The End Of The Beginning

Friday brought the much awaited conclusion of the past three weeks of sheer madness we lovingly referred to as Boot Camp. You will read my thoughts on that later, but first let me tell how we rounded out this week. Yesterday our class was visited by Jim Brady, former Executive Editor of washingtonpost.com. Brady was at the forefront of online revolution in the mid ’90′s. He was hired as Sports Editor of the Washington Post’s website when it launched in 1996, and has only been looking into the future of the internet journalism business ever since. Who better, then, to teach Boot Campers about how to become their own online news entrepreneurs?

Coming from the Washington Post, Brady gave an eyewitness account of the demise of the newspaper industry coinciding with the rise of online journalism. Whereas newspapers are by nature a general interest source for all kinds of news, he says that success in internet reporting can only come when your are THE definitive source for reporting on a specific topic. This allows you to connect with other internet reporters who report about similar topics. Over time, if you can network, get links to your content from other sites, and thus build up your traffic, then you can get advertisers to pay you for posting content. To a young wannabe reporter with a passion and a job search in his not-too-distant, this seems like sound advice to follow. Learn more here.

Brady emphasized being “entrepreneurial” in our approach to the internet. In addition to networking with successful sites to drive traffic to your own site, he told us we have to be risk-takers. It is nearly impossible to tell what will be the ‘next big thing’ on the internet, so you have to keep your eyes and ears open, and always look for opportunities. Combine this with a solid knowledge of how business and marketing work online, and you might stand a chance.

Jan Schaffer has a Pulitzer to her credit. If i were you, I'd listen to her.

This morning, Jan Schaffer said many of the same things Jim Brady told us the day before. Schaffer is the executive of J-Lab: The Institute For Interactive Journalism. A former Pulitzer Prize-winning print reporter, Schaffer has seen the ebbs and flows of the news business firsthand as well. At J-Lab, she now runs a site whose mission is to train a new generation of citizen journalists and new media specialists. Her advice was also to network, network, network. You have to specialize in your own niche, even if it is hyper-local. You can’t start out in the big leagues, but if you put in the legwork to connect with like-minded netizens, you too can be an online success.

To give us a better feel for what/who we should know about in the industry, Schaffer also gave us a laundry list of websites to study up on.

Jay Rosen’s PressThink
Clay Shirky
Jeff Jarvis’s BuzzMachine
Jim Romenesko
MediaBistro
Will Sullivan’s Journerdism
Mark Potts’ Recovering Journalist
Mark Glasers’ MediaShift
Online News Association

…just to list a few.

And on a personal note…

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, today is the last day of Boot Camp. Just to think, three short weeks ago, I was a wet-behind-the-ears, aspiring reporter just trying to find my way around this city. And today, I’m a wet-behind-the-ears, aspiring reporter, trying to find his away around both a city and an entire news industry. Oh how far we’ve come… But seriously, as hectic as the last three weeks got at times, I still feel like it absolutely flew by. I knew a little bit about reporting coming into this, but I thought simply being a good reporter would be enough for me to come here and try to wrap my head around. HA! Now I know that reporting is only half of the job from here on out, if that. The next year is going to be intense, but I’m ready for it. Plus, I’ve made a few dozen new friends in the past three weeks, and I’m sure that will make it all a bit easier. Much love to all my Boot Camp cohorts. See you in the funny papers…

Chess In DuPont Circle

Also as promised, here is the package by Lauren Orsini and myself. Let me know what you think!

My long-awaited Slide Show…

As promised (if a while ago), here is a link to the slide show of our day at the zoo. My partner, Coryn Connelly-Cabreros, and I took the pictures and conducted the interviews used in the slide show. Enjoy!

Boot Campers Make The Final Cut

Tuesday brought Boot Campers yet another step closer to achieving full multimedia maven status. Professors Rob Roberts, Carolyn Brown, and Josh Hatch brought their newest lessons in video post-production and let us loose editing our first video stories on Final Cut Pro. For many Boot Campers, this meant a first taste of the Apple video-editing software. My partner, Lauren, and I got right to work putting together our story about the chess players at DuPont Circle. Without giving too much else away, I’ve included some screen shots:

The park near the DuPont Circle Metro stop provides the setting for our first attempt as video reporters.

The devil is always in the details, and video editing is no exception

Our story features Eric, pictured here, who spends many a day in DuPont Circle brushing up on his chess game.

Playing by the rules of video

Quiet on the set! Many Boot Campers on Monday stepped behind the camera for their first lesson on the wide world of shooting video. Taking the stage to lead us into this brave new world of moving pictures was Rob Roberts, Senior Video Editor at USA Today. For a room chocked full of writers, yet scarce on experienced shooters, Roberts eased Boot Campers into the realm of moving pictures that lies ahead with a few simple guidelines:

1. Video Isn’t That Hard – By this, Roberts meant that audiences can be pretty forgiving of bad video. One need look no further than the exponential growth of YouTube to know that good Internet video doesn’t have to be professional-grade all of the time. Of course, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take our own shooting seriously.

2. Video Is Time-Consuming – As someone who used to get paid to do this video production stuff, I will testify to this rule. In court. Anytime. Roberts told us that for a one-minute video piece, a person could easily spend three to five hours of work putting it together. That’s an almost 300-1 ratio of work-to-final product. I’ve worked on plenty of video projects before, and to me, that sounds terribly accurate. Working with video can be very tedious, but it can also make some of the best storytelling.

3. The same skills that go into good journalism go into good video – This is also absolutely true. Good reporting isn’t done by winging it, and good video can’t be done like that either. I’ve tried the latter enough times to know that as scientific fact.

4. Know your audience, and know your medium – Easily enough, the strongest aspect of visual storytelling is that it is, in fact, visual. A compelling video sequence can evoke emotions that a single photograph can only approach and words sometimes fail completely. That said, as producers we also need to know how people are using video now, namely on the internet. The way videos are watched on the internet calls for a new style of grabbing a viewer’s attention instantly, before he or she can simply click away. To do this well, and mix it with good reporting…that is our challenge.

5. It’s All About The Story – Regardless of the medium, we aspiring journalists are still storytellers above all else. The video aspect of the game might come with different rules than simply committing words to text, but the function of telling a good story remains above all.

Then, armed with this new-found knowledge of the power of moving pictures, students embarked on their first video reporting assignments. My partner, Lauren Orsini, and myself took to Dupont Circle to interview DC’s unsung chess champions. Stay tuned for the fruits of that labor…

WAMU News Director, SOC alum discuss news careers

The old adage goes something like, “he has a face for radio.” While Jim Asendio’s outward appearances are not for me to judge, the News Director at WAMU certainly speaks with the velvety delivery of a well-tenured radio veteran. In his appearance in Friday’s Boot Camp session, Asendio served as the perfect teacher to a group of young journalists learning to properly use their voices.

WAMU News Director Jim Asendio talked to Boot Campers about professionalism.

Earlier in the morning, Professor Jill Olmsted had taught the class about the technical side of putting together a news report for radio. Asendio’s speech, however, focused much more on how to move up in the reporting industry. Journalism is not the profession for an introvert, he told the class. Everything in reporting is about connecting, be it with sources or with the viewing/reading public. While this is important advice for learning to tell a news story, the same holds true for finding work reporting the news.

In the news game, he said, anywhere you go, you’ll probably run into someone who knows someone you’ve worked with before. To students trying to move up in the industry, this offers a few very important lessons. Most importantly, don’t burn any bridges. You never know who you might cross paths with again in the future. And for the same reason, never refuse to take a job seriously just because you think it is small-time.

But what about first-time job seekers?

2008 SOC graduate Keosha Johnson joined our class later to discuss how she is making her way through the news world. Johnson first praised the program itself for the multimedia nature of the coursework. In her first job after AU as an associate at NBC News, Johnson was asked to do just as much computer graphic and web-based work as standard writing and shooting. While she initially found herself a bit overwhelmed at the workload she was not personally too proficient in, Johnson used the multimedia background she learned at AU as a launching pad for her professional career. She advised, “if you know how to shoot, edit, write, and do web production, you’re golden.”

While Jim Asendio reinforced the message we’ve heard before about, “It’s not what you know, but who you know,” Johnson reminded us that we need to make sure first that what we know isn’t a small amount. She recommended doing as much work as we can get our hands on during the program. During her time at AU, Johnson freelanced outside of class as a blogger for a fashion website. “Always try to be working outside of class,” she told a roomful of students already weary from two weeks of Boot Camp.

Boot Camp Goes To The National Zoo

The syllabus for Thursday was surprisingly sparse. Students were used to days in class filled to the brim with lectures, guest speakers, and time in the computer lab. But, by 11 a.m. on Thursday, Professors Olmsted and Hatch were done. They had finished everything listed for the day, and before lunch even. Then, shocked young Boot Campers learned they would be spending the rest of the day at D.C.’s National Zoo. The field trip was an opportunity for us to collect pictures and audio to use in our forthcoming slide show projects that we will work on in class Friday. Check back later to see how it turned out…

Stepping Into The World Of Audio Editing

Shakespeare once wrote, “It is a tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury”. No one realized, at the turn of the seventeenth century, that The Bard was actually writing then about my blog post today. The “sound” was the series of interviews, YouTube clips, and recorded lectures on which we cut our audio recording and editing teeth at Boot Camp today. A guest appearance from journalist Deborah Bolling can only be described as a “fury”. And if you have read any of my blog posts so far, I don’t have to tell you who the “idiot” is. Anyway…

On Wednesday, Boot Campers officially hit the Wall of Sound that is audio recording. Professor Jill Olmsted took the first part of the day to introduce us to the myriad of digital audio recorders, ranging from the rather-expensive to the simply a-little-too-expensive, that are sure to become our good friends during the course of the program. But of course, a good parent wouldn’t hand over the keys to the car without a driving lesson first. So Olmsted and guest professor Josh Hatch took us on a test drive of the new equipment.

Amid discussion about the use and recording of sound for news stories, both professors explained, emphasized, and repeated, repeated, repeated the absolute importance of using a pair of headphones to check the audio that you have recorded before leaving a story. Olmsted explained, “In news, there is no time to tweak audio in post-production, so you have to get the sound right in the field.” Hatch added, “No matter how dumb you feel wearing the headphones when you’re out, you’ll feel a lot worse when you come back and you don’t have sound around your colleagues.”

Then it was time to sound off. Students took turns conducting interviews with one another to test out their new equipment. Later, we would get the low-down on how to edit our audio clips on a computer program called Audition.

My uncut interview with fellow student Leslie Byford can be heard here:

I then used Audition to whittle my interview with Leslie down to the bare bones of the story. Listen here:

And of course, after the microphones, pick-up patterns and editing that make up “sound” came the “fury”, courtesy of our most animated guest professor thus far, Deborah Bolling. After telling us about her exploits in a former life as a music video director for the likes of political rappers Public Enemy, filmmaker-turned-reporter Bolling drew our attention to the sounds we use and describe in our stories, even if they are print stories. Said Bolling, “you’re not just going for the environment. You’re going for the mood of the environment.” Based on that advice, we then took a mini field trip to AU’s main green to write a story based only on the sounds one could hear there.

But aside from Bolling’s “sound” advice, as well as an unexpected endorsement of eavesdropping, she also reminded us that the crux of being a good reporter is being a good storyteller. “When somebody walks away from your story, they should be able to walk away and tell your story.”

To The Front Lines With A Former War Correspondent

He may have been the most fascinating guest speaker we’ve had in Boot Camp so far. Now that isn’t any kind of indictment of our other prominent, talented, successful, incredibly intelligent of the past week and a half. But John Pomfret, our Boot Camp guest this morning, used to be a war reporter for the Associated Press and the Washington Post. I’ll say that again for effect…WAR. REPORTER. That is so cool! Pomfret told us about his experiences in China, Bosnia, Zaire, and Afghanistan, among other war-torn areas in the past two-plus decades.

After an Cliff-Notes-style rundown of his career, Pomfret answered a multitude of questions from classmates who were undoubtedly as fascinated as myself. He told us about the difficulties of developing sources in countries who don’t have the same freedom of speech we may be used to. Pomfret also explained how important it is for a foreign correspondent to speak the language in the place they are reporting from. “People speak to the level of your ignorance,” he told us, meaning that if a source knows you can’t understand much of what they might tell you in a foreign language, that source might not tell you much at all.

After recounting his own fascinating past, Pomfret gave the class a few tips on our own future. Referring to his own passion for the area that allowed him to report from China, he told us how important it is for us, as reporters, to have an area of specialty that can gain us entry into a society or a sector to report on. And concerning the changing landscape of jobs for reporters that lies on the horizon for us, he told us, “Your challenge is not just to be a good reporter…Your challenge is to create your own business model.”

An SOC Alum, Getting The Most (Search Engine) Bang For Your Buck, Another SOC Alum, Photography 101, and, wait for it…Special Guest SOC Alums! (Day 6)

So what makes a great blog title? Wit? Pithiness? A winning smile(y emoticon)? None of the above, according to guest professor and SOC alum Josh Hatch, who spoke to our Boot Camp today. In our morning session, Hatch told us the rules of search engine optimization, or SEO. SEO is a series of steps that bloggers like my classmates and myself can take to make sure their websites appear near the top of search lists for a given subject on Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc.

One of Hatch’s tips was that search engines initially look at the title of a blog to check if the post itself matches a given search query. So my earlier post title, “I Will Expel You…”, would probably never show up in Google search results for someone looking for American University, School of Communication, Boot Camp, AP Style, or any of the other themes of that particular day in class. Hatch also told us how tagging our blogs appropriately, as well as skillfully using meta code, can increase our chances of getting a post listed on a search engine.

After making sure each student in the class had his or her own Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Delicious accounts, Hatch ceded the floor to a special guest. WDSU-TV (New Orleans) reporter, and another SOC alum, Rachel Wulff treated us to a surprise visit to talk about how to advance in the news industry, especially the TV news industry, in these trying times for journalists. Wulff stressed networking with one’s colleagues in the news business. And after showing us her personalized website, she added dryly, “I don’t want to tell you it’s all about shameless self-promotion, but it’s all about shameless self-promotion.” Dually noted, Ms. Wulff.

And last but not least in our Murderer’s Row of SOC alums, Laura Pohl took the afternoon session to introduce us to the wide world of photography. Pohl gave us some tips about what makes a good picture, including framing, use of light, and the Rule of Thirds. She also stressed to us that, as news gatherers, we should never try to stage a picture or get people to do something out of the ordinary for a photo op.

And now for your thought of the day. As part of Laura Pohl’s presentation on photography, she showed the class a video shot with a particular hi-def camera. We were supposed to notice the photographic composition of the short movie, which featured head-and-shoulder shots of people talking about what the American Dream meant to them. But what struck me most about the video was one man’s response to the given question. The man said that, to him, the American Dream is “when a person who has nothin’ works really hard, and ends up with somethin’.” That thought resonated beautifully with me, as the first two-thirds of it is pretty much the narrative I have going for me right about now. And since I’m at AU, I think I’ll adopt that as my own “American” Dream.

Peace Out