Sona Patel

Sona Uncategorized online

I’m back in SLO after spending six weeks as a Donald W. Reynolds Foundation fellow in the Maynard Multimedia Editing Program at the University of Nevada, Reno.

I learned more in the past six weeks than I would have in six years. Seriously, folks. If you have the opportunity to attend a Maynard program, do it. The workshops were comprehensive and covered several topics related to online and print journalism. We didn’t focus on multimedia but rather ethics, editing and the importance of upholding credibility in both print and online. This training was extremely valuable, especially at a time when newspapers are trying to figure out what’s going to save the industry. While we experiment with new ways of doing things, some of our Maynard instructors stressed the importance of maintaining standards. Yes, it’s such a simple concept, yet it’s one that’s easily overlooked.

At this point, I’m going to have to come up with a way to share what I’ve learned with my co-workers in the newsroom. It won’t be easy, especially since we learned so much during the six weeks. I think the best way to approach it will be to take a skills inventory of willing participants. Who knows what? Who wants to learn more and on which topics?

Here’s a quick list of training modules each Maynard fellow put together as their final presentation:

@stacielee: Editing the package

@scottdolan: HTML for copy editors

@yekoorb: Shooting video, for reporters

@tiffanya_hm: Social media and how to harness its potential, for editors and reporters

@virginiagriffey: Strategies/roadmap/guide for making ethical decisions about stories/photo use. Headline: Secrets for making ethical decisions

@prescwalker: How to approach reporting/writing as a continual process so that reporters post quickly to the Web, knowing that more can be added later.

@dwoods:  How to do news marketing and promotion; letting people know you have great stuff now and still to come.

@henrymlopez: The insiders guide to understanding your web audience through analytics.

@mcopley: Putting “Fault Lines” concepts into practice.

@sona23: The ethics of social media (e.g. friending sources on Facebook).

@mjbakereditor: An SEO strategy: Writing for the Web so your stories will be seen.

@eli_e_nichols Writing value-added cutlines.

@shellylembke: Design for the Web.

@gazetteeditor: How to create a blog that is both informative and entertaining.

Sona Uncategorized

Sona Uncategorized Maynard, online, video

Sona Media, Uncategorized online, social media, Twitter

Sona Media, Uncategorized online

I’ll never forget the first time I opened Flash. It was about a year ago at a multimedia workshop in North Carolina. For whatever reason I thought it wouldn’t be that difficult to learn. I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

It’s a great tool for designers and online storytellers, but the learning curve is incredibly steep. After taking a gander at it once, I felt compelled to learn how to make a multimedia project. So I spent a couple weeks teaching myself how to program in Action Script to create dialog boxes and markers on a Google map. It took forever learning how to code every single detail of a simple dialog box. ActionScript has to be on of the hardest programming languages out there. I, along with a couple of our instructors at the Maynard program, would not recommend learning Flash because of its steep learning curve.

I felt like it was worth learning so that I could at least understand how it’s used and what it’s used for. I also learned how it’s not really worth it to use Flash to create a multimedia project unless you’re anticipating a high ROI. At a time when newsrooms are struggling to do more with less, it’s always good to keep in mind the time it takes to complete a project.

Ask yourself “can I achieve the same goals by telling my story another way?”

Ever since I attended the Knight Digital Media Center’s Multimedia Training for Journalists in June 2008, I’ve only been able to produce three Flash applications for The Tribune. I’m trying to get into the habit of creating at least one a month so that I don’t forget how to use it and to show other reporters that there are ways to use multimedia to enhance their print stories.

Flash is a good tool to use to create interactive graphics. But there are drawbacks, including its inability to be recognized by search engines. And you can’t track hits, unless you find a way to embed, let’s say, Omniture code into it. So is it really worth it to try to teach journalists Flash? It has its pros and cons, but for the most part, it’s good to at least have a working knowledge of it. I would not recommend dedicating training sessions geared only towards Flash. And these days it’s really easy to find great tutorials and programs that will help you achieve your Flash-based storytelling goals.

Here is a list of some great, easy-to-use Flash applications that will come in handy for any journalist. I encourage you to visit these Web sites and play around with the different tools each has to offer. The best thing about most of these programs is that they’re user-friendly and for the most part, do not require a lot of ActionScript coding (except for AFComponents). I’ve posted this list before, so sorry for the repeat content. If you have a favorite Flash component site, feel free to post a comment.

1) Knight Digital Media Center’s training pages

Check out their tutorial pages on Flash, audio, video, photography and web design. They even provide downloadable templates which you can use to create your Flash projects. Best of all — it’s FREE!

2) Flash Den

FlasDen isn’t really tailored toward the average journalist, but it’s a great site to check out what you can do in Flash. I’ve come up with quite a few ideas for multimedia projects based off the components I’ve seen on this site.

3) SproutBuilder

SproutBuilder is an excellent program for making customizable widgets for your web page. You can even integrate audio, video, web polls, and other content to your Sprout widget. I’d suggest browsing through the “Recently Built Sprouts” section to get an idea of what you can do with SproutBuilder.

4) UMapper

This program allows you to create embeddable Flash maps for free. If you create a Google map in Flash you’ll have to use Action Script to program the points, dialogue boxes, and the ability to add links, video, and audio. UMapper does that for you and then generates embeddable code. You’ll have to tinker with the KML code and Google API keys (I think) but its doable. Check out some of the maps that have already been created and shared on UMapper. There are a bunch of big newspapers already using this program. I’ve had great success with it. Trust me, you won’t want to program your own map (I once spent five hours writing ActionScript to perfect a small Google map. I’ll never do that again!)

5) Advanced Flash Components

I’ve only used once component off this site, but it seems to have great little video players and cool components for interactive maps (I used the component GMap which is free.) Their customer service will also help you figure out how to work with KML code. They’re great at responding to e-mails.

Sona Media, Uncategorized Flash, Multimedia, online

Handout: Social media ethics policies of some major newspapers

Sona Uncategorized

I’ve used Soundslides Plus several times to make audio slideshows. I’ve made slideshows using Flash, but after being introduced to SoundSlides a couple years ago by Tribune photographer David Middlecamp, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to creating slideshows in Flash. Michelle Johnson from Emory University continued skills week at Maynard with a little sound editing using Amadeus. I use Adobe Soundbooth and Pro Tools at The Tribune for editing, so it was good to learn a new program.

Amadeus is free and easy to use. Besides learning how to edit audio clips in Amadeus, Michelle talked about whether it’s OK to enhance audio and the rules on altering audio. It’s an important detail that can be easily overlooked in the newsroom, especially when using high-end audio editing software that allows you to add scores of effects to your tracks. Some of those features are tempting, especially when you want to clean up that perfect clip. The Radio-Television News Directors Association published a series of guidelines to help determine whether you’re going too far with your editing. Here are a few tips for gathering audio out in the field and what you can do in case your audio doesn’t turn out as expected:

Location: Depending on what your story is about, choose a good location for capturing audio. If you’re doing a man-on-the-street interview, make sure there’s not a truck roaring in the background or a train crossing. If it happens during the middle of the interview, politely ask your subject to repeat his or her answer.

Microphone: Hold your microphone or audio recorder at a comfortable distance from your subject. Don’t hold it up too close, but just enough so that your elbow is comfortable and you can still hear the audio at a decent volume level. Make sure to watch your arm throughout the entire interview. If you let it drop, you might not be able to hear your subject clearly. Remember, try to wear headphones whenever possible!

Clean up static: It’s best practice to do whatever you can to capture good audio, but just in case you capture any annoying white noise in the background, there are features in Adobe Soundbooth, Audacity and Amadeus that allow you to clear it up to produce NPR-style audio (after all, that’s always the goal, right?)

After editing our audio tracks, we started assembling our Soundslides projects. Michelle showed us a Web site that generates embed code for your Soundslides presentation so that you can post your project directly onto your blog or site. I thought this would be a great tool for some of our Tribune bloggers such as Sarah Linn (who writes She Likes to Watch) and Pat Pemberton (author of Sidetracked) who might want to use Soundslides to create audio slideshows. Note: your Soundslides project does not need to have audio, hence, a simple slideshow with the beauty of Flash effects.

*Here are a few Web sites for royalty-free music, in case you want to add music to your presentation. Be sure to credit whomever’s music you decide to use! Most of these sites are based on Creative Commons licensing, which pretty much allows you to share audio selections in exchange for a credit. However, these licenses allow creators to specify which rights they reserve, so be sure to read the legal terms on each site*

FreePlayMusic.com

FreeSound.org

CreativeCommons.org (I learned about this site after watching the farewell video that The Rocky Mountain News posted on its Web site. They used music from CC. The video is excellent because it, in my opinion, demonstrates powerful storytelling on an emotional issue. You can check it out here.)

Here’s a short Soundslides project on my recent trip to the Pacific Northwest. I love Seattle and Portland in the fall!

What are your tips for capturing good audio?

Sona Uncategorized

We spent two days discussing media ethics will Melissa McCoy, who was until this spring, a deputy managing editor of the LA Times. She was in charge of copy desks, standards and the editorial library.

She joined the Times in 1992 and worked as an assistant managing editor, copy desks, foreign desk copy chief, suburban assistant copy chief and metro copy editor.

It was definitely a comprehensive discussion that could have gone on for several hours. Unfortunately we had to stop at some point. We talked about ethical issues surrounding photos, headlines, social media, and terminology. Melissa raised some excellent points that I had never thought of when it comes to what we’re doing on the web.

And ethics isn’t just about what you’re putting in the paper. Employees should know what their internal ethics policies are. Are you familiar with yours? For instance, do you accept freebies? Can you give money to political candidates? There’s no right answer to these questions, just make sure you know what your company’s policy is … and stick to it!

Keep in mind that the world of print and online really merge. Everything has to have standards, no matter what medium it’sin. Readers are counting on you to use good judgement. And editing is nothing more than excercising good judgement, she said.

In any situation surrounding ethics, it’s important to remember that “going with you gut” won’t cut it, so you have to always think clearly.

Making good decisions involves a couple factors:

1. What’s my journalistic purpose? For example, would you run a photo of someone committing suicide?
2. What are my concerns?

Going back to to my point about ethics and the Web. The Web is a place where you get into the most trouble because you’re publishing in real time. I’d say things are taken more lightly when it comes to content being posted on the web. Stories go up unedited, headlines are sometimes not double-checked for errors, etc. I think online content producers have the mindset that anything on the web can be easily removed. That’s not necessarily the case, though. The best way to work around ethical questions is to involve others in the decision-making process. That’s difficult these days, mainly because everyone in the newsroom is already multitasking, but certain situations, if handled incorrectly, can hurt your news organization’s credibility.

As Melissa pointed out, credibility is everything.

Accuracy: The single most important application of ethics. Are all your facts correct? Is the story fair and balanced? Remember, if you lose your journalistic integrity, you’ve lost everything.

Tone: Do you use certain words that aren’t needed? For example, do you add unnecessary adjectives in your stories?

Balance: Are you doing enough reporting to ensure that all sides are being represented fairly?

Voice: Editors need to let reporters have a voice. But remember that too much voice = no balance.

Sometimes the best way to achieve transparency in your news organization is to be up front with your readers.

Think about being up front with your readers in the following situations:

1. Manipulating photographs: If you’ve manipulated an image, make sure to explain why. Several major news organizations sometimes use cropped images from several photographs and morph them into some sort of illustration. If you’re going to do that, again, be up front with your readers. You must be careful anytime you’re manipulating images.
2. Inappropriate photos: When might a photo be inappropriate for publication? What if you’re using file art from several years ago to illustrate something that’s happening now? How do you know if you’re crossing the line? (For more on photo ethics, see Maynard fellow Virginia Griffey’s blog post, Ethical use of photos.) She has a comprehensive list of ethical issues surrounding the use of images.

Finally, to the Web. This is an extensive topic that I’ll continue in another post, but for now, remember this: It’s way more important to be right then it is to be first. This is a basic but important concept that tends to be overlooked because the Web is sometimes treated like a mish-mash of content.

More later …

Sona Uncategorized

After participating in the Maynard Multimedia Editing program in July 2009, I learned that videos can best be told in certain categories. I plan to use this video to train my colleagues on how to shoot a profile video. I also use many of the techniques I’ve learned over the years, including shooting wide medium and tight shots, the rule of thirds, etc. The video was shot with a Sony HDV 1080i and edited in Final Cut Express.

Sona video