From Work Related

Then the print story:
“Feeding Hungry Continues Drexel Mission At Lourdes”

Then the video:

I wanted to accomplish:

• Timeliness. Using my iPhone, I filmed, edited and uploaded the video as soon as possible.
• A flavor of the unfolding events for people who couldn’t be there but could check in through social media. On Twitter, I focused on color as prayers and rites began. Pictures sent via Twitter put people in the scene.
• I followed the routine of: Twitter, photo, Facebook, video. I interviewed a lot of people using the tried and true pen and notebook.

You can see them at the Youtube Channel for the Georgia Bulletin.

The first video was a reaction piece from the current Catholic archbishop and my efforts concluded with a slideshow using Animoto.

The video below was the most popular of the group:

Tell me what you, do graphic resumes make a difference versus text?

I enjoyed sharing my know-how with about 20 editors at a journalism conference.
I shared with them my experience of using my iPhone as a reporting tool, using it get video for video stories and audio for slideshows and story telling. Please read more about the experience at my Tumblr: andrewcnelson.tumblr.com.

UPDATE:

It was great to get this email a few days later:

Andrew,

I hope all is going well in Atlanta. I wanted to let you know that you have inspired me to finally take baby steps to more interactive features on our website.

My first venture was a photo slideshow with Animoto. It is embed in this story.

My presentation:

And you can find the story for the newspaper here.

There have been 1,125 “absolute unique visitors” during the past quarter.

A year ago, August, September and October had 600 visitor.

It puts wind in my sails to post more often, trying to highlight the community in new, unique and interesting ways.

My next post will dig deeper about what fueled the jumped.

I came up with two ways that were immediate.

• Photos of the rally. This was easy.  I had my camera phone and took crowd pictures.  They show the large size of the protesters, along with signs. Instead of waiting a week for the paper, I posted them online as they appeared in other local media.
• Video. I also captured video of a prominent speaker at the rally.  This video  added some depth to the web site about the issue as one side sees it..

Here’s the link to see how it came out.

I saved comments and insights from people attending the rally for the print paper. This give readers additional information and adds value to the paper instead of just repeating the web story.

But first the back story.

In December, I was assigned to cover the 20th anniversary of a men’s day of reflection at a local Catholic high school.  I prepared for the event and started to frame how I could tell the story. Since it was the milestone anniversary, I thought multimedia would be a good way to capture some heartfelt remarks from these dads about being dads. I am a big fan of StoryCorps, the NPR series where people share about intimate moments in their lives as they are interviewed by family or close friends. My goal was model my audio after the NPR show. I thought I could capture the same intimate moments, with probing questions: what was it like the first time you held your child, what has surprised you about fatherhood.

Where’d it go wrong?

Working in a group.

I didn’t do my homework enough.  I showed up on the scene and threw my request at the organizers on the spot.  In the short time, the best I could do was gather these guys around a table and ask them the questions.

Lesson learned: working with a bunch of guys sitting around the table doesn’t help with the best audio.

Among Strangers

Everyone was really helpful and glad to talk with me. But having said that, if a stranger puts a microphone under your nose and starts asking the kind of questions I was, sometimes the answers aren’t so great.

Lesson learned: I should have called ahead and asked the organizers, tell me someone who has been at the conference for a very long time, someone talkative.  We could have spoken before the day and done the audio at the guys house or some other place where he may have been more comfortable talk about being a dad. The point is I hadn’t developed a relationship with these men ahead of time. This was a feature story where I had the time. Of course, on a breaking news story the rules are very different.

I really wanted to run the story. I edited the audio to the best of my ability to the three minute mark. But at the end of the day, talking it over with my colleague, we agreed it wasn’t the best work. For me, the success came with keeping the bar high for the work we produce and the lessons learned are a good kick in the pants to pay attention to the fundamentals when working on a multimedia story.

Feb. 24:  Since I wrote that and accidently left it in draft form, I’ve only published a few items in the format.  But new week, new goals.  At least once a day, I am going to publish. I promise.

Both involve students at Tri-Cities High School, which I am pleased about.

Here’s one that features senior Malcolm Norwood, the head drum major of the marching Band.

See it here

The other is a 3 minute video of student chefs.  They had prepared desserts at the neighborhood Thanksgiving meeting. I used my Flip video camera to record them.  I had recently read how readers really like having video on a website even if its not Hollywood quality.  What did I do?

I filmed their desserts. Then I asked the teacher for permission to interview them. During a pause of their activity, I lined up the group and had them answer a few easy questions. You can see the result here: