Poynter has a nice list of ‘Letters to the Editor Blogs’:
“Examples include the Decatur (IL) Herald-Review, the Tacoma (WA) News Tribune, The Australian, and The Economist. In my own town, the Boulder (CO) Daily Camera letter blog recently garnered well-deserved praise from BusinessWeek blogger Stephen Baker.”
Author Stephen Baker also suggests some features he’d like to see, including a simple domain, cross-links, allowing HTML and even recording voice messages for mp3 distribution online.
Here’s a question: what makes good online audio? Having already seen journalists struggle with online video and predictably try to duplicate the qualities of broadcast television, what should we take from broadcast radio – and what leave behind?
I have some suggestions.
Firstly, the audio should be short. Online users don’t have time to scan through a five minute speech. If the subject matter is long, then it should be ‘chunked’ into separate subject-specific pieces of audio.
Secondly, the audio should offer colour. This can come in two forms: a compelling voice; or atmosphere.
Say, for example, you interview someone who fought in World War II – quotes alone may not convey the fear in his voice as he recounts his experiences – or the joy.
Or say you attend a boxing match where the crowd got out of hand. The sounds of booing, the announcement on the PA, the confusion and argument could all make a compelling piece of audio that again, words wouldn’t describe as effectively.
Or, how about a mix of the two? A politician makes a speech and is heckled, for instance.
Now, that’s all I can think of: brevity, and compelling content. Are there any other reasons for using audio? I suppose if you have copyright covered you can use music to set a mood under a story, but that seems a lot of effort to make. Radio can keep its presenters, and the four-minute package that presents a range of viewpoints is just as effectively done with words.
But this seems too simple…
Comments please.
PODCASTS: Podcasts, it seems to me, represent a separate category here. These are useful as a distribution format for news generally, so if you’re producing podcasts you could be forgiven for simply reading out the headlines on the basis that people are likely to be listening to the podcast on an mp3 player as they travel when they’re not in a situation to read a paper or click through a website. Having said that, I think the same considerations as radio news apply – so, brevity again, and the importance of colour.
This video really is not journalism-oriented, but it can spark a few thoughts about how web 2.0 is changing ‘the machine’
from Media Week:
“Each issue will run to at least 35 pages and will target 13 to 19-year-old girls with fashion, music, film and TV content with a humorous tone, rounding up content from websites such as YouTube and inviting readers to send in clips.
“As with Monkey, it will be e-mailed for free each week and will have a variety of rich media ad formats, including display ads with embedded content, advertorials, sponsorships and bumper ads that bookend video clips.”
The online video bandwagon rolls on, with Media Week reporting that the Telegraph is to team up with ITN for the “supply of broadcast content” (note the word ‘broadcast’). Meanwhile, today’s Press Gazette reports on the launch of new TV studios at VNU, and the Exeter’s Express & Star.
In all cases publishers seem to be making television – not video. A good example is the Telegraph’s video on London Fashion Week (WMV). It starts well – lots of footage of catwalk action: the sort of thing you can’t get across in print. But it then falls into standard TV package fare – headshot interviews with designers which could be much better placed in print where the reader can scan-read.
My suggestion: either drop the headshots and run the interviews over catwalk shots; or combine video footage with a text report.
A much better example – ‘Elephant Rampage’ (WMV). Quirky, compelling visuals, and a short piece which you could imagine on YouTube.
As for the Exeter Express & Star’s ‘Fire in Sowton’ piece, this begins with a TV news-style ‘presenter’ introducing the item before handing over to a reporter on the spot to deliver it. Why? On television, the presenter is there to anchor the whole and link different items, but online the webpage performs that function. This use of a presenter is not only wasting the viewer’s time, but the TV studio’s time. In fact, it begs the question, why do you need a TV studio at all? These publishers may come to realise they’ve wasted their money.
Last week saw the start of this year’s online journalism module: second year students, some on a specialist journalism degree, others studying media or television (last year all but one were journalism specialists, which perhaps indicates how students are beginning to realise the importance of online).
I kicked off the session by asking them why they felt they needed to study online journalism. Encouragingly, their responses were well informed. Then I gave them just 20 mins (hence typos) to write an op-piece-style blog post on why people needed these skills.
As you’d expect, these ranged from the dry factual-based approach to a more wit-based posts (it could be said that the latter is more appropriate for blogs). I particularly liked:
“For those who have not experienced online journalism you have suffered long enough, the time has come to don your spectacles and embark upon a life of microwaveable meals in front of your computer screen.”
Or:
“Not only do readers have a heightened level and speed of news intake on the internet, they have the ability to interact with the news inself. Posting responses to breaking news bulletins, and being involved in news forums and developing further informed disscussions within an ‘online community'” (Link)
Or:
“this is pretty good right? You get the chance to have your say and some hillbilly from the other side of the world with a computer can hear your voice. Or are you guys taking our jobs away from us? With the accessibility of this new technology, opportunity in journalism has never been so broad, right now not only am I and the rest of us alcoholic hacks competing against each other we now have to compete against any old joe with something to say. But this is ok. You guys have just raised the bar, and a bit of healthy competition is always good chicken soup for the soul.”
Interestingly, the students seemed to equate “online journalism” with being taught to “write for the web”. That’s one lesson (one and a half if you include last week’s introduction to blogging). As for the other nine… well, more on those as the weeks go by.
Meanwhile, please click on the links below to go to those blog postings – please post a comment if you can so the students know they’re not typing in a vacuum:
Rant #1: A student studying a ‘dino’-profession
Why are online journalism skills essential?
Why are Online Journalism skills essential?
Why Online journalism skills are essential in the news industry
Someone agrees with me about the online video bandwagon (read my previous rant informed analysis here). Meanwhile, I am softening a little after reading the thoughts of the Guardian’s head of editorial development Neil McIntosh, who is quoted in a lengthy feature on video in this week’s Press Gazette (not online – argh!):
“Asking users to ‘sit forward’ and watch video online is a ‘big commitment,’ he says, but the rise of YouTube has shown that there is a huge market for ‘good, gripping video in short bursts.’ McIntosh argues that this has been almost completely ignored by other newspapers.
“‘They are often producing very long things or content that is not very gripping at all, or full of stock images of men in suits walking through revolving doors. That works perfectly well on broadcast television but when you’re demanding that the user pay attention for short bursts, you’ve got to do better than that.'”
So asks Shane Richmond of the Readius, “an electronic reader with a rollable screen that folds to the size of a mobile phone.” Looks like a believable picture of the future – I’ll be showing it to my online journalism students to convince them of the merits of RSS (if they’re not already addicted to MyGoogle/Wikio/Bloglines after their first session).
Graham Holliday has listed “the most influential voices” in online journalism blogs for today’s Press Gazette (apologies to those who have had to look at my gurning visage twice in that publication this week, not to mention at the head of this blog).
Anyway, once again, it doesn’t seem to be on their website, but you can find it on Seamus McCauley’s blog and Martin Stabe’s (who should have been included even if he is now working for Press Gazette again, thank god). So get your personalised news service/RSS reader ready and start copying and pasting:
“The list included Roy Greenslade; Andrew Grant-Adamson; Adrian Monck; Robin Hamman; Richard Sambrook; Paul Bradshaw; Shane Richmond; Neil McIntosh; Andy Dickinson; Richard Burton, Strange Attractor by Suw Charman and Kevin Anderson and Vickywatch.”
Online Journalism Blog 