Skype session with Kevin Anderson
Courtesy of his Twitter; Kevin Anderson: Digital strategist and freelance journalist with more than a decade experience with the Guardian and the BBC. Helping create the future of journalism. FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER!
On Thursday, March 24, 2011, Anderson skyped in to chat! Being half way accross the world didn’t stop him from making his 3:30 p.m. EST Skype sesh.
Valuable advice given to aspiring job-searching journalists: Go to WordPress.com or Tumblr, set up a blog, start writing and taking pictures. The costs of doing that is almost nothing. Use your moble phone and take pictures of videos. Think of the best ways to tell stories with graphics and data. You need to show you didn’t need that first job to make the initiative.
Anderson said, “With BBC, I did interviews with military bloggers. One of the most powerful radio programs is I got three soldiers together talking about their experiences. With a joint interview, you can usually get more out of them; you can have them talking to eachother. They all conversed and shared their stories. I still get shivers when I think of that radio program.”
Storify has been a hot topic in the Online Journalism classroom the entire semester. He did raise caution with one aspect of the site. “Its grat to collect material, but make sure you use the text tool to add content to what youre making,” said Anderson.
Professor Steve Klein responded with, “So in otherwise, bridge the material with good old fashioned writing.”
“Absolutely,” said Anderson.
Twitter. On the topic of media giant Twitter, Anderson said talked about maps and locations. In all seriousness, he said that he includes his location in his tweets so he can map them later. Although, don’t do that in Syria because you don’t want to encourage an air strike.
Relating to online journalism and storytelling. Anderson wrapped up the Skype sesh with, “You couldn’t tell the horror without the Japanese tsunami without the videos. And that is a small example of it. You can’t tell the story of the revolution in Egypt without the voices or the people submitting their videos online.”
Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (2)Briggs Chapter 10
Managing News as a Conversation
“The speed of communications is wonderful to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.” –Edward R. Murrow
It began as comments on news stories and blog posts, this has mushroomed into full social networking tools on news sites.
“News as a conversation has transformed journalism in many ways, but perhaps the most significant way that is has transformed journalism is in how journalists and their communities can cover a beat better,” says Patrick Thornton, editor of BeatBlogging.org.
Tips for Journalists using Social Media:
- Use sites like Twitter and Facebook becuase familiarity is important.
- Be mindful that you represent more than just yourself.
- Presume your tweets, status updates or other content will go further and reach more people than you intend for them to go.
- Ask your boss to follow your twitter. It’s a good accountability measure.
Making news perticipatory was important for mainstream organizations. They did this by using Message boards, FredTalk.com (Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star); Most commented, emailed, viewed links and information; using their own social networks on their sites, TimesPeople (The New York Times), USAToday.com, Vita.mn (Star Tribune, Minneapolis).
Last but not least, keep your conversations accurate and ethical!
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)Briggs Chapter 7
Making Audio Journalism Visible
Audio Journalism? It works when using a few tools like a microphone or recorder to make full-featured segments that sound like radio epidodes. You can distribute them as podcosts to gain an audience!
Importance:
- Presence
- Emotions
- Atmosphere
How to use this audio?
- Reporter overview
- Podcasts
- Audio slide show
- Breaking news
National Public Radio has set this standerd. NPR’s success stems from the connection to the audience its reporters and show hosts are able to make. Personal wins the audience.
Getting started with audio is easy, but improvising is not good enough when it comes time to add voice to a multimedia project. Investing time to plan and prepare your voice contribution will make your effort worthwhile.
Getting ready for prime time! You need to:
- Record interviews
- Choose location
- Gather natural sound
- Prepare your subject
- Watch what you sau
- Try delayed recording
- Do voice-overs
Now edit, edit, edit your piece! And publish!
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)My Video Conference with George Allen on C-SPAN
George Allen is back and on top of his game! Allen participated in a C-SPAN video conference with students from George Mason University and The University of Denver to discuss his upcoming Senate run and his new book “What Washington Can Learn from the World of Sports.”
I was one of the lucky students who had the chance to personally talk to Allen and ask him a question, “You have mentioned numerous times that Thomas Jefferson is one of your biggest role models; what similarities do you see between yourself and him?”
He mentioned that besides the distinct title of holding Thomas Jefferson’s seat in the Virginia General Assembly, he admitted he is a self-described “Common Sense Jeffersonian Conservative.”
This formidable opponent opened up about his campaigns strategies to reach out to the community.
They are using:
Like I mentioned above, Allen’s book came out in 2010! One of the chapters in his book, which is relateable in his political life, sports life, and family life is: Defense Wins Championships.
Solid conclusion.
As related to online journalism, Allen ended with “The internet is the best invention since the Guttenberg Press”. I could not have out it any better, Mr. Allen.
View George Allen’s Announcement video on YouTube!
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (1)Top 10 Ways to Rock Your Resumé
LifeHacker posted “Top 10 Ways to Rock Your Resume”, written by Whitson Gordon, on Mar. 5, 2011 and it already has over 115,000 views three days later!
- Start with a Big List, and Then Shorten It- Keeping your resumé brief is important, but one of the best ways to make sure your resumé is as good as possible is to start long.
- Know What Not to Include- Get rid of not-so-notable accomplishments, and anything outdated can probably go too.
- Avoid Overused Phrases- If you want to make your resumé stand out, you’re going to want to avoid canned phrases like “team player”, “strong work ethic”, and “innovative”.
- Quantify Your Accomplishments- Pick something quantifiable, something real and tangible.
- Find the Keywords Your Employer is Looking for and Use Them- HR folks are scanning them for relevant keywords.
- Strategically Tweak Your Dates of Employment- Strategically format your resumé to highlight the jobs, not the dates.
- Try a Visual Slideshow or Video Resumé- While many employers will prefer the simple, single-page list of accomplishments, lots of others would prefer to see your personality and accomplishments more in-depth through a slideshow or video resumé.
- Don’t Use it Until the End of the Interview Process- If you wait to hand in your resumé until the end, you’ll be forced to show yourself off in other ways, and keep your potential employers thinking about something else beyond the dull checklist of accomplishments.
- Use Multiple Resumés for Different Potential Jobs- Tailor your resumé to each specific job you apply for, and send a unique resumé out for each one.
- Proofread from the Bottom Up- One of the more interesting ways we’ve seen is to read it from the bottom up. This way, you’ll make sure you don’t skip over any sections, and will also help you see things from an angle other than the one you’ve already written and proofread it fifteen times.
