Sona Patel

A couple weeks ago, our Assistant Editorial Page Editor Kate Riley and I talked about ways to increase the online presence of @SeaTimesOpinion, the Twitter account for The Seattle Times’ Opinion section. Of course, establishing dialogue, a unique voice and engaging your audience on your social media space(s) were chief among the list of things to try. But getting started on that route takes an overall shift in mindset. Shepherding your social media accounts takes time and spaces such as Twitter and Facebook only work as strong reporting tools if you spend time managing your account.  When reporters ask how they’re supposed to juggle reporting and using social media, I always tell them that they should find some way to work it into their daily workflow, like responding to e-mails and listening to voicemails. That advice doesn’t always work, however, leaving some journalists unconvinced. The best way is learning by doing. Sometimes it takes an event, project or even breaking news, to show others that social media can be used as a powerful reporting tool that can engage your audience.

I thought the best way for push ourselves off the ground with @SeaTimesOpinion would be to host a live Twitter chat via CoverItLive. Kate had the idea of getting together opinion writers from The Times, the Kansas City Star and a Scripps newspaper in Central Florida as a way to bring in voices from a variety of political backgrounds. The result: 12 Twitter-folk across three states.

The idea of inviting newspapers across the country was to encourage diverse voices and bring in an equally diverse audience. So we got editorial page editors from each of the newspapers along with guest writers from each region. The guest writers include the President-Designate of the Florida Senate and other elected officials at the state and local level. We’ll also have bloggers and freelance writers. En toto, about 4 from each state.

During the address, people will have the opportunity to participate via Cover It Live on seattletimes.com, kcstar.com, and tcpalm.com. We’ll be pulling in tweets from our writers and those in the Twittersphere using the hashtag #OPEDSOTU. Our tweeps will be talking amongst themselves, answering questions and responding to other tweeps’ comments about the speech — and politics in general. I’m not sure how much I want to direct the conversation, but I will be throwing in ideas every so often to possibly stimulate discussion.

I’m looking forward to the experiment and am hoping that we get a lot of participating. Be on the lookout for #OPEDSOTU and please … join in on the discussion!

What do you think about this project? Have you tried something similar at your news organization? As always, tips and suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Sona Media, social media social media

I had the rare and exciting opportunity a few weeks ago to attend the maiden flight of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.  I’ve been at The Seattle Times for a little more than a month now, so I wasn’t too familiar with the story and how big of a deal it actually was.  I was told by several colleagues that the newspaper had been preparing for this flight for quite awhile. Essentially, the plan was to go all out on our coverage.

We had a small pool of reporters and photographers attend the takeoff and landing, but we didn’t have anyone primarily dedicated to tweeting photos and videos. That’s where I came in. For highly-attended events, I’d strongly recommend sparing someone in the newsroom whose job it would be to handle the social media aspect from the field.

I had helped a couple reporters the day before become familiar with tweeting from the field, including taking photos, e-mailing, TwitPic’ng, etc. They both did an awesome job, but I still wanted to make sure they had enough time for reporting. I know what it’s like to have to juggle multiple tasks — reporting for the paper, shooting video, capturing audio, etc. — so I wanted to help alleviate their workload.

Both reporters were equipped with smartphones, which had e-mail and text capabilities. We were all pretty much on our own throughout the day, but had talked earlier about what types of things we wanted to tweet. Everything about the First Flight was uncertain, even up until an hour or so before its scheduled takeoff. The plane was scheduled to depart from Paine Field in Everett, Wa. and land at Boeing in Seattle. Because the weather had been pretty bad that week, Boeing told us that we wouldn’t know whether the flight would happen until the morning of the flight. But we wanted to be prepared, just in case.

I bought a new phone — a HTC MyTouch3G — about 3 days before the event. What a perfect time to test it out, right? Yes … and No. The phone has video capabilities, so I downloaded the Qik app and tested it out in my apartment the night before the flight. I was able to stream live video right to my Qik page really easily. I also tested e-mailing videos to my Gmail account. That also worked flawlessly.

What I didn’t anticipate was how well my phone — and 3G connection — would work amongst thousands of people. And I’m not talking just members of the media, of which there were 252. During takeoff I was amongst a sea of Boeing employees. Whether it was iPhones or camcorders, almost every person had some sort of electronic device in their hand. I stood with the media during the landing and it seemed as if everyone was attempting to livestream the event. Long story short, a couple of my videos didn’t make it to my page. I never figured out why, but it’s possible that the networks were jammed.  Here are a few other things I learned from going MoJo at a major news event:

• Weather: It was FREEzing the morning of the first flight. It didn’t start raining until 20 minutes after takeoff, so we lucked out by not having to protect our phones. But when you have a touch-screen phone that responds only to warm fingers, typing a tweet — or doing anything, for that matter — could take awhile. I wasn’t wearing my gloves because it became a pain having to take them off every time I wanted to use my phone. Someone had a couple of handwarmers that I ended up sticking in my coat pocket. Not only did those keep my hands warm, but they enabled me to type faster and with more accuracy. The scaffold area for the media was pretty tight at Paine Field (for takeoff) and Boeing (for the landing). There was plenty of standing room, but as you could imagine, everyone was clamoring for an unobstructed view of the plane, which was right along a railing that faced the runway. As a result, Boeing didn’t allow umbrellas on the scaffolds. Yup, no umbrellas. A colleague suggested I put my phone in a Ziploc sandwich bag so as not to ruin the phone. It was a good idea in theory, but it was hard to keep the bag completely dry, especially since I had to take my phone in and out of the bag AND because the bag itself was getting wet and obstructing the lens. I don’t have any solutions to offer for this except to just be aware of the weather and protect your phone and whatever gadgets or equipment you have on you.

• Timing: Always prepare for the worst. Period. The first flight was scheduled to last about 3.5 hours. So we allotted enough time to drive to Boeing from Paine Field. The organizers of the First Flight event were hosting a luncheon for the media at Boeing. It was your typical media luncheon room: Plenty of outlets to recharge laptops and enough space to sit down and write stories. We got to Paine Field around 2 p.m. As soon as we set our stuff down, a Boeing spokeswoman told us the plane was about 30 minutes out, essentially, about 2 hours ahead of schedule. The battery on my cell was at around 30 percent. I didn’t have a spare and didn’t have time to recharge. We ended up rushing to a bus which drove us out to the media area where we watched the plane land. So, always prepare for the possibilty that you won’t be able to recharge your batteries. Bring a spare battery, or two, especially if you’re planning to shoot video.

• Dictate your updates: If you have trouble tweeting or Facebooking from the field, be prepared to dictate your tweets over the phone. Make sure you’ve established a contact person in your newsroom well in advance, in case you have to do this.

• Backapacks and gear: Fortunately I have a pretty good laptop bag, so I wasn’t too concerned about my laptop getting wet. But my bag was in the rain for a good 2 hours and soaked by the time we left Boeing. Make sure your gear is able to stay protected for however long you plan to stay outside for. A waterproof (um, weatherproof) bag comes in handy here. And make sure it’s secure. I had to set my bag down on the scaffold multiple times and was afraid it was going to get stepped on or pushed around. The padding on the backpack eased a lot of those concerns.

• Storing key contacts: Make sure you’re all connected in some way or the other. This is pretty much a given, but make sure you have all your colleagues’ contact info stored in your phone in case you need to make a quick phone call. A reporter and I were the first to arrive at Boeing so we frantically made calls to our photogs and videographers to make sure they’d make it to Boeing in time for the landing.

Thoughts? What are some of your MoJo tips?

Sona Media, Uncategorized online

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

So our Tahoe trip has been postponed because of rain.  Unfortunately, it has been raining in Reno since we arrived last weekend.  Definitely wasn’t expecting that, but I guess we’ll figure out a way to work around it.

We were issued video cameras on Friday to use for our video projects.  I didn’t get a chance to test mine out because we don’t have tapes for them yet, but I’m guessing it’ll function similar to the Sony Hard Disk Drive camera I use at home.  That said, I don’t have a project idea yet.  If you have tips, please share!  I’ll probably do a tourist/destination piece on Lake Tahoe and the area where Bonanza! was filmed.  I’m looking to get more practice on lighting techniques, setting white balance and learning video settings rather than producing content.  Bottom line, I’m trying to get out of my comfort zone!

One of Maynard Fellows, Henry Lopez, Web editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican, shared some tips on some of the key elements it takes to make a good video.  I learned a lot of those same tips from two multimedia training courses I attended last year: a multimedia bootcamp at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at the Knight Digital Media training at UC Berkeley. John W. Poole, a producer at NPR, taught us several solid techniques, many of which are included below.

Here’s a list of tips on how to shoot video.  Henry wrote most of them, but I’ve tweaked them a little and added a few of my own points, most of which are in parenthesis.

Story idea: Have an idea of what you expect to get out of the project; be ready to change what you think you’re getting out of the project.  (You can also expect to be in a different setting than originally anticipated so be prepared for that.  Also, make sure to bring a camera cover in case of bad weather.  You don’t want to have to worry about whether you’re going to break your $5,000 camera because it’s getting wet!)

Details: Get close enough to your subject to see details. Remember, Web video requires lots of compression in which detail gets lost so get close enough to capture fine detail that survives compression.

Zooming: Don’t rely on zoom. Think positioning of your body first, zoom second.  (Also, don’t zoom unless you absolutely have to.  Same goes for panning.  Both techniques are used for taking home videos, not for work to be posted on your news organization’s Web site!  I was taught to do it if you have something to actually zoom on, i.e. don’t do it for the special effect.)

Watch the sun: Don’t get it behind your subject or they’ll be nothing but a silhouette.  (Also, don’t underestimate the amount of light in a room.  Make sure to have the proper lighting!)

…Watch the sun: Get it behind your subject when you want to create a dramatic silhouette.

Sound: Hush! Nothing will frustrate you more than hearing uh-huh, mm-hmm and yeah on your audio track. (Also make sure to avoid unnecessary background noise.  If a car drives by, politely interject and ask the subject to repeat his or her answer.  If you’re interviewing inside a home, politely ask if the subject would be willing to turn off, let’s say, the refrigerator, to eliminate any humming, buzzing, or clicking in the background.  Also, lapel mics should be fed inside clothing.  It’s a bit of an inconvenience for your subject, but it looks so much better on the screen.)  Oh, and have a microphone.  You. must. have. an. external. microphone!

Get comfortable with your subjects: Talk to your subjects before turning on the camera. Know what they’re going to say, then let them say it on camera. Then shut up! Let them talk until they’re done. (I’ve always politely asked my subjects to repeat the question when they give an answer so as to get a full sound byte I can use.  Some people may disagree, but it’s better than coming back with a good soundbyte that I can’t use because it has no context.)

Sona Media, Reno, Uncategorized Maynard, Multimedia, online, video

Ahh, the smell of casinos.  A couple Maynard fellows and I walked through downtown Reno this afternoon to get a taste of the city.  Not quite like Vegas, but definitely a place for hardcore gambling.  I was surprised to see a lot of vacant storefronts surrounded by newer condo complexes.  It made me wonder whether the city of Reno has a makeover in the works.  Nonetheless, it was fun checking out the cheesy souvenir shops, express wedding chapels and antique stores.  I didn’t play any Blackjack or craps today.  I don’t plan on gambling, but some of those slot machines looked pretty tempting.

Sona Media, Reno Maynard, Reno