DESIGN

I think good and bad design of a website depend on a multitude of different factors. After the lesson last week and after reading Williams article, the CRAP acronym is defintily important. I like the idea that by using the basic principals of contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity anyone can simply webpage production. Unfortuanly, through my own personal I have found out that learning the correct "CRAP mix" is the difficult part. I think Alignment comes the quickest. When your looking at a website, elements that aren't aligned correctly seem to jump out at you. Same edge alignment is important. Also, when it comes to aligment I like how the Williams article says that a centered alignment must be a conscience placement. I always thought that a centered alignment was a "lemonade-stand-flyer-folly!"

Aside from alignment, borders are huge. There's nothing worse than logging onto some low-rent website and finding wood-grain borders or stainless-steel looking borders. I hate that. It's unprofessional and makes your website look like a 1980's Nintendo game. Less is more.

Anway, I think the best way to create a professional, clean website is to go by good examples. Many times I have found myself taking layout ideas from popular wesites. While it is hard for me to implement some of those ideas, looking at them still makes me realize what is good and what is bad

It's in a FLASH~ not really...

Flash design is a very helpful tool for enhancing your web page! It allows you to be more creative, organized and ability to impress your viewers with different graphics. In our webpage we are using flash buttons that start out dark blue but turn a murky green to represent flood water- so aesthetics play a part in flash- Other advantages include smooth transitions between pages and flash can make links to other pages VERY obvious- Flash journalism is practically just starting and the breakthroughs are only beginning with what you can and will be able to do- The only disadvantage I see is that it takes a while to manipulate the flash program to get exactly what you want on a page- In oour groups page we used buttons which when clicked on represented murky flood water color over a dark sea blue- This took a long time for one of our group members which leads me to believe its a difficult process- I am excited to continue on with flash and look forward to gaining more experience with it- I have seen some cool things it can do and hope to one day become a flash expert because it is just another great addition to this thing we call convergence journalism!

-SSliker

Flash woah

Flash Journalism

Flash videos and the like along with the Internet craze sites like youtube.com and others are revolutionizing journalism. Short flash videos, accessible on almost any computer are making the Internet the place to be for hard to find rare video that some citizen has snatched off their camera phone. Now graphics and website design and all the other great stuff that flash allows journalist to do aside, short flash videos are making the internet an open video forum for anyone and everyone who can functionally work a computer. What we are learning in convergence is how to capture and master the art of flash video and use it to our advantage as journalist. I am sure in future years that flash will become an even bigger part of the overall journalistic landscape and an important aspect in how people get their news. It is up to use as journalist to focus on this medium and evolve with it as to not be left behind.

Flash journalism

Though my exposure and experience with slideshows and rollover graphics is only minimal, knowing those tools are available to tell a story makes the group project more interesting to work on. I've definitely become more appreciative of slideshows since some of the video interviews I did with kids didn't turn out well. Instead, I had to use a mirantz so that way I could hold mike up to the kids mouth for good sound, but I was also able to have visual footage of the children by taking photos and putting it together as s slideshow. With flash we're able to be more creative in how we capture something. I also like the use of graphics in explaining complex things. I've seen graphics for health and science stories that work well for both print and online. This gives people the option to learn the same thing in a different way, which I think is important.

Flash

I won't lie; photography is my thing. There is something that is just captivating about still images and a person's ability to take their time to absorb everything in those images, as opposed to watching moving video. That being said, I've become a sucker for slide shows with audio. The addition of a single voice, or one track of music, can really take things to the next level. My best friend and I actually began crying watching a slide show of the Pulitzer Prize winning photographs. I think in that case, Flash is the means for a perfect combination of mediums. I'm sold.

Usability over accessibility flash

Usability over accessibility
In fact I didn’t think accessibility as quite big of a problem either, but it was one of the listed disadvantages in the reading, so I used it for my headline.
There are reasons, why we learned flash programs in class other then others that have been mentioned in the reading. One is it’s advantage on usability.
As the reading has mentioned in Chapter two, more then 90 % of the American user have access to the flash player, and even 44% of the Asian countries has program include flash player in their computer.
Even if one does not have a flash player in their computer, they can easy download one off the internet, and install it without even restarting computers. That might seem like a minor point when we are free. But as I heard from other classes, in the information overload age, people don’t have much patience to wait around. They want to click and get information that they want to see, and want to hear. And flash offer us that option.
Although we might have a bit hard time for making the search engines with the flash player that to us as journalists might be a little bit inconvenience. But our jobs are to search and collect information that should not be a problem to us at all.
After looking learning flash information from the reading, and from class, I really think that using flash has more advantages than disadvantages. I am glad I can learn it from class.

Flash

I think Flash is a very effective tool for multimedia journalism. Stories that can be interactive with rollover links and text boxes, as well as things like soundslides, allow for creativity on the journalists' end as well as the feeling of freedom of click on the user's end. It's a winning combination for both I think. Creating pages with flash seems to be something that just needs to be done as trial and error, see what works, what looks the best. But with some time invested it will be a really good thing to know how to use in the newsroom.

Flash

To me, I think that slideshows with audio can be an incredibly powerful way to tell a story. Just the impact a single voice can have on a group of photos adds emotion and relatability to the story. With audio attached to the photos, there's no need for captions, even if what someone is saying does not directly come from the photo. Earlier in the semester, I watched a slideshow about men wounded in Iraq. Just hearing their voices and then seeing that emotion radiate into their eyes in a photo is a powerful thing. Adding natural sound also contributes to the relatability of the story. For instance, in one of the soldier stories, there was nat sound from a doctors visit he was at with his wife. You could hear the concern for her husband in her questions, but the photos also illustrated that concern as well.

Flash Me

Working in radio, I believe audio is the most affective way of telling a story. What I like most about the audio aspect of journalism are the ways images seem to develop in someone’s mind, and how these images are never exactly the same from person-to-person. There is a closeness that I feel to the sounds of a family, a machine, or even a disaster. It draws you in, and can leave you subconsciously replaying those sounds like a broken record.

Photographs locks in a moment in time whereas a video captures so many fast moving images that it is impossible for the viewer to process every spec of each reel. Photographs on the other hand are a much more intimate experience allowing someone to stare off into the wilderness for a “complete” second. When I study a picture, I often think about the images not being shown and the stories that are not so blatantly obvious. Taking several moments to study a single second is much more adventurous than having to give up a moment within a second.

Mixing natural sound and still images to produce a very cereal experience leaves the viewer feeling like they are part of the story. A misconception with slideshows is that they are brand new, and are only beginning to be implemented in reporting. This is half true. As stated in the article, slideshow storytelling has been around for more than 150 years, but it is just being upgraded with digital imaging and sound and the instantaneous functions of the Internet.

Using flash with slideshows and video amplifies the emotional connectivity people have with stories. Flash offers interactivity for viewers to absorb content differently by processing it individually. Flash has the potential to give the web designer and viewer more control over an animation. The designer has the choice of where, when, and how to place the control. In many cases, a viewer will log onto a flash animated graphic, and be presented with a series of options that might include the order or duration of videos/photos/audio. If a user has an ample amount of control, they may choose to replay certain sections of an animation to gain a deeper understanding or connection with the story being told.

Good and Bad Design

The Williams and Tollett article outlines an array of helpful web tips. One of the most important elements for a good website is user compatibility. The whole purpose of the web is to make the processes of collecting and sending information easier. Having to work hard (and waste time) browsing a web page is never a pleasant experience. Spending a lot of time studying small text, looking for links, getting annoyed by numerous animated gif files will quickly turn users away. With the growing importance of the Internet, it is unheard of for a business not to have a website. A poorly designed website can negatively reflect an entire organization. Each and every page should have a consistent illustration style that is pleasant to look at, and not overwhelming for the viewer. A webpage, like anything, should be based on quality, not quantity. Including lots of cumbersome graphics and fonts will only distress the person viewing the page. It is also important to note that explanations on a webpage, like for links, are perfectly acceptable. No web developer should ever assume that another person knows how to completely navigate a page just as well as the webmaster. Any web designer should always ask the following question, “If I were visiting this page for the first time, what would I think?”

I'm glad that we're having the opportunity to get some formal (brief though it may be) training on design. I know with my personal page it was so easy to get carried away with colors and fonts that you forget how distracting and confusing it may be to joe schmo who stumbles upon it on the web. i admit i was nervous about composing a page for the final project after having looked at some from previous semesters. i realize now that by adhering to a few simple rules, common pitfalls can be avoided and even small adjustments (such as not centering text or having too many moving parts) make a huge difference. More isn't always better which can sometimes be counterintuitive.

Design

To me, I think with design less is more. A lot of the time I think we try to do to many things and in the argument between artistic vs. usability, usability wins. With the final project page for our group, when we design it we are trying to make sure that anyone from an experienced Internet user, to a grandmother everyone can use our page. Making something artistic limits the people who can view the page. I might be old fashioned, but I really think that design and content are much more important than artistic ability, or how well you know how to use flash. I think someone who truly understands how to use flash would make the page very usable, and mildly artistic.

Good Design Against Bad Design

When reading about what good and bad designs are I was really captivated. I never knew there was a standard but apparently, there is! I thought it was very interesting that good design is usually defined as strictly flush left and on top on the web page this is the proximity element. Contrast is another thing that is very important- but obvious, you dont want yellow text against a light tan background less you want to strain your readers eyes in ways that can lead to migranes. Repetition is very important when designing your website because you should have consistancy or else the page can become confusing. I think that the information I read about will help me to become a better more organized web designer- These elements will make my page look more professional, and will stand out against alot of the pages out there.

By Design

These tips all seemed pretty obvious to me. No one likes to scroll sideways and ALL CAPS looks very amateur. They are the things I would do wrong though when making a site. I'm the kind of person who would for some reason think changing sizes or fonts of links presents them in a better way. These chapters do a great job of warning against the little negatives we may overlook and explaining what has proven effective at appealing to audiences.

Good and Bad Design

I am glad we went over this topic because I have learned to be better with my color choices and which fonts to make bigger and smaller. The first site I did was bright and hard on the eye and it has helped to read over the packet of good design and things not to do so that I can prevet that in the creation of the final site. One of the sites that I thought was good was the African art. I liked the opening bage because it was clean and compact. I also thought the colors went to well nicely. It showed me that you can do bright and fun colors if you do them in the right hue.

Web Design

Before reading these chapters and going over the crash course during class, I hadn't had any experience with Web design. Some of the things seemed obvious such as making the text legible and large enough to see clearly, but I learned a lot from this lesson. I hate going to poorly designed Web sites, ones that are laid out sloppily or don't have any proximity. Even if the content is great, the site's credibility goes down big time if the page just looks bad or is difficult to navigate.

good idea, bad idea

Every now and then... ok, let me be realistic... ALL THE TIME, I run into sites made by well meaning people who should really know better. It ranges from blogs with background pictures that completely obscure the text, to bright red and yellow color schemes that make me feel like I'm being stabbed in the eyes. The most important function of the site is to convey information, and in some cases it's almost impossible to tell what that information is. Some of my personal pet peeves, however, are lots of scrolling text boxes on the main page (they just make everything look so cluttered), and when everything on a page is centered (because it begins to look sloppy and seems pointless). Something I find really cool, though, is interactive text. There is a website called AskMoses, for instance, that explains various aspects of Judaism, and all of the unfamiliar or Hebrew words can be toggled to show a definition.

Good and Bad design

I imagine it's quite a challenge to make a homepage that holds alot of information but also presents the information in a way that is easy to sort through and visually interesting.
I think a tendency that is hard to avoid is getting carried away with one's homepage and putting way too much stuff so that it takes forever to download, as mentioned in "The Non-Designers Web Book." I will usually go to a different page if it takes awhile to download, making someone else's efforts to impress people wasted.
Important tips from the design handouts that have come to mind as I've been visualizing my groups Website are making sure pages download quickly, good use of graphic elements,consistentcy in style, and making sure the hierarchy of text if perfectly clear.
People are inundated with so much information, so it's important to present information in a way that is easy to follow with pictures and graphics to make the information even more accessible.

I could write for years about good design and bad design for the web.
Things I personally can't stand:

- horizontal scrolling
- splash pages
- not knowing where to direct my focus first
- no white space anywhere
- the little blue underline for links
- things that aren't lined up
- wild colors on professional sites
- too much background detail, not enough content
- purple
- things that blink
- video and audio that autoplays
- things that only work in IE
- more color than b&w in the background
- ads that pop over text and then won't go away

Knowledge About Web Design

Making the website clear and regular seems to be better than making website differently after I read the assignment.
Normally, I’ll like to make my blog look different, look “NICE” however, I forgot about the reader’s user ability, forgot about the blog’s layout and it’s format. Whenever blog has a new feature came out, I’ll try to embrace it into my website, without every think about weather or now it will make my blog look different, or make other harder to follow.
I noticed the color contrast matter, before I read these readings, because sometime I found my friends’ blog hard to read, yet, I didn’t know that repetitions is better then making things new.
On Tuesday’s class Lynda even mentioned which form of letters are easier to read, and better for display, although I normally just put up fronts like the “Times New Roman”, but I didn’t realized that some fronts are better to use on the web than others.
Again, I am glad we have this class for us to try, and learn from errors, and I realized even fronts, and lay out of the website have a loads of knowledge out there I can learn and catch up on.

Alignment and spacing

I thought a lot of this information was kind of common sense, however, I was interested in what was said about alignment. The author made reference to how so many times we think by centering something it makes it look "cooler." In reality, it just makes the text look jumbled up and really doesn't look nice. I also thought it was relevant to see what was said about spacing. It helped to know about how far away text and titles should be. I also thought it was interesting to see how making things closer together or farther apart made things look more uniform.

I think some of the characteristics described in the reading were a bit obvious, but for the most part I thought the reading was helpful. I thought the pages we looked at in class were more helpful in me getting an understanding of some really important simple tricks to good page design. Sitting in class with everyone throwing out ideas made it easier for me to get a grasp on the most important techniques and what you can and can't let go. I think the things like contrast which are easier to recognize are easily avoided, and other aspects of page like alignment are those subtle things that are easily missed. Thing that I have come to despise and recognize is bad spacing on a page be it stories to pictures, pictures to captions, or advertisements to the rest of the page, spacing, or bad spacing I should say, is something that can ruin your page design wise quickly.

Writing for the visual medium

In my limited experience, writing for the visual medium of video is quite like writing for audio. Sentences must be short, direct, and convey information in a way that keeps the viewer's attention. Sometimes (for me, anyway) this can be difficult to do without feeling like you're writing at a 6th-grade level. But in a way, writing for video - and audio - is refining. It forces a writer to cut out the unnecessary baggage and communicate clearly and concisely. Ideally, this carries over to writing for print (or the web) and results in stories that make sense with minimal interference from the author.

Writing for a visual medium such as television or the Internet is such a different experience for a journalist than any other type of writing, say newspaper or magazine. For a journalist you have to keep your audience engaged in your story, keep them interested and wanting more and you go about that differently if you are writing for a visual medium, Your story and your video coexist to tell your story. Every thing you do leads your audience from clip to clip to help your audience understand what video you are showing them and why. Your audience can be taken to the scene of the accident or to the ball game or to the big Forth of July celebration, as long as you take them there. It is a medium that is so much simpler for an audience to understand, but so much more complicated and easily corrupted by a journalist that we find ourselves as young journalist at a crossroads where we must take the not so straight and narrow path and learn to use the medium in the correct and proper fashion.

Writing for the TV medium

Just the concept alone is tough to decipher. Writing for TV is so much different than writing for anything else because instead of writing information in article form your more writing for others to tell their stories. The lead is so much more important here being the key to ok stories and excellent stories. I have found this process to be challenging but fun because I love doing the process. It certainly makes you think about what kind of story you want to tell. Though it is tough, the challenges are worth while because in the end the product I think is on the most stimulating media of any out there.

Ideology

"Writing the Package" makes a great point about the idea of the story being the first step, then the field work simply a reflection of that. It is important to know the purpose of your story, rather than trying to find one once you have identified a powerful visual. The text of the story then comes from what was actually found at the scene. It is too risky to start with the second or third step. Too often nothing will be found, and a potential story is missed, that would have been seen while researching. Do not confuse research with scripting or staging though. There is a clear difference, one is to ensure accuracy, the other is simply laziness.

putting it all together

The thought of putting together a piece for TV is really interesting, but I also know that I will probably have problems with the editing process. I tend to be unable to decide what exactly I want to include and what to discard. I don't have as much of a problem editing for print, mostly because there is usually more wiggle room. Despite my ADD editing, I like the thought of combining so many elements into one story, but I'd probably try to convince someone else to do the standup... I'd rather be behind the camera than in front of it!

writing for the visual medium

Personally, I'm easily the most challenged by television. No other medium holds the same challenges. I feel uncomfortable interviewing from behind a television camera, I feel intrusive using it, my shots aren't the best and I routinely forget something necessary to put a package together (this time: first a battery, then cover video). Television is also, ironically, the medium I as a citizen pay the least amount of attention to.
Writing for television and radio is one of the hardest parts. I've re-discovered how difficult it is to concisely sum up information for audio broadcast. Not my favorite task, and definitely not one I do well at yet.
I think for me though, it's more a case of just not having done it enough and not having seen it done enough. It's a conversational tone that I'm sure I could develop in time.

Visual medium writing

Writing for a visual medium is a skill that takes careful practice in order to fully develop. It is much different, and in many cases, more difficult to do than writing for print, simply because of the time constraint involved. Many times the visual package will only have :30 to 2:00 in order to tell a story when the same story can fill up to four or five columns in the newspaper.

So, choosing and crafting words for the visual package must be done carefully and effectively in order to get the most out of them. Also, it is helpful to write out not only the voice-over soundbites, but also the format of the package (order of shots, order of clips from interviews, etc) so you get a good idea that all of the time is used effectively and none of the interviews are stepped on by poorly written voice-overs. This style of writing is something I’m still working on, but these past two assignments have helped me with trial and error as I learn what works and what doesn’t.

Poynter Article

This article definitely hit home for me after this weekend. Personally I've always had a problem with focusing my story and interviewing in general. (My weaknesses are definitely reflected in my package that is due.) Anyway, any and every piece of advice and/or hint is invited. The sentence and word story descriptions used by the journalists in this story are helpful. I used them within the context of my story and it did help some with clarity. Surprisingly I find it a lot harder to interview someone that is extremely interesting compared to someone that just feeds you what you want to hear. For example, if I'm interviewing someone that is full of information, I tend to try to sneak extras into my story. Even though some side facts may be interesting, they can also act as a story disruptor.

The interview tips in the Poynter article were also useful. Nervousness in terms of interviewing is always one of my main concerns. I constantly find myself filling in silence with crazy laughter or "agreeing words" only to regret it later in the editing process. I think that the most important aspect of an interview, according to the article, is to develop a relationship with the source. By doing this you can "get close and invest emotionally" and "make eye contact and be interested". I need to do better at these things because gaining the trust of a source is key.

Staging

It is obvious, especially after reading the article Staged, Staging, and Stages that staging is an unethical jounalistic practice. I'm not gonna lie, there have been times when I have considered asking someone to recreate a scene that I was supposed to shoot. It's an easy way out. Even though staging can add to the effect a story has on it's audience, it's extremely misleading.
I especially liked the part about "comfortableness." I think that if it does seem like a certain scene or sequence is uncomfortable it can be considered staged. Even something as simple as asking a person to walk up stairs or open a door is staging. This type of "false journalism" takes away from a journalists ability to report the truth. Another aspect about the article that I found interesting was the "We asked so and so to show us how they..." technique. In my opinion this technique works. Even though it may seem like reporting laziness, the face that the request is identified makes the sequence usable. This technique be very useful in situations in which you are covering something that that rarely happens. In the end staging is frowned upon. In my opinion a proactive journalist should never have a problem with it.

Poynter Article

It’s very important to be concise and focus, being a journalist. This is easy to say, but hard to do. Both times, when I look at my TV stories, I kept finding myself getting a lot more ideas then I need to get my story told.

Let’s put tomorrow’s TV package as an example. I have footages from two of the classes; both of them have good shoots. But this brings up another problem of choosing which idea is more compelling to tell. I ended choosing one that I think complete story, over one that which might end up being another informative story, as I put in my audio story. I should have limited myself to one that I think I really will like and then just edit with whatever I have. This way, I can be more focus, can save more time, and be probably save my time in editing too.
Being focus is what I need to work on, and then after that, I can connect my heart, my eyes, and my body to Journalism as Tompkins mentioned in the reading.

How to Focus, Interview, and Get the Story Told

As multimedia, backpack, superstar, cowabunga journalists, we have the privilege of telling stories in an array of formats. Even though having a firm grasp of digital imaging and video/audio editing is important in our field, we must not lose track of our ubiquitous purpose, to tell a thoroughly reported and narrowly focused story. Every issue has many themes that can be pursued from one angle or another. Instead of examining many of these themes, journalists should dedicate an entire story on one important topic, and cover elements within that theme. As Regina McCombs states, having a focus “keeps your story clear.”

A year and a half ago, I worked on a radio series on underage drinking. I decided to focus my series on one theme: STRIPES, a safe alternative to drinking and driving offered to students at MU. As I worked on the story, I realized there were many other elements that should be covered such as the laws of underage drinking, solutions for students battling alcoholism, and advertising in the media. By the time I was done outlining my series, I found the appropriate structure that could raise awareness about underage drinking to all people, not just minors.

One of the most laborious challenges for a journalist is leveling on an equal playing field with the interviewee. A lot of people are intimidated when a tape recorder or a camera is set up that the information they would normally give to a non-journalist can be subconsciously censored. The Poynter article presents a fine list of helpful interview suggestions so that the interviewee feels like a person and not a subject for a story. One of my personal techniques is to start an interview with questions not relevant to the topic at hand. Granted this may not be an option if there is minimal interview time, but it can be interesting to ask someone about their life, their loves, and any additional information they have locked up that they may want to share. Asking these sort of questions can lead to additional information that can strengthen the story and help the person being interviewed forget that they are being interviewed. Every journalist should investing an interest in a person for reasons other than the completion of a story.

During the past few weeks, I have embarked on an exciting journey with interviewing. I am currently working on a radio series where I ride the Columbia transit and talk to people…that’s it. I am compiling stories from strangers, and creating a four-week series with each episode centering around a theme that is relevant to a collection of interviews. For the first time ever, I am approaching people with absolutely no idea of what they are going to talk about. I have met some fascinating people over the past month anxious to be given an open outlet to speak. Additionally, I have found that people will treat you the way you treat them. Some of the individuals I have interviewed come off as intimidating or nurturing, but what binds all of them together is that they are human beings, nothing more and nothing less. Keeping this in mind, I have been able to connect with these people, and ask some of the most personal questions that they have had no problem answering. Sure there will be times when someone will not dive deeper into an issue, but it is alright to ask for more information. As a journalist, it is important to garner as much information as possible so that the end story will be rich in quality and content. The greatest mistake in life is not trying, and this same principle applies to journalism.


A 4802 Extra

A Multimedia Manifesto (click image):


Ghetto Life 101...2 young boys in Chicago talk to members of their community (click image):

Poynter Article

It made sense to me that you should be able to say the main point of your story in one sentence. I feel that it would keep you on track to what you are trying to get across to the viewer. I thik that is something I will definately keep in mind in the upcoming group projects. I also liked the interviewing tips and have found the ones I have used from the list to be successful. Especially when you have personal connections to something someone is talking about. I found out the rink owner that I was interviewing knew some of the people that I knew back home in Seattle. I would have never though someone in Missouri would know those skating people. I thought it was pretty cool and it made her more open to talk to me. It also helped that I knew enough about the topic that they felt comfortable with me writing and interviewing them.

I agree wth the article when it says that we need to connect our eye, heart and body to journalism. I think all of those are important in creating something appealing and interesting. I do like that they said there should be that "gee whiz" moment. There does need to be some kind of suprise element that people don't know about because if not what's the point. People don't want to learn about what they already know!

Visual Mediums

The part of the visual story telling tips that i found most useful was undoubtedly the idea behind each aspect of the website not being repetitive but complimentary. Looking back on my current website i definitely feel that I should have used this tip a little more, but hey thats why we are learning right...right, anyways I definitely think that this is something i will strive to do more of in our final projects.

In regards to the Poynter Institute article I think that gave a lot of great tips when it comes to reporting. Probably the one that I found has been most useful, and one that i learned in j2100, was the idea of silence. I can actually remember a time when I was doing a phone interview with a state senator and I asked him a question and he seemed very unwilling to answer a question and I just sat there and eventually I got the answer I was looking for. I have also found that if you dont talk the person you are interviewing will feel as if they havent said enough and will continue talking and may even give you better material to work with.

whew im out of breath

Writing for Visual Medium

Other than the technical difficulties, writing for a visual medium has been an enjoyable experience for me. I think you can leave yourself out of the story easily and focus on showing people what a person is saying. Writing for print makes it diffuclt to capture people's tones and what expression they made when they said particular things. With a visual medium, you can show people, rather than try to write a description. Though working witih a visual medium presents the challenge of using the right video footage to help people understand what is going on. I've read that using stimulating visuals can also be distracting when you are trying to get a complex message across. Trying to balance out what a person is saying with something interesting to look at can be hard when you're not sure if perhaps the audience is going to pay more attention to the visuals rather than the audio of the person being interviewed.

visual storytelling

I read the tips on visual storytelling, and I thought it was very interesting that they said that the different multimedia aspects of your site should not be repetitive, but complimentary. I first thought, wow that would probably be the hardest part...but then in the storyboarding section, they go through a good example. I really feel that I will reference this site for our final projects.

As for the poynter institute article, I loved the tips for interviewing. Silence is okay. Give the interviewee time to think about their answers. This is probably something that I would do...rushing. Oops. Also they said to connect with your interviewee and tell them something about yourself. This happened when I was interviewing a woman for my video story on my page. She started telling me the things I wanted to hear without me even having to ask her questions. Go Poynter.

The Total Package

I found the reading on how to create a package incredibly helpful. I wrote my package from the 5 step guideline as I read through it. I liked how it said to make points; I have a bad tendency to go off on tangents or show a clip or soundbite I just really like instead of thinking about whether or not it really fits with what I'm trying to get across. The step-by-step guide helped me complete my planning for my package in no time! I now know which shots I need to get, what I need to say, and the points I would like to express in my piece. I also have a better idea of what questions I need to ask. I think that what the reading said about whether or not a story needs a package is very true. Not every story needs or can handle a total package. Some stories aren't enough to make a whole piece with cover video and interviews and voice overs. The job of telling which stories should be told by the anchor and which should be made into a package is a hard one. But, the reading gave good examples and information to help decide. I thought this assignment was well worth it's weight in gold and it helped me emmensely.

Focus!!!

The article in poynter resonated loud and clear with me personally. As I was reading through it I was being called back to the convergence project we did in j2100 and how easy it was to get excited about a new detail and be pulled increasingly farther away from the original simplicity of the story. Going into an interview you must have a clear outline of goals you would like to accomplish but be mindful of your own ability to force things that aren’t there. For an accurate story you must let your subject tell their story but as a good journalist, you must keep them on track. Being flexible within your story can produce unexpected and viable results. I like that in this article it discussed how to maintain focus within a specific assignment but at the heart of every interview, overarching goals should be applied as well. Things like connecting to the viewer and good storytelling are ultimately the foundation and all other goals should be constructed on top of these.

Illustrative Storytelling

I dont beleive that as convergence journalists we should use the illustrative technique. I think that we could use some sort of slide show, or just a written story to convey what we would in a illustrative video story. If a story is heavy on facts and low on visual and audio effects, then it would be stronger to just write a story filled with facts. Show a few photos and thats a story. I understand with something like KOMU doing a story illustratively because they are somewhat limited to one media, yes the can do online stuff but when the big story of the day has a lot of facts they have to do an illustrative story. I personally see this as a reason to be a convergence journalist.

Acorn to Oak

The story from the Poynter Institute talks a lot about focusing your story. I like the idea they gave of trying to explain the focus of your story in one sentence. So often reporters come up with these great ideas, but they are so broad or general that its hard to really get a good story out of that. By focusing the story, you make for a more concise, better reported package. I also liked when Chip Scanlan said, "the story's focus is the acorn that contains the promise of a mighty oak."

Rich Murphy's philosophy of finding a gee whiz moment made a lot of sense too. Try to suprise your viewers with something new and different even in a mundane story.

Fudging around with video and sound

When I first came to write this blog, I was tempted to write a piece defending staging shots or swapping sound. After all, if journalism's obligation is to the truth, why would recreating a situation in a truthful manner be bad?

Think about what journalists regularly do. Their stock and trade is gathering information from a variety of sources and retelling what they think happened, as their information tells them it happened. If journalists are given carte blanche to do this with the written word, why is doing this in a graphic form wrong?

I think the difference comes down to the level of credibility people give each form. With words, the source of them is obvious, coming from the reporter and sources, and people are used to some level of skepticism that what they're being told may not be how it actually happened.

Yet with visual images or sounds, their ability to convince is greater, since if an image of something is shown or a sound, it seems to actually be coming from what is seen or heard. The viewer/listener is easily led to believe that what is being shown is how it actually happened, even if it is a recreation, since recreations so easily match "the real thing". Thus, if something is actually inaccurate, the damage to the truth is greater, since more people will be deceived. If someone just read or heard someone say an inaccurate recollection of events, they have their greater incredulity to protect them from believing BS.

My favorite part of these readings was the Poynter piece's notes regarding how music, effects, lighting or editing can be deceitful. This is one of my greatest concerns, how these tricks influence how a subject is perceived subliminally, and I don't think this has been studied enough, given how fuzzy and hard to discern the impact of these tricks is. I hope more research and cogitation can help give a clearer understanding of the effects of these tricks.

Adderall

The Adderall story, while well-done overall, had some definite weak points. The most glaring was the statement by the reporter that "taking someone else's prescription enhances its side-effects", which is absurd. Not having the proper piece of paper has no impact on the side-effects--although not having a doctor screen for side-effects may have been what the reporter was looking for.

The intro was quite lovely, with the ratatat recitation of school stresses almost replicating what I'd imagine Adderall would be like, as well as conveying the potential to overwhelm that school has. For the rest of the piece, there was nothing else sound-wise to really engage me. How about clinking of pills as a prescription is filled?

There was good overall balance between the two sides. I've been thinking recently about what Lynda said about how what's placed last gets special emphasis. In this case, it was a supportive voice for using the drug, which struck me as kind of off.

All in all, a strong piece with a few weak points.

Final Salute

This piece brought up for me the greatest strengths, weaknesses and trapfalls of "converged" online reporting.

I went onto the site and at first I was overwhelmed by the amount of information on that start page--stories of various types, ads, "helpful" site navigation tools interfering with my experience of the story. "Ok, I just need to dive into one of these so I can experience it."

I click on the story link. Same clutter. The moving story in the center, ads pasted on the left side, ads on the right and that same "helpful" navigator, all cluttering up the story. I read down, but really I didn't go past page 1 (of 10 or so) because the presentation felt so distasteful.

I go to the audio slideshow. After a few false starts trying to get the audio right, the story unfolds. I'm reminded what the real cost of war is, what it means every time a soldier dies, in a way that I haven't since a high school friend, also a marine, was killed in the first month of the war. I feel stupid for letting the war become just another issue instead of the concrete event it is.

I think of all the stories there must be every time someone, anywhere, dies. This story of grieving, seeing the casket, first in the funeral parlour, then being carried, brings back to me my grandfather's funeral, what it was like carrying his casket over ice and snow, in dread fear of falling.

I'll feel privileged if I can bring a story to someone in such a real way as a journalist.

Wow, converged reporting is great. This is amazing that I can experience this powerful story whenever I want to. This story couldn't be told this way in any other medium.

Back to the main page. "Oh, I see they have the story that was cluttered up with ads in PDF format, as it was originally presented in the newspaper. Great, I can see read this story the way it was meant to be." Click. "Acrobat 5.0 has encountered an error and needs to close down." (Damnit.) Click again. Same. Click on another link and this time it loads.

"Wow, this page is beautifully laid out. This is the story as it was meant to be. Now I can read this story without the obnoxious ads. This must've been what it was actually like in the newspaper--I wonder what it was like to read it in the actual newspaper. At least now there aren't any ink smudges."

Back to the main page. Try the 2nd page again--I guess Acrobat is working now.

"Acrobat 5.0 has encountered an error and needs to close down."

Damnit, I give up.

David Snider's Street Pictures

I'll be honest here and say my first two reactions two the Street Pictures series by David Snider were negative. But not negative in that I was critical of Snider's work. His work gave me curiosity and joy. Rather, the negatives were more internally directed.

In his essay, he passed on wise advice that he learned in his classes in turn onto us: "It's not the heat, it's the timidity." As an amateur (for the love of it) photographer, I've often faced the challenge he had faced: how to capture spontaneous moments without the awareness of his subjects, and to deal with the occasional annoyance people give at being "found out" while I try to capture a photo. My stealth skills, or maybe it's just skill at being unimposing while taking photographs, are quite sub par.

There are interesting parallels here with reporting-based journalism. Reportage involves trying to capture the information and dealing with unfriendly subjects of information gathering, too. In the end, what matters is the one valuable, cooperative subject you get for every hostile encounter.

The second negativity involves bewilderment at how to interpret these beautiful photographs. Being a logical person, one of my earliest responses to a piece of art is, "What is it trying to convey?" More often than not, I just can't figure it out. And, truly, it seems to me that the greatest art doesn't easily give off messages. Maybe the problem is trying to figure out the message is, instead of having a direct experience.

Getting down to the nitty, I'm frankly distrustful of photojournalism. It's a byproduct of this uncertain, amorphous message that might be emitted by a photo. I think the subtle, non-logical aspect of art can almost be more coercive than any words, simply because it bypasses logical thought, and untruthful messages might get by the censor of a good editor simply because aesthetics is so much easier to judge in a piece of art than what it's saying.

Staging Video and sliding audio

After reading through the sliding sound article from Poynter I found some really interesting takeaway reminders and ideas for editing video as well as other types of multimedia. KLAS definately was at fault for being careless and reckless with its handling of the shooting story. One of our main objectives as journalists is to give the most accurate depiction of a story to the viewer/customer and allow them to decide for themselves. "Journalism is essential to self-governing society. We can only fulfill our critical role of informing the public if the public believes what we put on the air," the article says. Being cautious and thorough in editing to weed out these mistakes is the best possible way to avoid sticky situations, and I thought the article did a good job of laying out the obligations journalists have to portray an honest story.

video staging

Nothing here too surprising...I guess my first thought is that it is supposed to be easier to verify the trustworthiness of something caught on tape - but the camera cannot see everything. We distrust Stephen Glass-style journalists, but his work was done in words and descriptions that if filmed on camera would have exposed the fraud.
Maybe that is part of why broadcast journalism is more popular; it's easier to trust the camera than it is a written description. Even so, deception is still not hard; we as journalists need to do as my mom would say, and avoid even the "appearance of evil."

Call it Theatre if it's Staged

At first I thought these articles were a bunch of ethics statements that I have heard over and over again. A camera changes the meaning though.Visual storytelling will often be the most effective, so there is a major emphasis on "getting the best shot". It comes down to shear laziness when a journalist stages events to gain this. It is easy to make up a story, when compared to finding one and showing it, but that's in no way journalism. "Recreating" an event or simply making one up is fake, unless identified as fake, the footage is not news.

It is also true that a camera will cause the subject to change their behavior. With many stories the right questions will continuously result in wrong answers. It is also hard to just go about your business with a camera on you. It is difficult but crucial to get an interview subject to act normal. I liked Wertheimer's suggestion of getting your subject to talk to you not the camera.

Going with the Flow response to "Staged, Staging, Stages," by Dave Wertheimer

As Journalist, we should be an observer, and report only what we have seen. Our presents at the events should not affect how things are supposed to be happened. Wertheimer mentioned that some reporter asked people to stage what they thought NFL drafting story should look like. Maybe these reporters are under deadline pressures, maybe they are holding their “gate keeping pride” to deliver “what the TV reviews” should see, or maybe they are lazy changing their angle of the story.
I am against staging as well. As Lynda has mentioned in her “Story Commitment” articles, “A great reporter takes every available moment before arriving at a story scene to research the story and brainstorm possible ways to "frame" the story.”, in other words, we should frame the our cover story, so that we have our ideas on what to cover. But lives changes, things changes, so we should also have different plans to reach our goals. In Journalism, that is having different views of a story idea, so if one does go well, we can use our resources to sell the story in other way.
It’s always easier to say then done, but having the abilities to display a story in different way, and still making the story relevant, this requires a lot time to research. It is the battle between time and quality. For example, I was going to study how to use Avid during the weekend, because I knew I won’t have much time to edit the clips today. But Eres went down, and my avid experience won’t so successful, so I can only go to school early tomorrow to ask for help.
Life change, everything changes, as a reporter, we can only go with the flow, and work on our, and tell the true (Not making the true) the best we can.

The Visual Grammar of Motion Picture Photography
&
Video Editing: The Invisible Art

A skilled editor successfully reconstructs a series of events that “embodies a sense of continuity or consecutiveness” to sharpen and enlighten the viewer’s experience. The images presented in a story need to show an event unfold, as it could in real life. The photographer should view a camera’s lens as a human eye. The way a person observes a setting, and gradually focuses on certain details should be considered when setting up a camera shot. Several techniques can be used to help this process. The 'Rule of Thirds' improves the composition of a setting by having the photographer divide a scene into thirds. When viewing scenes in this way, the photographer places subjects in regions where the lines intersect. This useful approach enables the viewer to concentrate on the most important actions. Another strategy when capturing a setting is the pan, which is used to survey a scene that lasts long enough for an average person to process the documented details. In journalism, less equates to more. Images that do not clutter a picture and lack detail often succeed in effectively telling a story.

One of my concerns with any sort of journalism is staging. I always try to stay outside of the story so that I can successfully document the natural actions during a moment in time without influencing the actions within a scene. With the overlapping action, the photographer at times interferes with the natural flow of events by instructing the person in the image to repeat an action. Although this may be necessary in order to capture a master shot and a detail shot, the idea of staging journalism makes me quiver with pity and shame.

An important technique with editing is the cutaway. In radio, I am comfortable with taking two separate parts of a single interview and pasting them together to save time, without changing the meaning. In television, editing in this way is not as cut and dry. Joining two separate parts of a video interview results in a jump cut. Cutaways prevent jump cuts by inserting b-roll as a backdrop over the interviewee’s audio. Doing this correctly will prevent the viewer from being distracted by an obvious edit. A technique in radio that can be applied to television is using sound as a transitional device. Starting natural sound at the tail end of a shot can ease the viewer with a sound bridge from one scene to another.

Just like the way a camera’s lens should be viewed as a human eye, editing should be done with “our eyes and with our minds.” Since editing is such an integrated part of storytelling, everyone involved in the process (the reporter, writer, photographer, etc) is an editor. Every image in television has tidbits of information that should flow smoothly from one scene to another, and every edit made should make sense. Simply placing b-roll over an interview should add to a story, not defer from it.


A 4802 Web Extra

For more detailed photography techniques, click here.

For an article on the the ethics of staging, click here.

When News is Staged Viewers Become Enraged--

After reading the article on the "staging of video" within the news, I certainly understood the angles that Al Thompkins took instructing the dangers in staging. The principle rule is not to add anything for adding things be it sounds, or any other types of special effects can alter the ultimate goal for which the journalist seeks; the truth.

I think this article should be read in the beginning of the course as a reminder of journalism's ethical guidelines and how to go out and create stories. I made the mistake in adding sound effects in my first audio which deceives the listener. I didn't think about how it altered reality and blocked the search for the truth, impeded by my desire to make it a "story" where the word story in news in different than story in entertainment. Stories are bare bones truth where a listener, viewer or reader makes up their minds based on factual information.

The other tips were also helpful reminders on how to continue to bring out the truth in your reporting. The lesson learned through reading the article was to keep Hollywood in Hollywood and allow news to be news.

--SSliker

Staging

When it comes to shooting short news stories for video, I can't imagine a situation in which staging would be absolutely necessary to effectively tell the story. Such a situation might exist, but I prefer the philosophy that says staging in journalism inserts too much outside influence into the story. On the other hand, it could be viewed as the same as a print reporter allowing a source to restate something, and using that quote instead of what they initially said. As long as it isn't an attempt to cover up something, that seems permissible. Nonetheless, I think it's important to try and avoid staging in most cases.

Filming and Editing

I think the most obvious thing stated in both chapters is that everybody is human, and because everybody is human we are all going to see things the way we want to see them, and that way may or may not be true. We have to be aware of this human character flaw and attempt to move away form it and see reality as it is and not what we want it to be. The more aware we are of this the the less likely we are to edit or film in a way that is not ethical.

I also enjoyed reading everything that this author had to say. It really provides a deep insight into how to create a ascetically pleasing story without violating ethics rules.

staged journalism

I think it's a shame that people resort to staging photos or video because they can't get to the scene on time or because they don't feel that what they got on tape was exciting enough. The author was right when he said it makes the subject uncomfortable. I think some people are uncomfortable enough, just being on camera. I really can't say much else about the subject because the article was so short...

But it is something that all journalists should be very cautious of, I believe it can become a slippery-slope.

Code of Ethics

I agreed with all that the Poynter Institute had to say about what the code of ethics should be. I also thought the question they told you to ask yourself (how willing would you be to explain your editing process/techniques to the public) made a good point. If you had to explain certain things to the public would you do the same thing or would you do them differently. I think it makes the reporter more cautious about what they are doing. It is our job to show reality and not to create it... that's for movie directors. This is why I think it is important to follow the "do not add" rule, because when you add certain elements it changes reality, which isn't what journalism is.

staging and stuff

The parts I liked in Dave Wertheimer's Staged, Staging, Stages was when he said that our very presence alters the situation from its original position. We and our equipment are a distraction. One good tip he gave was to use eye contact, so as not to be a "guy/girl with camera" but "Erin who happens to have a camera". Also he said to leave the wireless mic in the room and leave, that way people are really not intimidated. Funny, I thought. Further, yea, staging is really an ethical issue. I remember in class Lynda talking about a reporter asking someone to say something in a certain way... not okay. Its nice to see that this guy knows it's not just a "line in the sand".

Staging Video

Obviously, staging video is ethically wrong and is a great way to get you fired and forced into a new profession. However, there are little nuances that maybe confusing to young journalists. I remember in class, someone had a question about cutting video in and out of an interview between segments of an interview. It was said that you couldn’t cut peoples interview so that there words are distorted and the meaning is changed. However, we were encouraged to cut the best part of our video to the beginning if it is good for the interview. So you can see it is a fine line between the ethics of cutting video and good video editing techniques. It is something that young journalist must be careful to learn these fine lines and remember down the line during their journalistic career. These are difficult lessons that we all must learn and it is good for us as students to learn the basics of this fundamental question in journalism.

What stuck out to me about the story about KLAS, was what the director said ... the station had gone too long without a discussion about video editing. This to me could stop a lot of problems from happening. When I wrote for a small weekly in North Carolina, there were a lot of things that stuck out to me as un ethical, but there was never anytime to voice it. I think that if newsrooms regularly take the time to not only remind the staff of the stations ethical code, but also to listen to the staff as to what the station might be doing wrong, I think the news would take great steps forward.
I realize that getting the whole station together at any point and having the time to have this discussion is hard to find, but I believe that they people form KLAS will tell you the wish they had found the time to review ethics.

slidng audio

There seems to be some gray areas when it comes to ethics in journalism, and sliding audio is one of them. I think it's always good to ask yourself what purpose the audio editing serves. Is it just to clean up a story and make it sound better or is it to make people think something happend that actually didn't? Even when editing my audio stories, I wondered if it was okay to cut and paste a pause or someone saying "umm" and inject it somewhere else in a story as a transition betweeen sentences. I appreciate the sectin of the article on using file tape and the questions one should ask when using file tape. Sometimes people are entertained by watching really tragic events and enjoy watching it for the sensational value of it, just as people are entertained by violent movies. Yet, the fact that some things we see on tv news is real life with real people suffering should be more imortant than the publics desire to see something sensational.

Staging

My only experience with photographs is the ones of my friends and family that are often goofy, out of focus and most importantly, almost always staged. Not only is it easy to visualize the shot you want/need, but it only makes sense to position subjects to attain a certain goal. I feel it is much easier to be accurate in print because there are several levels of fact checking that must be done. Mistakes are made, of course, but who is to say if what is happening in the picture actually took place or not? A good journalist must always be alert and focused on not only the subject, but the surroundings and the details of each moment. As a photographer, there may be just a few brief moments that are available to produce a solid product and they can be missed if not prepared. When taking pictures for this class, I found myself getting frustrated when reality didn't match up to the way I had envisioned they would. It has definately been a learning experience in that you can't force the events you want to happen you have to work with what you are given.

Ethics from the Poynter Institute

Some of the suggestions written in this article I thought were common sense, but they were things I never would've thought of on my own. For example, when the author talked about taking a storm picture and then addding sound from before or after the shot was taken isn't ethical. Why I can understand this fact, I still don't think I would've thought of it on my own.

Also, I liked the refresher about not using songs unless it was taken from the scene of your story. Using soundtracks or pre-recorded audio is not ethical. The songs must have been hearded at the scene that day.

I liked the idea of using the front page story check to see if your story is ethical. You must ask yourself that if a newspaper called you and wanted to run that story on the front page, would it be okay?