Thoughts on the Journalists’ Toolkit

My first thought (and, I think, the most important) is that this has been the sort of course I hoped I would have in graduate school, but didn’t expect. I am a practicing journalist who wants to get better at his craft, and this course has helped me do that. How? Let’s look at some of the ways:

The Course Gave Me Permission

There’s no news value in the fact that photographs can tell a story. There’s no news value in the fact that audio recording can be a useful journalist’s tool. In the early weeks of this course, though, the assignments gave me permission to practice both still photography and audio recording from a journalist’s perspective. It was important for me to have a reason to carve out time to practice these when I didn’t have a paycheck riding on the results, and when the feedback I received wasn’t from someone who saw me as a content-creation asset.

The Course Gave Me Tools

By the middle of the term, I was being introduced to tools and techniques I hadn’t used before. The SoundSlides package was a revelation, a structured way of telling a story using still images and audio. I had used each piece alone, but I was shown a way to use both together to tell a compelling story. I’ve already begun using SoundSlides in my professional work, and I have a feeling I’ll continue to stretch with these tools as I move into the next course.

As we moved toward the final package, I gained another new tool in embedded Google Maps. I knew it was possible to embed these, but I hadn’t done it, and was bowled over by the simplicity of the process. I’ve had the first discussions with an editor about using these techniques for stories, and can see great possibilities for the future.

The Course Gave Me Feedback

Notes from Mindy and comments from my fellow students were critical to my improvement. In a fortunate turn of events, they were also enjoyable. Honest feedback from people with judgment you trust is invaluable for progress. I’m indebted to my colleagues who took the time to talk with me about projects and provide comments on this blog.

The Course Gave Me Ideas

I knew, before the first day of class, that on-line journalism is a significant part of our profession’s future. I knew, before I stepped through the lab door for the first time, that audio, visual images, and text working together could tell a powerful story. As I’ve worked with all the elements of the stories, though, I’ve begun to think about how I can use these techniques and tools to tell better, more complete, and more compelling stories in the future. I’ve started to think about whether I can build a studio at home to help me with story production. I’m looking forward to telling new stories in new ways — that’s a result you can’t count on from any given class.

The material in this course is a collection of survival skills for anyone who wants to be employed as a working journalist in the coming years. For the vast majority of us, the days of toiling over words — just words — is over. The good news is that we get to keep telling stories under the same contract to people who want to hear the news. The more difficult news (I won’t say it’s bad) is that we have to become proficient in new ways of telling those stories. I am already using the skills taught in this course to pay my bills. I can think of no more ringing an endorsement to give the course.

Now, on to Toolkit II…

Why Journalism Must Change or Die *

Reading Adrian Holovaty’s blog post from 2006, it’s almost impossible not to start thinking about one of the most critical questions facing journalists today. “What can we give readers that makes them want to read our publications now, and at least once more in the future?” The same question from a different angle is “What can my publication give readers that they can’t get anywhere else?”

Publications have always been pushed toward relevance, but in the past the primary competition for readers’ attention was often nothing at all — at least, nothing in the form of another publication. Sure, big cities had multiple daily newspapers, but in smaller cities and towns the competition generally consisted of the morning paper versus the afternoon paper. Today, competition comes from every direction, and a dizzying array of media types. Given that reality, what can we do to make our publication critical to the reader’s life?

I think the first thing we have to do is figure out why the publication exists. What’s the mission of our publication? Back in the dot-com bubble days, people were always asking for your “elevator pitch.” That is, if you got on an elevator with a venture capitalist in the lobby of a skyscraper, what could you tell him about your business before he reached his floor? Think about your reader — what would your elevator pitch to them sound like? If you can’t get the mission of your publication down to a sentence or two, then you need to sit down and do some serious thinking about what you’re trying to do. You (and all the writers and editors of the publication) should have a crystal-clear idea of who you’re going to reach, and how you’re going to do one thing better than any other publication.

Once you know what you’re trying to do, you can set out to do it using the best technologies and techniques you can muster. Keep your stories fresh and meaningful, base them on information that isn’t well-aggregated anywhere else, and give the reader plenty of ways to deeply explore the issues on their own. I’m convinced we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of how the Web can be used to tell stories: go out, define your mission and tell your stories. Your readers are waiting.

* With apologies to Bishop John Shelby Spong. This title is based on the title of his book Why Christianity Must Change or Die.

"We’re Packaging for Google"

Once upon a time, we designed pages to draw readers into a story. There were story meetings, then meetings with the art department, all intended to create a page (or a two-page spread if the needs of the well and the advertising budget allowed) that would convince a reader to spend time reading the story. Sometimes, you would get to see illustration proposals that the art director had commissioned from an artist. It was enjoyable, and the layouts created were occasionally spectacular.

Recently, I took part in a conference call for a publication I write for. The editor outlined a process much like the one in the last paragraph, then told us it was no longer the case. Instead of packaging articles for readers, he said that we’re now packaging for Google. He meant that studies have shown that getting readers to your story is far more critical than precisely how it looks once they get there. I’m still trying to figure out precisely how I feel about that.

It must be said that, in a very important way, how I feel doesn’t matter at all. The research is there to support the view that high search-result placement brings more reader. Full stop, end of story. Still, while I understand the importance of putting your story in front of the reader (and that’s what search engines do), I can’t help but be uneasy about all the ramifications of designing pages for search engine optimization, even the sort of enlightened SEO discussed in the reading for Week 12.

I’ve taken part in SEO training classes presented by people who seemed rather more expert in algorithms than in English. They told us to do things like put every key word associated with the article into the headline, with the more important and commonly-searched-for words placed earlier in the hed. Under their tutelage, the headline for his entry might read something like:

Google Blog and Article Optimization Packaging Successful On-line Publication Makes

You’ll excuse me if I don’t buy it. Now, I absolutely do buy that we should do more to make headlines meaningful (even if I dearly love the obscure hed to make readers curious), and that tagging has to be part of a meaningful scheme to help readers search for and find particular articles. These things are critical to making our on-line publications easier to read. What I will resist is the notion that the search engine is more important than the reader. We must continue to write clear, accurate, compelling stories that readers will love once they’ve been found. I’ll work hard to make that part of my craft — but I practice the craft for readers, not search spyders, so the readers will get the bulk of my effort.

Preserving Handcrafts

What happens when the last practitioner of a traditional craft dies or retires? We think of the loss in cultural or aesthetic terms, but with craft as the foundation for much of our technology, future innovations may be lost or delayed, as well.

The International Kumihimo Conference provided an opportunity to see the point where traditional crafts and modern technology meet. The value of the craft — and the potential magnitude of the loss — were clearly demonstrated by the participants from both sides.

I tell the story of preserving handcrafts through a lens of kumihimo braiding. It is, I think, a modern story told through a very old language. Click on the hands of the braider to get the whole story.