipulate the HTML page to change the spacing between "break" and "paragraph." I won't lie, it terrifies me a little to try to change the coding, but I'll be brave and give it a try. Finally, as I was having a little trouble understanding the concept of how to use repetition without being boring, I really liked the rooftop example. The same elements and colors were used, but in ways that adapted to the needs of every page. Clever!

writing for the visual media

Reading the articles over how to write for the visual media reminded me of a project we used to do in my grade school. Once a year we had a writing competition, and before writing your story you were given an 8-frame piece of paper and asked to draw out your story. Preparing for writing a video package is similar. According to the article by Fred Shook, the most important part of preparation is defining a clear beginning, middle and end. The best lead-ins jump straight to the point and do not include lengthy introductions which may not really add much or inform the viewer. Also, Shook made the point that a solid close is the difference between a story drifting off and really ending decisively. The close, of course, should reinforce the purpose and focus of the story. And, as Lynda always ways, use lots of natural sound.

The portion of the Poynter article that I found most interesting was the section on exercises to complete prior to writing a visual story. The author suggesting summarizing the story in one sentence and the theme in one word in order to help focus the story. This seems like a great idea to me, since I know I'm guilty of going on tangents at times.

When it all comes down to it, writing a story for a visual medium seems very similar to preparing for any other story: you need research, interesting questions, a topic that matters to viewers, and the added element of strong visuals.

journalistic video example

Today I watched a story on abc.com entitled "Returning After Injury: A Bob Woodruff Update." The story was about a reporter who had been severely injured while on assignment in Iraq and had recently woken up from a 36-day coma. The story was uplifting, but definitely had a few weak spots. For instance, the first shot the viewer sees of Bob is in a hospital bed with a window behind him, washing him out. He's talking about how bad his scars are, but the lighting makes it very difficult to see the scar. A different angle would have been much better.

Another issue was the lack of titles underneath people giving interviews. From context clues I could deduce who Bob's wife was, but the other 2 interview subjects could have been anyone in the world.

The story spent quite a bit of time discussing how Bob's language center had been destroyed, but that doesn't mean much to the average person. I would have liked to see a picture of the brain scan compared to a normal brain so I could understand exactly what effects his injuries had on him longterm.

Despite these issues, certain aspects of the story really leant themselves to a video format. For instance, several scenes show Bob lying in his hospital bed playing with his young daughters. An especially touching moment shows the youngest daughter helping her father learn how to pronoune the word "diamond." She patiently repeats it over and over as he attempts to make the right sounds. A moment like that would have been very difficult to capture in print.

Additionally, the scene with Bob dancing with his wife while singing a song about how, even though he can't talk properly, he can still dance, was a great addition. It really humanized him and made him easy to relate to. Again, this wouldn't have been the same if the story was done in print.

-Jessica Ekhoff

convergence lessons...

Last week I learned what I think is a common problem with convergence journalism. I would have posted about this last week, of course, but I foolishly screwed up my Blogger account and only now have been able to fix it. So brace yourself for some stale recollections!

Here's the problem: I don't think convergence respects print. We frequently do radio-only stories and video-only stories, but whenever someone pitches an idea for the Missourian, it's only acceptable if it's "Missourian-plus." Can't a good print story stand on its own once in a while?

Woodward and Bernstein in 7804's Friday morning pitching session:

W&B: well, professors, we've got a few leads that we think will help us bring down Nixon and a slew of top dogs at the white house. We're thinking it would be best as a newspaper piece.
Professors: Hmmm...sounds like a good idea. But can we maybe get some audio with that? What about a few pictures? It seems incomplete...

I know we usually do feature stories that lend themselves to more than just text, but still, I think we could do better to respect a good print story when we see one.

this week's work

OK, I think I have just found a new calling for myself- flash journalism.
This week me and my comrade Kevin Quealy spent all our free time to put together a flash page for the missourian. It appeared along with the new sunday cover about the historic district downtown.
Writing the program turned out to be fairly easy. the hard part was getting all the graphics to look right. that was Kevin's department. But unfortunately, the whole exercise was divergent from what we learn in class. Learning flash should be a requirement for all convergence students. The 'jack of all trades and a master of none' is a bad model for journalists to follow. As convergence people, we should concentrate on an area in which we can 'corner the market,' i.e. flash
Learning the actionscript is imperative. A really good book is 'teach yourself actionscript for flash in 24 hours' Note: the 24 hours claim is a complete lie. Richard Feynman might take that long, but everyone else should spend a month to digest it.

Chinese School

I thought, overall, the Chinese School story by KBIA was fairly well done. There were a variety of sources - teachers, parents, students, and sociologists. However, I felt like there wasn't a good explanation of why this story was important - the story in my mind lacked a nut graf.
The story also lacked a strong point of view from a child. Only one interview was used, and to me it seemed that the student was not comfortable being interviewed. She sounded irritated not because she doesn't care about her Chinese culture (like the reporter framed it) but because she didn't want to be interviewed. I would be interested to know how many students the reporter interviewed, and if this was truly the best interview or just the one that supported the story that the reporter had in mind.
I had a problem with the phrase "classic long face," used to describe that one student that was interviewed. Was this a bit of editorializing? Maybe it wasn't an egregious error, but it troubled me a bit and I would have phrased it differently.

Neuticles

Among the different types of media we are attempting to combine in convergence, radio is probably the one I have worked with least. In high school, I was the district champion in radio speaking for speech contests, but these performances were live. It is recording audio and making it play back smoothly that seems to be difficult. Longer format radio stories, though, generally capture my interest, perhaps because I would like to learn to produce these pieces. If I were producing the Neuticles story for KBIA, there is more information I would to have included. For example, I would have talked to pet owners who might consider the procedure to get reactions to consumers, as opposed to just professionals. After listening to the story as it was written, I feel as though I have only seen half the perspectives.

and STILL impressed

Listening to these stories, once in class, and then again on my own, I feel that I’m starting to understand ‘writing for the ear’ more and more. All the stories, I think, are great. Even though we talked about how the neuticles story could have added some different interviews, or how the baseball story could have pushed the limits on sounds, they were all more creative than I had anticipated. When we were told we would be listening to stories, I imagined watching the news with my eyes closed, but mostly, that wasn’t the case. I never expected to be entertained as I listened. While it has not been diagnosed, I’m a firm believer in having my own personal form of ADD, but when listening to these stories, I didn’t get bored once.

Kind of off topic, but then as I was editing my own audio sample, though not a NPR style story, I saw all the work that goes into these stories. When you listen to them, it seems so easy, like everything just fell into place. But as I attempted to edit my 10-minute interview down to under a minute, I saw that these pieces are all well thought out and time consuming. It’s much harder than I thought.

I feel like with each blog I always say that I am starting to understand convergence more, and starting to realize that I like it more than any one news medium, and even though it’s repetitive, I must say, I have the same feeling this week. In this class, I am seeing news as I never saw it. For me, it was always newspaper, magazine, or broadcast. True, I still got most of my news online, but I always thought it was just a copy of what was in the paper. I am beginning to appreciate what the different forms can do for a story.

Mario Manzini

Listening to the KBIA story about Mario Manzini, I was most impressed by the fact that a world record-holding escape artist would choose to live in Columbia. Obviously, that’s exactly what the reporters were thinking as well. I think, given the circumstances, the story did a good job of painting the personality that made the story. It seemed like the majority of the story was the reporter’s voice, but Manzini’s conveniently radio-friendly voice was interspersed frequently enough, and at the points that required personality, that I could still get enough of a sense of who this man was. The only other sounds to accompany the story that I can think of would be the muffled grunts and rubbing fabric of Manzini escaping from a strait jacket. However, if such an event wasn’t planned during work on the story, then there are ethical issues in asking ManzinI to perform just for the reporter’s benefit. I assume that the reporter most likely took this into consideration, so I think the story was “made for the ear” as best as it could be.

Neuticles...??

Listening to this story really just makes me laugh. I found it incredibly interesting that there are actual vets/doctors who specialize in putting silicon-prosthetic testicles into a male animal after being neutered. Also, I was not at all surprised to learn that absolutely 100% of the people requesting to have this done for their animal were male. Like one of the doctors interviewed, I also believe the dogs do not care about having neuticles because they don't even understand what's going on "down there," anyway. Frankly, once they're gone, they're gone, along with the hormones that make an unneutered male dog/animal act the way he does. I was shocked to hear neuticles were even put into a Florida alligator though!

I thought the radio broadcast story was done very well overall. The introduction with the answering machine to "Neuticles" was very creative and actually brought reality to the story and allowed me as the listener to participate more actively just by hearing the recording. I felt there could have been more natural background noise in this story, but at the time there just may not have been anything going on where the interview was taking place, so that is understandable. It was beneficial for the reporter to use the noises Miller's dog was making in its kennel at the end of the story though. This sound bit went hand in hand with the closing line of the reporter when referring to Miller's pampered dog with neuticles, "...and he doesn't even know what he's missing." There was a definite overall flow to the story with the use of the sound clips, voice of the source, as well as the voice of the reporter and I felt it was covered in a creative manner in order to pull the audience in.