Sunday, February 23, 2014

Better journalism through multimedia

by Elise Stolte and Karen Unland
Prepared for a MacEwan University class Feb. 25, 2014

What do we mean by multimedia?

For the purposes of this class, we're talking about any kind of journalistic activity that goes beyond a traditional story with photo that you would typically see on a website or in the newspaper.

This includes:
  • Crowd-sourcing - drawing in knowledge and experience from the community with guest blog posts, by using Storify, through contests, crowd-generated maps and with comments.
  • Fostering debate - using Facebook, Twitter, or hosting live chats with guests online using tools such as ScribbleLive.
  • Live coverage - through video streaming, live blogging, Twitter.
  • Going deep - letting users access and further explore data or background materials through interactive maps, graphics, links, online databases, and enhanced visual such as videos, photo galleries and other multimedia.
Below you'll find the videos and links we refer to in class.

Etiquette on Twitter - David Staples



My colleague David Staples is the city columnist at the Edmonton Journal, who learned how to blog and use social media successfully first by writing on the Oilers. Now he uses @dstaples for hockey-related news and @davidstaplesyeg for city hall-related news. I value his honesty as he talks about social media as a learned activity. There are no rule books and we all make mistakes as we learn.


Reaching a new audience through Facebook - Paula Simons

 

Paula Simons has long been a well-read columnist at the Edmonton Journal, but here she explains how Facebook allowed her to reach a whole new group of people. Watching her work online, I always admire her transparency and willingness to wrestle publicly with a topic.

Reporting on/with social media - Elise Stolte




Talking about mistakes, apparently it's important to find a firm surface to tripod the iPhone when shooting yourself. Sorry about the shake in this video. Here I share a bit of my passion for tools such as Storify, where are a very honest, transparent way to draw in reporting from the community about live events.

See how I covered an online debate here, and how we covered community league days here.

Another example of crowd-sourcing is this map of favourite things to do in Edmonton during the winter.



Live blogging

Live blogging is definitely a learned skill. Being fast and accurate isn't easy, but practice helps you to quickly identify the key points of a message on the fly, type that out and post it while listening for the next point. A good live blog includes other details of what's happening in the room beyond what's being said and makes a great read, even after the event is finished.

Here's a fairly simple example of live coverage from a Capital Region Board meeting where funding for Edmonton's arena was discussed. Funny enough, it was because I was live blogging and recording the count, and because I wanted to let readers "go deep" and see exactly which municipalities go for and against, that we realized later the votes had been counted wrong. That led to a whole new story the next day.


Video / Multimedia

I have no proof of this, but I believe much of the video, online databases and multimedia work that you see online today was self-taught. Learning how to learn a new skill is a lesson in itself. If you want to succeed, you have to invest the time to learn it, whether it's on your own time or work time.

Here's a clip from my colleague Lucas Timmons who pioneered many of the online projects at the Journal, writing the code to get complex projects online.


If you want to learn to shoot video, I'd recommend starting with this instructional video from Ryan Jackson, whose done lots of cool things for us. When I shoot a video, I almost always touch base with Ryan to get more tips on how to do it better next time.

He gave this training session to a previous MacEwan journalism class.


I also think Ryan succeeds because he's good at focusing his efforts. He talks about a pyramid of projects. At the top, there's a super cool project that will require tons of work but is almost sure to go viral. At the bottom, there are the more mundane projects that don't take a lot of work (but still add to the story). In the middle are the mediocre projects, things that suck up your time but will never get tons of attention. Never waste your time on the stuff in the middle.

Case Studies

During this class, we'd like you to split into groups and take a look at five case studies. Each group will report back to the class on one of them. For each case study, answer the following questions:
  • Explain how the project crowdsourced, fostered debate, provided live coverage or let readers go deep.
  • How else could the story have been told?
  • How did the use of this technology change the relationship between the reporter and the readers?

Case study 1: Exploring the North Saskatchewan River

I set out to write a story about how Edmontonians' use of the North Saskatchewan River was changing after chatting with the Riverkeeper one day at city hall. The story evolved as I did my reporting, but here you can find the various elements:

Case study 2: The arena debate

Chances are, if you live in Edmonton, you've been following at least some coverage of the arena debate. I'll provide a few links here, but do you have other examples to contribute here demonstrating how various media outlet have brought this issue online and used it to engage their community?

Many of the Journal stories are compiled in a list here so readers can go back into the archives (hasn't been updated recently).

Case study 3: The Trade: Twenty-five years since Wayne Gretzky left

This was a large project many people contributed to, looking back at an event that shaped Edmonton.
Note how it looks different from a story or package on the regular Journal site.

Pay particular attention to the Interactives section, as that's where the things that depart most from traditional words-and-pictures reside.

Case study 4: Fatal Care

This is a groundbreaking investigation by reporters Karen Kleiss and Darcy Henton, which started with a simple question on a routine story, and snowballed into a four-year court battle for information and a week-long series that led to a provincial roundtable and may result in legislative changes. Lucas Timmons helped analyze/sort the data and put the documents online.

Pay particular attention to the database.

Also look at the "Why -- and how -- we did it."

With a story like this, what are the pros and cons of letting your community know what you are working on? When would you tweet about it? Why?

Case study 5: Capital Ideas

Capital Ideas is a project is part of an experiment to find new ways for a news organization like the Edmonton Journal to serve its community. Its tagline is Business Owners Helping Business Owners, which we do in three main ways:
  1. Monthly live events where three local entrepreneurs share what they've learned about a particular business challenge. Here’s a recap of a recent one.
  2. Advice shared in the newspaper and online in response to a question we pose by email or at another organization's event.
  3. On our social media channels -- Twitter and LinkedIn.
Is this journalism? What is or is not journalistic about it? How do you feel about the integration of paying partners such as ATB Business?

Conclusions and points to ponder

  • There are many ways to tell a story, and we have the freedom to choose now.
  • Collaboration with the community is not only a path to better journalism, but a good business decision, too.
  • The tools of journalism have changed enormously during our careers, and they will keep changing.
  • As more becomes possible, the expectations of the audience go up.

Who we are

Noise-maker for video clips.
Elise Stolte has been a reporter at the Edmonton Journal for eight years, most recently covering two beats, First Nations communities and urban affairs. I'm currently on maternity leave, but when I work I use Twitter and Facebook extensively. I also use Storify, live blogging and blogging, believing that by connecting with my community I make my journalism stronger.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/estolte
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elise.stolte
Blog: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/urban
LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/elisestolte
Storify: http://storify.com/EliseStolte

Karen Unland is a full-on future-of-media nerd who is passionate about helping news organizations truly serve their communities. She worked for the Edmonton Journal for 14 years, first as a reporter, then as various flavours of editor, and finally as boss of edmontonjournal.com before quitting to found a consulting firm. Then, just like the mob, Postmedia pulled her back in to run the Edmonton side of Postmedia Labs, which gave birth to Capital Ideas.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/karenunland
Instagram: http://instagram.com/karenunland
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/karenunland
Storify: storify.com/karenunland

Other places to learn

Are there other resources you've found and valued? Tips you'd like to pass on or other comments? Leave a note in the comments section. You can say thanks for the resources and lessons we've given by sharing your own.
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