Online Journalism

Like most up-and-coming sports journalists, B.J. wanted to cover the biggest and best pro sports teams. But after covering high school sports, he fell in love with it because HS sports offers “the most access and the most real people.”

B.J. Koubaroulis

Video has been a life-changing experience for him; one guy wih a camera can make a difference and produce quality content. Individuals can harness the power of video now as compared to when you used to need a crew.

Prior to his ability of working with video, B.J. said he didn’t think the editorial staff at the Washington Post found him as attractive.

The unique thing that B.J’s company, Synthesis Multimedia Productions,  provides is that when they do game story video packages, the stories are usually turned in around 2 hours after the game.

B.J. has done a lot of things: radio, television, web, writing, video. And he recommends trying different things to learn what you’re good at. Invest in yourself.

You’re not just a writer or broadcaster or radio host. You are a media person. Don’t peg yourself into doing one thing. Do all of it and you’ll be able to do what you want to do. If you’re not going to change you’re going to get left behind and if you only do one thing, you are easily replaceable.

The most important thing for someone that works for him, is for them to be, at heart, a journalist.

The four things you need to do the kind of backpack journalism that B.J. talks about:

• A computer
• A camera
• A microphone
• Being ready to work hard

The #1 thing for B.J. is that you learn things by doing it.

Mark Potts started out by stating that Wikipedia is a sort of new site. It’s useful because it’s built by the crowd and articles can be built instantly.

The Washington Post implemented Facebook to tell a story about a mother who gave birth and then got sick a couple months ago. Potts said this story was hard to tell without including the medium in which it happened.

Potts said Storify is the flavor of the month; but when it’s used, it needs transitions between bits. Otherwise the reader can get lost.

Potts said people who blog about their community do it out of passion not for the money. They want the pride of being recognized by their community. Bloggers have passion. You want people who care.

Computational journalism: the application of computation to the activities of journalism. Potts recommended Five Thirty Eight, a blog that excels at computational journalism and “is devoted to rigorous analysis of politics, polling, public affairs, sports, science and culture, largely through statistical means.” Nate Silver from being a zero to a top 20 blogger in six months.

Potts considers WikiLeaks journalism. Journalism isn’t necessarily about writing something, but disseminating information. Not affording the same protections to the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, as other journalists is damaging to journalism, according to Potts.

Tubeify is an example of a web site that excelled at data visualization by showing which songs were tops on the Billboard 100 throughout the years.

According to Potts, Twitter is worthless as a professional tool; it’s too much noise for him. RSS feeds are much more valuable to him. But Twitter is a must-use tool for professional journalists to increase publicity.

The most important tool in the last five years for journalists is the smartphone.

Potts says journalism is better than ever been before. The problem is the gutting of newsrooms, having fewer people to cover things. Those people are shifting to other places.

The river of news today is overwhelming, so people need to be their own filter of news.

Being prepared by having some kind of mobile technology with you at all times is key to being a successful journalist and capturing news right as it happens.

Because of the development in technology over the past few years, all a journalist needs at bare minimum is a cell phone. But that cell phone needs to have a good quality camera and access to the Internet. With those tools, a journalist can capture breaking news and at least flesh out their story while on the scene and then refine when they get back to their desk or computer.

Using mobile technology is critical to almost every kind of reporting:

• Criminal and civil trials
• Important speeches or announcements by public officials, celebrities, sports figures and business leaders
• Breaking news events, including fires, shootings, natural disasters, plane crash crashes and car accidents that back up traffic
• Public gatherings like protests and political rallies
• Sporting events
• Grand openings

If you want to be a hardcore, mobile journalist, Briggs recommends a combination of these tools:

• A laptop (preferably a netbook)
• A camera
• A video camera
• A tripod
• An audio recorder
• Headphones
• A microphone
• A cell phone

When I cover high school sports, I carry my digital camera to take plenty of pictures, my voice recorder to gather quotes and my cell phone to post updates on Twitter.

No longer is it OK to just carry a notepad and record notes. As journalists in this new era, we have to get accustomed to using new technology every day and progress with its new developments.

Image via Wikipedia

“A picture’s worth 1,000 words.”

That’s the cliché that you’ve probably heard plenty of times through your life, but at times a picture is more effective at telling a story than words. Or as Briggs puts it, “journalism without photographs is like writing without verbs.”

Briggs starts the chapter by outlining the technical side of digital photography:

• A megapixel is 1 million pixels, which is the visual representation of data in a digital image or graphic
• Pictures are stored as digital files on a memory card
• Resolution is a measurement of pixels that are available to the human eye

The two types of cameras are point-and-shoot cameras and DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) cameras. Point-and-shoot are easier to use, cheaper and smaller, but the quality of picture isn’t going to be nearly as good. DSLR cameras are more expensive, larger and take more time to get used to, but the quality of pictures is much better and a DSLR can do so much more because of the customization that comes along with buying different lenses.

The most important thing when it comes to taking pictures is lighting. Having covered high school football games, I can definitely attest to this. I have a decent DSLR, but if the lighting on the field is poor, my pictures won’t turn out well. And the flash won’t help at all because the standard flash isn’t nearly strong enough to light up the field.

Some other tips within the chapter from Craig Sailor:

• Hold the camera steady. Do anything to keep your body still while shooting.
• Fill the frame. Don’t leave a lot of empty space in the photo.
• Focus on one thing. Literally, when using the auto focus feature, make sure to focus one thing to make the picture sharper.
• Get closer, change angles.
• Go vertical, meaning turn the camera vertically if the subject is vertical.
• Shoot action.

When shooting, the more pictures taken the better. It’s common sense really, the more pictures you take, the higher chance you have that you have some quality pictures. When I cover a basketball game, I usually take at least 100-150 pictures, in part because of the fact that the pictures are in motion but also so that I get better pictures. Of all those pictures, I usually only use about 14-20 that I think are worthy of publishing.

After learning the basics, taking pictures is just like writing. The more practice the better you’ll get at taking pictures, although you’ll also need better technology for better pictures.

That and being in the right place at the right time helps in capturing good pictures.

Image via Wikipedia

Dan Rather and Tucker Carlson spoke with George Mason students through video conference on Feb. 24, 2011 to speak about the state of journalism and where it’s headed.

Rather, who was the news anchor for the CBS Evening News from 1981 to 2005 and is now the anchor of Dan Rather Reports on HDNet and Carlson, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Caller and former co-host of Crossfire on CNN, joined students participating from the George Mason University Studio along with Steve Scully, the political editor for the C-SPAN networks, and students from the University of Denver, Purdue University and Georgetown University.

The distance learning course, which is produced by C-SPAN, is a unique opportunity for students to interview guests via video conference. The course airs on C-SPAN3 on Fridays at 5 p.m. and also streams online.

So according to Dan Rather, what makes a good reporter?

“Curiosity and determination makes a good reporter,” Rather said. “Writing is a bedrock of the craft.” Even if you want to get into television or radio, you have to be a good writer to be a good reporter.

Rather has been working in news since 1950 and was there to report about John F. Kennedy’s assassination, one of the hardest events to work through. He reported what he saw from the Zapruder film directly from memory and was remarkably calm through the live telecast.

“As a professional you are hit with the same emotions everyone else has, but you have to seal out those emotions,” Rather said. Sealing out those emotions were what allowed Rather to report how JFK died in such a calm manner.

When Kennedy’s assassination occurred, the television was the national hearth according to Rather, replacing radio. After 9/11, the Internet was becoming the national hearth.

“Now here in 2011, we’re in the Internet age,” Rather said. “President Obama is our first Internet president.”

Rather has often spoken out about the lack of courage amongst journalists in today’s media to ask tough questions. Tucker Carlson weighed in along with rather about what journalism needs now.

“Basically what journalism needs is more guts and a sense of independence,” Rather said.

“The best journalism is tough and it pays no regard to authority and it doesn’t suck up to power,” Carlson said. “A central problem is the unwillingness to take on central authority.

“Journalism’s not complicated, it’s a matter of finding out what happened and reporting it to the people.”

Image via Wikipedia

Microblogging. Most of us know what it is, we just don’t know it.

Microblogging “allows users to publish brief text messages, usually no more than 140 characters, with links to other Web sites, photos or videos. Messages can be submitted in a variety of ways, including text messaging, instant messaging, e-mail, digital audio or simply posting to the Web. In other words, you can go to the microblog, or you can have it come to you.”

Recognize it? Sounds a lot like Twitter.

As Professor Klein and our guest speakers have talked about, Twitter is absolutely essential to being a journalist or reporter in today’s world. It may change eventually or re-invent itself, but Twitter isn’t going away.

And that’s a good thing, because Twitter is probably the most efficient way to receive news and definitely the fastest. When Twitter is used in the right manner, it can be the best tool for a journalist. You can break news. You can let people know what you’ve just had published. You can use it to get tips or feedback from citizens in the area you cover. You can gain a larger audience, which is always great. You can interact with your audience.

“One great thing about Twitter–and this is why it is so useful for student journalists–is that after a while it trains you to look for interesting things around you (and think how you can communicate that in 140 characters). Those who write off the minutiae of Twitter need to realize: it’s the writer who makes it interesting.” — Paul Bradshaw

“The hunter-gatherer model of journalism is no long sufficient. Citizens can do their own hunting and gathering on the Internet. What they need is somebody to add value to that information by processing it–digesting it, organizing it, making it usable.” — Phil Meyer, author of “Precision Journalism”

Briggs starts out the third chapter of “Journalism Next” by writing about how today’s journalists are embracing technology more than ever and using information gathered from citizens to help them assemble their news.

What Briggs writes about reminds a lot about what Mandy Jenkins was talking about when she visited to speak about TBD. TBD uses tweets from people to learn about events and incidents that are happening around the area because TBD is limited to only 15 reporters who can be out on the streets. It also reminds me of Patch as they do the same thing where the editors allow people to e-mail them or tweet them with tips about what’s going on or what they would like to be covered.

The most interesting term I found from the chapter was pro-am journalism. This is the kind of journalism that allows people to publish directly to the same platform the journalists use to publish their news, which also reminds of what Patch does a little bit.

Briggs then goes into detail about crowdsourcing and why it is important for journalists. Crowdsourcing allows communities to focus on a specific project where they can outperform a small group of experienced journalists because they can employ more manpower.

Briggs then talks about invaluable links are to writing for online media. Just a few years ago, linking to the competition was pretty much forbidden, but now it is welcome and many online journalists use it to link to valuable information from other journalists. They do this in the hope that readers will come back to their website because they find that what they link to is credible.

Briggs’ final point is that these types of collaborative journalism aren’t going to go away. With the access to technology that we have now, people are more invested in what is going on right around the corner from them. With companies laying off journalists, media platforms are going to need contribution from ‘regular people’ now more than ever.

“The great thing about a blog for an old-fashioned beat reporter like me is that it is journalism at its core–pounding the pavement looking for the next scoop and making sure that you stay two steps ahead of the competition. That drive was always in me as a beat reporter, but a blog elevates that to a much higher level.” — John Cook, co-founder of TechFlash

In Mark Briggs’ second chapter of “Journalism Next,” Briggs talks about the many advantages of having and maintaining a blog.

• Blogging helps develop community with readers or viewers so they can test ideas, receive early and direct feedback and publish or broadcast in the timeliest manner.
• Can help build an audience as a college journalist.
• Helps establish deeper relationships with readers and can help broaden coverage.

One of the interesting things Briggs points out is that with blogging, their isn’t as much of a sense of competition because people are more willing to share information online. In some blog posts, people link to other people’s sites or blogs and compile info from other resources online to establish their content.

How popular and powerful are blogs now? According to a report done by Technorati, “blogs have more total unique visitors than either Facebook or MySpace.” Blogs help motivate journalists and organizations to be #1. As Joel Achenbach mentioned in his article from “The Washington Post,” journalists are motivated by page views; in this case being a highly viewed blog is a great feeling.

Briggs then outlines some of the jargon associated with blogging, some of the boring stuff.

Then he outlines some tips for how to build a successful blog:

• Put the reader first
• Organize your ideas
• Be direct
• Be the authority, with a personality
• Wait 15 minutes after writing to edit yourself dispassionately.
• Make your posts scanable
• Link, summarize and analyze
• Be specific with headlines
• Have a good attitude
• Use photos and screenshots
• Post early, post often (at least once a day)
• Participate in the community
• Comment on and read other blogs
• Link to other blogs
• Use RSS feeds

As you can tell by these guidelines, a lot of these tips apply to traditional print journalism. That’s because blogging is similar to traditional print journalism, but it can be updated more often and it is more connectible to the audience than a newspaper is.

Related articles

• What’s the State of Your Blogosphere? (blogworld.com)
• Don’t Feel Guilty If…You Give it Up for Free (hollabackhealth.com)
• Oprah: “Know Your Viewer” (blogworld.com)

Image by Lars K. Jensen via Flickr

In the first chapter of Mark Briggs‘ “Journalism Next,” Briggs starts off by stating that we as a society take the Internet and e-mail for granted.

He then goes on to define ‘digital information’ and how to create and save text files, audio files, picture files and video files. One of the tips that Briggs advises for Internet etiquette  is to never send a file larger than 1 MB through e-mail, because it can clog your server and the recipient’s server, particularly if it’s a company address you’re sending it to.

Briggs then explains how the Internet works and what the cache is and that it’s a good idea to clean it out regularly to help your system run faster and more efficient. Briggs advises uses RSS feeds (as we did for our blogs) because it’s the easiest way to consume massive amounts of information; it reminds me a lot of Twitter.

He then outlines how to quickly build an HTML page. As anyone who has perused the Internet, he recommends adding images and other visuals to make your Web page not so boring. After explaining HTML, Briggs details CSS which helps to further delve into a Web page to make it look better. He advises to have  at least a small amount of CSS knowledge so as to be able to tweak the sites you may potentially work with.

Image via Wikipedia

In Joel Achenbach‘s article, he writes about how journalists across all platforms have become more obsessed with how many people are viewing, listening or reading their works than the quality of their works and how it impacts people.

Obviously, journalists want as many people as possible to view their work, but Achenbach raises the question: at what point does journalism become marketing?

Achenbach raises a good point in his article: journalists just need to focus on writing a good story. If the writing is good and it’s worth reading, people will read. Journalists need to do what they have been doing for the past 50 years: write well and write about what matters.

That’s what got such renowned journalists as Michael Wilbon, Edward R. Murrow, Bob Woodward and other journalists of different fields to be as well regarded as they are: reporting on what matters and doing it in the right fashion.