Multimedia Reporter

Using Google Wave as an interview tool

2009-10-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

Last week, I may have conducted the first ever news interview using Google Wave. At least the first interview in Wichita, KS. Google Wave is currently being tested and accounts are available by invitation. No, I can't send you an invitation, because I wasn't one of the cool kids first invited to use it. I believe most were web developers. They got the invitations to distribute, and local web

Communication Week: Surfing the government online

2009-10-13T19:48:00.000-07:00

There's a ton of information on the web about how your government works, if you know where to look. To guide you, here are some links presented in a panel Wednesday at Wichita State University during its Communication Week. National Centers for Disease Control Library of Congress Census Bureau CIA Library Bureau of Labor Statistics Bureau of Justice Statistics Drug Enforcement

Links for WSU Class

2009-09-22T07:11:00.001-07:00

Today I'm speaking to two journalism classes at Wichita State University about multimedia journalism, what I'm doing and ideas about what they should explore. Here's the list of links I'm using for future reference. The basics Print? Broadcast? Social Media Journalism Student blogs and pages My Kansas.com blog Example of a personal site Linked-In Some hot journalism tools (of the moment)

Size doesn't matter: Why metrics are no longer important to my beat blog

2009-09-17T19:03:00.000-07:00

John Ensslin and I were talking over lunch at the National Journalism Conference last month in Indianapolis, pondering why the numbers on our news blogs weren't soaring as they did on the daily stories we posted off the crime beat. We're both courthouse reporters. John produces " for the Colorado Springs Gazette. I do "What the Judge Ate for Breakfast for the Wichita Eagle. Like most news sites

Getting videos even your photographer buddies will think is cool

2009-09-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

Face it, as reporters we are still on the low end of priorities when it comes to video. Yes, it's now a requirement for us to know how to shoot, capture and edit video stories in a multimedia world. But try arm-wrestling for equipment, and you're going to lose to the real photographers in the newsroom, whose jobs are increasingly dependent on video expertise. And they should. I'm not one to

So then I started this video series to expand the coverage of my beat

2009-09-14T10:08:00.000-07:00

After the Twitter experiment worked, I began searching for other ways to expand my court beat online. What I really wanted to do is reach past the types of cases that usually made news. There's so much that goes on in the courthouse everyday, you can't cover it all. But I figured the web enabled me to go beyond what I used to do when I only had the newspaper, and its limited space, as a venue.

60 sites in 60 minutes: stampeding the SPJ Convention

2009-09-01T00:16:00.000-07:00

Jeff Cutler and I were overwhelmed by the response to our session Saturday at the SPJ National Convention. "Site Stampede: 60 web sites in 60 minutes" drew a large, lively crowd anxious to learn what we'd linked to around the web. You can download a copy of the links (.doc) and Mitch Davis posted a series of videos, for those who couldn't attend. We're hoping to do it again next year in Vegas.

And now I return to where I started as a multimedia reporter

2009-09-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

I come back to this blog, and really I realize I never should have left. This is where I started my journey into a new era of journalism that many my age found frightening. I feel like I've come a long way in the past two years. I made many new friends. I discovered Twitter, which brought me to a new level of reporting and may have saved my career. I've talked to journalists around the country

Pushing Twitter trial coverage a step forward: federal court

2009-02-26T03:48:00.000-08:00

In less than a year, covering trials via Twitter has gone from an experiment to one of my regular reporting tools. With each new trial, I've gained about 100 followers - both locally and even from other countries - and that doesn't count the people who watch it from our news web site or on my work blog. The reaction has been stunning at times. Other news sites, notably the Orange County

To be a journalist: to publish, to benefit a community

2009-01-22T23:18:00.000-08:00

Used to be, we needed people who owned big printing presses or big towers in order to be journalists. But today, when most people are getting their information online, anyone can publish content. The business of big media is watching their stocks fall, while watching the rise of citizen journalists. But what is a citizen journalist, and what makes them different from professional journalists.

Seeing the future of journalism, and trying to save it, in Denver

2008-12-16T10:30:00.000-08:00

The Denver Press Club recently invited me to participate in a weekend workshop looking at the future, and the precarious present, of journalism. Denver Channel 8 taped my presentation and put it online. My wife found it stunning that, 1) anyone would invite me to visit their city to talk about Twitter and 2) broadcast it on TV. I also got a chance to talk to newsrooms of both the Denver Post

Jon Stewart asks his "depressing riddle" about newspapers

2008-12-10T21:22:00.000-08:00

"What's black and white and completely over?" Jon Stewart asked last night on the "Daily Show." We knew the answer before he said it. Here's the video. It smarts. But good satire is that way. That's why we're learning these skills for online. But still, it smarts.

The rise of social media and the demise of newspapers

2008-12-05T06:23:00.000-08:00

I remember a kind of panic going through the newspaper industry -- around 1989. Young people weren't reading newspapers, and there was a great amount of money being spent trying to figure out how to change that. "How are we going to get the next generation to read the newspaper?" publishers asked. They spent a lot of money making youth-oriented sections for newspapers that went unread. Now we

The big digital news of today: Spot.us launches

2008-11-10T22:23:00.000-08:00

Just in case you haven't seen it yet, the non-profit Spot.us launched this week - the very definition of civic journalism. Brought to you by David Cohn, a.k.a "DigiDave," he describes the idea behind it this way: "Journalism is a process not a product, but that process takes time and people who do it professionally need to be compensated. The process of journalism should be participatory - and

Who are we trying to reach by video: journalism, the audience or ourselves

2008-10-30T16:12:00.000-07:00

As journalists, we sometimes let a good story get in the way of the news. That tendency has plagued us, as we’ve moved to multimedia platforms. Fortunately, the people we are trying to serve with information have a way of keeping us grounded. Remember a few years ago, when everybody was preaching narrative writing? The inverted pyramid was declared dead, a relic of the past. Then something

Journalists' should make sure their voices are heard in community conversations

2008-10-25T15:51:00.000-07:00

I'm catching up on reading, and blogging, after knee surgery. Still a little loopy on the pain meds, but I'll see if I can patch together some coherent sentences. I watched this video interview with social media guru Howard Rheingold. He's talking about libraries here, but what he says about their mission is much the same, I believe, as journalists. Journalism is more than a TV clip or

Talking Twitter with BeatBlogger about microblogging the news

2008-09-28T19:48:00.000-07:00

Patrick Thornton of Beatblogging.org called last week to talk about how I use Twitter to cover trials. It resulted in this post and podcast. Also look up Patrick on Twitter @jionoclast.

Hot links this week on online journalism

2008-09-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

Jack Lail says "We'd get more readers if we gave them less frickin' news to read": “The news junkies, however, are the users that move the metrics and we focus even more on what they want because they are generating more pageviews and longer times on site. And thus we have less of what more casual news consumers want. Sort of like drinking ourselves to death?” "We Were Print" – the blog of “

Best of online journalism: from D.C. to Middletown

2008-09-16T23:19:00.000-07:00

"Fixing D.C. Schools" is the kind of project I still remember seeing for the first time on Washington Post.com. It covered every aspect of the public schools in D.C., from the maintenance of the school halls to student scores. It told stories across the multimedia platforms. No surprise it won the Knight Award for Public Service during the Online Journalism Awards. See the awards site for

SPJ Convention all a-Twitter with new media and online journalism learning

2008-09-09T03:29:00.000-07:00

Random notes from the SPJ National Convention which ending Sunday … Some SPJ members may see the organization as still being for a bunch of old newspaper dudes. You may think curmudgeons rule, but you couldn’t tell that by attending the workshops and sessions in Atlanta. “People are getting new media here and loving it,” Molly McDonough said. “I don’t get that back in my newsroom.” I would agree

I'm moving

2007-09-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

The Society of Professional Journalists asked me recently if I'd consider moving my posts over to its blogosphere. As a national board member of SPJ and a longtime member, I jumped at my friend Chrisine Tatum's invitation.A couple of other reporters are joining me at Technolo-J. The content will be the same, but with three of us posting, hopefully there will be more information and more

For anyone who has had to sit through a bad PowerPoint

2007-09-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

Here's one to enjoy over the long weekend (via Cyberjournalist.net)

It's all about content

2007-08-27T20:28:00.000-07:00

One of the ways I’ve continued to learn about multimedia is through the comments people leave on this blog about their own experiences. Robert Cronkleton of the Kansas City Star is the latest to share his early ventures into multimedia reporting. Robert collected audio of candidates for fire chief in Kansas City,

Deciding what to show and what to tell

2007-08-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

When I’m taking a new path, it’s helpful for me to find one that's comfortable. The first computer-assisted reporting project I tried 10 years ago analyzed restaurant health inspections – along with about every other CAR newbie in the country. I’d written about the so-called “CSI Effect” from a courtroom perspective. But I’d always wanted to shadow a crime scene investigator and show, not

Staring down the deadline

2007-08-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

Today, I filed. Not that my project is completely finished. There’s still the usual work, such as answering editors’ endless questions and endlessly debating whether the nut graph really exists or is just a figment of their imaginations. This was an attempt at putting together a multimedia package.