I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you….

We discussed continuing with our original idea, and we plan to go back and tell more stories that include our original idea. I think we both felt, though, that we would regret not going with the story that presented itself that day, and that is represented in our submitted video. The fact is that Lincolnville is both a rich, unique community, and a community that represents what is happening in a lot of places around the U.S. We’ll be heading back soon to talk to more people and find more stories.

I’ve invested in my own equipment for use on assignment, or have had clients invest for me. My publication has a few video cameras, but they’re in a pool (and the pool is located 2,500 miles from my house), so getting my hands on the video cameras is tough. I’m much happier with my own gear — I can practice, practice some more, use it for multiple projects, practice a bit more, and finally feel like I have some facility with their use.

Your concern about equipment barriers is valid. When I look in my bags, I see equipment that is far from being the most expensive, but still represents thousands of dollars in investment. I’m not sure there’s a good way around that, since I’m convinced that most of us are going to be living the (mostly) free-lance lifestyle from now on. It requires you to invest in yourself, and that can be tough when there are other things (like house payments and food) that are demanding your financial attention.

Question for you: Do you use your own equipment on assignment, when you’re story-telling? Or do your employers provide your story-telling equipment? Sometimes I worry that equipment barriers (whether they’re corporately enforced or enforced by an slow-to-change university system) are what’s keeping journalists from truly mastering the art of news story-telling.

I feel the skills I learned this semester are really useful in my future career if I can fully develop those skills and apply them to my job. However, I still try to find out the best direction I want to lead my career to. I still cannot see the whole picture of the future role of new media in communication. I know that be able to tell story in different ways can add me a lot of points in future career, but my problem now is that, I am interested in all these new technologies I am not familiar with, and I am kinda lost my own direction.