How Newhouse Can Become Relevant Again
This post is in part a response to Lauren Rabaino’s post on how to change the Cal Poly journalism program in part an answer to the #collegejourn call for posts on how to improve college journalism education.
Lauren’s analysis of the way to overhaul the her journalism program seems to go down the right path. I would take it just a set or two further though and stop the broadcast concentration. I'm looking at:
- writing track: teaches reporting as any old print/newspaper prof would typically teach it, but with a strong emphasis on writing for the web. This naturally includes social networking, blogging, and audio production.
- visual-content track These are are photogs, broadcast people, & designers. Teach a little bit of print design, but go 40-60% with web design. Photogs and video folk ought to know most of what each other does. Photogs may get some studio and photoshop time that the video folk won't and the video people ought to focus a little more on how to produce BJ style stories.
- tech track: We need to be teaching/recruiting coders as journalists. Now that we’re on the web, we need people who are capable of running that infrastructure. We ought to be training people in web site design, database management and display, data-mining, website development, etc
I mostly agree with Lauren’s idea of scrapping the print track, as I’ve said, teaching print design is a bit like teaching someone esperanto. It’s not like print design is going to go away, but it is far less important that teaching web design to those in the journalism field.
Video
I’ll go ahead and cautiously agree with Lauren, video should be taught in some form or another to all the majors. I say again: cautiously.
Newhouse has a the ‘kid in the candy store’ syndrome when it comes to video. Soundslides are taught in beginning writing and photo classes, video/multimedia has become an integral part of nearly every lesson plan. The thinking is, ‘new media’ involves heavy use of multimedia and video, and therefore every student should be indoctrinated into the ways of ‘new media.’
This thinking is just … flawed. Beginning photo students just don’t need to know how to shoot video … it’s advanced skill that just doesn’t need to be taught to beginning students.
Besides, the video that Newhouse emphasizes is short-form, heavily edited video segments that last 1:30. I’m not at all convinced that the ROI is there.
Instead, Newhouse ought to focus on the basics of shooting video (composition, lighting, uploading, etc) for those not in the visual track and long form video (10 min) for the visual folk.
Social Media
Every program should heavily emphasis social media. How to leverage it for reporting, maintaining a personal and professional blog, twitter, podcasting, etc…
One nice thing about Newhouse is it is home to a lot of up-to-date, high-end equipment. This makes the job of learning and reporting much easier, but it’s all for nought if we’re not learning applicable information.
An active blog ought to be viewed in the same light as getting an internship – a requirement.
Old media
Just like the mainstream media industry, journalism academia is run by Baby Boomers and a select few in Generation X. Generally, these folk just don’t ‘get’ social media in the same way that us Generation Y kids do. How can they be expect to teach the value of something that they don’t value? Read the rest of this post →
Newspapers Oughta Sell Their New Expertise
Inspired by a small point made by Jeff Jarvis, I left a comment on his blog saying that I thought he had struck gold — a way to supplement ad revenue at local newspapers.
To adapt to the Internet, newspapers have been forced to evolve, some have become experts in ‘new media.’ A term that I hate because, really what is ‘new media?’ When does it stop becoming new, and what will we call the media that comes after it? Is everything just eternally ‘new media?’
The current definition means that a ‘new media’ expert is up-to-speed on blogging, linking, short form video, Facebook, Twitter, other social networks, etc… All of this expertise is a real commodity that many businesses would love to tap into.
I Bet the CIA Could Do This 10 Years Ago…
Academic research has developed a technology that allows video and photographs to be combined to produce stunning results.Just… wow.
These videos are rather academic, and would be boring to watch, but their content is so amazing that I was entertained the whole time. The ease and quality of the result is simply astounding.
Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene from pro on Vimeo.
Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO, News Corporation | D6 Highlights | AllThingsD
Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of the News Corporation spoke at the famous All Things Digital today. His interview was rather enlightening. Here is the two part highlight reel:
Interesting to note:
- The conference is put in association with the Wall Street Journal, which Murdoch Owns.
- The interviewers are presumably employees of Murdoch.
- Most of the questions are fairly soft, but there are a couple that have a point to them.
Editing: ‘Real World’ Style
My semester is coming to an end in London and I've just completed a video class that I really enjoyed. It was really my first experience playing with video equipment that ranks at the 'prosumer' level. Lessons learn'd a'plenty, but to the point of this post:
A project that I did for this class was something of an experiment for me. I took footage of a few nights spent in my flat in London – which I share with 10 other people. We had joked for a while that we lived in a MTV Real World atmosphere. Reviewing the footage, I couldn't have summarized it better.
No doubt we act and behave a lot like the characters in the Real World, but when I was editing the footage, I got a real sense of how MTV is able to edit their footage to do all the things that they are accused of doing – enhancing conflict, portraying characters in a certain light, changing the timeline, etc…
And that's sort of the rub – reality TV is shot in a journalistic style. It appears to be capturing a slice of the lives of a cast of people. That, is the problem though – they are a cast, and it is a show – not a journalistic report. There is no greater moral oversight to how the show is shot and edited.
I noticed that in editing, it was more fun to pick and choose clips, change the order of events (slightly) and so forth – it made my finished result more entertaining to watch. However, i certainly couldn't have presented it as a journalistic work.
Props to the AP
Video Essay: Pope Visits NYC - washingtonpost.com
A great example from the AP what a cheap piece* of video equipment can do for multimedia journalism. Good on'ya AP.
*I presume it's cheap because of the quality of the footage. (dynamic range isn't that great), but it might rather expensive.
London Book Store Your Videos – Currently Viewing “Book Store”
This is a just a quick little thing that I did in an hour for class. Really not the great, but I figured I'd post it.
AP Cuts Prices, Announces Mobile Product – washingtonpost.com
The Associated Press announced Monday it will … develop an advertising-supported service that will deliver stories and photos to advanced cell phones, including the iPhone.
AP Cuts Prices, Announces Mobile Product - washingtonpost.com
And the inevitable happens. The AP goes online in mobile (and bigger way). The strategy to encourage outlets to tag online photos is great for the industry as a whole.
Of course, this will help the newspaper industry a lot too:
Altogether, the expected savings from participating in the digital indexing program combined with the savings from the new pricing mechanism would add up to $21 million. That represents 10 percent of the total fees that member newspapers pay the AP.
Photography ➔ Video
"The model for the future is somebody who can go out and capture content, the imagery that tells the story correctly in a narrative, and then on the back end produce it -- put it together in a program like FinalCutPro," says Pancho Bernasconi, director of photography for Getty's worldwide news division. "That's key, to have that quick turnaround. Time is always an issue, so if you have someone who can do it all themselves, that's a really attractive thing."
The Photographer As Director – American Photo
This is a really great article to read if you're considering or are in a career in photography. Mark my words. Within 10 years, the professions of photography and videography will be so fused, it will be hard to tell the difference.
Proof? Well, first off there's the progression of major news outlets towards multimedia. It's slowly becoming expected that photographers know something about audio if not video too.
Second, there's that inevitable increase in technology. The still sort of new Red One Camera, has the potential to revolutionize the way small budget films are shot – which is to say higher than HD quailty. 12mp, as a matter of fact. Yea, 12mp, that's good enough for me for stills. Once these guys figure out how to make this camera portable (as in you can record for hours without the need for a bunch of hard drive arrays tethered to the camera), there's almost no reason to shoot stills. Just shoot this sucker (the Red Five or so?) at full res at the already available 60FPS and life is good.
Lastly, I'll blame the internet. Thanks to youtube, people are so used to seeing video online, that looking at a simple photo is the least they expect. They want to be entertained, and amazed by moving pictures. It's easy enough to understand why too. There's something about movement that you just can't get from a still frame. (Visa versa is true too of course, but why have only one when you can have both?)
Right. Not too sure where to end this, except to say that this is an argument/discussion that I've been having with many people for a while now and this has really only been a splurge of thought onto the keyboard.
