Feedback sought on RGMP
I need to take a break from blogging for about a week while I go off and run some journalism training. In the meantime, I would really appreciate it — a lot! — if some of you could give me some feedback about this series, “Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency.” Is it good for you? Is it good for someone you know? Is anything missing? Is anything unclear?
I have five more installments planned, including three about online video.
Previous posts in this series:
- RGMP 1: Read blogs and use RSS
- RGMP 2: Start a blog
- RGMP 3: Buy an audio recorder and learn to use it
- RGMP 4: Start editing audio
- RGMP 5: Listen to podcasts
- RGMP 6: Post an interview (or podcast) on your blog
- RGMP 7: Learn how to shoot decent photos
- RGMP 8: Learn how to crop, tone, and optimize photos
- RGMP 9: Add photos to your blog
- RGMP 10: Learn to use Soundslides
1a – browser/blog add-ons – such as delicious, google notes, press this etc – which allow 1 click tagging/archiving/posting of web pages and articles.
For aggregation tagging is many times more efficient than categorizing.
March 3, 2009 at 9:47 amHonestly — it’s brilliant. Beautifully put together, you cover so much in relatively short posts.
I’d love to see this piled together as a printable PDF — nicely formatted and so on. Would be a must-have resource for any online journo.
March 3, 2009 at 9:48 amI absolutely agree with Dave Lee.
March 3, 2009 at 10:02 amI’m with Dave and Kelly. This will be a great series to keep and pass around to people just getting into multimedia, like your seminar worksheets.
March 3, 2009 at 10:48 amThis has been great so far. I’ve passed it on to everyone in my newsroom.
March 3, 2009 at 12:38 pmI deeply appreciate all the love … really, I do!
Now let’s hear some criticisms, and/or suggestions for more topics!
March 3, 2009 at 4:24 pmI love your list. I’ve blogged it twice already. I would add more about video and maybe an advanced lesson on taking your blog from a free site to hosting it yourself.
March 3, 2009 at 5:37 pmI really believe that your blog is like taking courses on line, very useful, indeed, thank very much, I dont miss any of your posts.
March 3, 2009 at 6:51 pmI love your RGMP. I’ve used it to prepare my online journalism course in Spain. It’s clear, smart, simply and useful. I usually tell my students that technology skills aren’t the key for their works, and your guide is perfect because simplify the process and privilege the content. Sorry for my english. Thanks a lot!
March 4, 2009 at 5:53 amMindy, great stuff.
March 4, 2009 at 10:56 amI’d also like to see an installment on advanced search, particularly using Google to search specific domains and top-level domains, and using boolean operators in proprietary databases. (And a library card for those who think they don’t have access to any proprietary databases.)
Mindy, I really appreciate the time and effort you put in doing these posts. I do believe multimedia is a great way to tell a story. Now I have a problem that I have been unable to solve. I have multiple audio files (recorded at different moments) that I would like to “seam” together in Audacity and eventually produce one single audio file to be worked in Soundslides. Is it possible to do that (with Audacity)?
March 5, 2009 at 9:27 amThank you in advance. Virginie
Mindy, great series so far, but I’d like to some posts on the value associated with each of these skills when it comes to making money. Working with journalists myself I find it’s easy to get them excited about the possibilities of multimedia, but when it comes to the hard metrics of why it’s important they sometimes shut down. Obviously most understand this is the way things are going whether they like it or not, but some hard metrics would hopefully help the cause.
Also, when you do talk about video I think a post on the importance of quality vs. quantity is needed. With so many cheap HD cameras out there, everyone thinks they can make video, but it’s simply just not the case.
Looking forward to what’s next.
March 5, 2009 at 10:43 am@Virginie
Not a problem at all. Go ahead and import all your audio files into Audacity. If you can, organize your audio tracks top down, starting with what you want to use first. This way you won’t get confused. From there you can trim away parts you don’t want to use, while creating a linear audio track. Unlike video editing however, there is not a single timeline for the finished project, but when exported everything will come out as one track. When you’re done just export the project and import it into soundslides.
Hope that helps, but if you’ve got more questions please feel free to drop me a line.
Cheers,
March 5, 2009 at 11:06 amTim
I would add some basic video technique. Using a simple camera, like the flip, shooting technique, basic editing in iMovie, etc. Otherwise, great start!
March 7, 2009 at 5:58 pmDear Mindy, I enjoyed your blog more than one year ago and thanks to your posts, among other things, I knew Soundslide (and Audacity too). I’m an italian free lance journalist (so, sorry for my bad english!) and sometime I used Soundslide to tell a story or to make a reportage (oh, I really would like to show you someone of my works and ask your opinion, but they are in italian; anyway here a simple slideshow just to tell a trip between rome and barcelon http://www.cossolou.net/download/roberta/Roma_Barcellona_2009/
March 9, 2009 at 3:49 amhere, about a old lady who lives in a hospice
http://www.cossolou.net/download/roberta/Mariuccia/
here, a reportage about a petrolchemical factory http://robertapietrasanta.blogspot.com/2008/12/4-dicembre-2008-eni-chiude-il.html)
Now I would add some video between photos. Do you have some special advise for that?
Thank you for your effort and your clearness!
Roberta
My two cents:
http://kellytalks.blogspot.com/2009/03/becoming-well-oiled-machine.html
March 9, 2009 at 9:02 pmI think that including software-specific items on your list (#10 in particular) is probably the wrong approach.
I think your list should focus more on skill-sets than on particular software.
Until the training budget (& the reporters) were cut, we were getting reporters coming back from seminars all fired up about doing soundslides, and their results were all terrible, because none of the classes dealt with visual story-telling.
Learning to operate one of the most idiot-friendly pieces of software in the multimedia world is not hard.
The goal should be to learn to tell stories visually, with audio that complements the images, edited with a pace and rhythm appropriate for the piece. Dumping a folder of pictures over top of some bad audio does no one any good.
The visual skillset needed to layer images and audio to produce powerful stories applies to both video and slide shows and doesn’t depend on any single piece of software.
March 12, 2009 at 10:44 pm[...] Mindy McAdams is teaching online journalism at the University of Florida and I’ve pointed you to her website before. She’s been writing a series of articles on new media reporting which I thought would be helpful for you budding agribloggers and farm podcasters. She’s looking for some feedback about what she’s written so far since she’s got several more articles planned. Here’s a list of the topics she’s covered so far. You can find links to all of them on her blog. [...]
March 14, 2009 at 4:19 pm@Chuck Fadely – I agree with you 100 percent that it’s much more important to learn storytelling skills than to learn how to use software. However, without in fact making the visual stories (using some type of software to do so), the student has nothing but theory. In the workplace, they find they have no clue how to put that theory to work. So journalists have got to learn to use some kind of tools for producing visual and audio stories if they are to practice.
The storytelling is actually the subject of my next RGMP (No. 11), if I ever find time to write it! I think Soundslides specifically is the best tool to use to learn how to tell documentary stories.
March 15, 2009 at 8:57 amEither you or someone on the audio reporting page recommended
NPR
Sound Reporting
The NPR Guide To Audio Journalism And Production
( Jonathan Kern )
ISB# 978-0-226-43178-9
( sorry for not digging your page up & identifying which, but I’m reading the book, and it’s awesome, though “heavy” )
That, combined with “Shut Up & Shoot” ( Antony Q Artis ), give SO much leverage to anyone wanting to get the sense of good, low-$, effective work…
Thank you VERY much.
BTW, for anyone wanting to do video work, who isn’t in Mac, try Adobe Premiere Elements 7: it isn’t crippled to 4 clips/tracks, as almost all other affordable MS-Windows apps are, instead allowing 99 clips/tracks, so *editing together a piece* becomes possible.
It does AVCHD, though one may be better off using “Neo Scene”
http://www.cineform.com/products/NeoScene.htm
to convert from AVCHD, so one doesn’t have to upgrade the CPU/mobo/RAM/etc
I agree with so many who’ve commented here & elsewhere: learning by DOING, the same as the way children do, and one grows one’s own way, and *understanding*.
A basic set of tools, and *doing* stuff with ‘em, .. who was the woman who said her videojournalism developed because she was forced to edit her own material?
Yeah, exactly.
Storyboarding, too, is underrated.
It forces one to work out the overall story, and that matters very much.
Cheers!
March 18, 2009 at 8:02 am[...] Fadely of the Miami Herald was dead right in his earlier comment when he said: The goal should be to learn to tell stories visually, with audio that complements the [...]
March 19, 2009 at 9:12 am[...] 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive,” by Mark Briggs, available in book form or free online. * Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency, by Mindy McAdams * Testable, Measurable Skills We Should Teach in J-School by Mindy [...]
March 21, 2009 at 3:05 amRGMP is incredibly useful–especially for a soon to be J school grad. I find the examples and details to be very helpful, and the links are great!
April 29, 2009 at 1:21 am[...] Fadely vom Miami Herald hatte Recht, als er in seinem Kommentar zur zehnten (Original-)Folge RGMP schrieb: Ziel sollte es sein, visuell orientierte Geschichten zu [...]
December 8, 2009 at 5:44 pm