When the News Needs a Little Explanation

 The headlines move fast. The context rarely keeps up.

That's the idea behind four titles from the I'm No Expert, But library that happen to line up with what's dominating the news right now: a chokepoint in the Persian Gulf, a war grinding through its third year in Eastern Europe, the fossil fuels that quietly run almost everything, and a trade policy tool that keeps showing up in headlines without much explanation of how it actually works.

Each book follows the same premise. I'm not an expert. I went looking anyway, and I came back with seven things that surprised me enough to write down.

Seven Things You Should Know About the Strait of Hormuz explains why a 21-mile-wide waterway can move oil markets and foreign policy in the same afternoon. Seven Things You Should Know About the War in Ukraine lays out the mechanics behind a conflict most of us only see in fragments. Seven Things You Should Know About Oil and Gas covers the industry that shapes gas prices, geopolitics, and a good chunk of the evening news, whether we notice it or not. Seven Things You Should Know About Tariffs untangles a word that gets thrown around constantly and understood rarely.

None of these books argue a side. They're not trying to. The goal is the same one behind every title in the series: explain the mechanism, name the disagreement where experts have one, and trust the reader to take it from there.

If the news has left you nodding along without quite following, one of these might be worth the hour (or less) it takes to read. All available on Amazon.

Strait of Hormuz: Seven Things You Should Know

War in Ukraine: Seven Things You Should Know

Oil and Gas: Seven Things You Should Know

Tariffs: Seven Things You Should Know

JPROF-First Inning Press newsletter

 Jim publishes a newsletter every Friday that contains a variety of articles, news about his books, and giveaways. The newsletter is free. You can sign up for it at JPROF.com.

Seven steps to the audio slideshow

Getting prepared for the upcoming semester, I took a shot at codifying the procedures for creating an audio slideshow. If any journalism instructors out there want to use this, they're welcome to it (credit JPROF.com).

Seven steps to the audio slideshow

JEM 200 and 230 students (and beyond)

An audio slideshow is a journalistic form that combines sound and still pictures to tell a story.

1. FORM THE IDEA

-- what’s the slideshow about; what story is being told

2. DRAFT THE SCRIPT

• two to three minutes (or as long as necessary)
• time the script (remember: 10-15 pictures per minute

3. SHOOT THE PHOTOS

• Rule No. 1: Take lots of pictures
• Long-range, midrange, close-ups
• Control the background, fill the frame, wait for moments
• Rule of thirds
• Last rule: Take lots of pictures

4. REVISE AND EDIT THE SCRIPT

(and shoot more photos)

5. Record and edit the audio (Audacity)

• narrator
• interviews
• ambient sound
• music and sound effects

6. SELECT, EDIT AND SEQUENCE THE PICTURES

• software: Picasa, iMovie, Soundslides, Animoto
• create title, credit and date slides

7. COMBINE SOUND AND PICTURES

• convert to video file
• upload (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)
• breathe a sigh of relief
• tell your friends

Photo story day - JEM 200's in-class lecture assignment

Lecture assignment, March 25, 2010

Students in the JEM 200 course at the University of Tennessee were assigned to do a photo story of the lecture itself last week. Here's a short video of how the class went. Below are some of the instructions students received about the assignment.

Students,

You will be asked to begin an in-class photo assignment in lecture this week. To prepare, do the following.

• Acquire a camera and get familiar with the kind of pictures it can take -- particularly pictures indoors with reasonably good light.
• Establish an account with some picture hosting service. Recommended is Picasaweb, Google's service.
• Upload some pictures to your account so that you can get familiar with the process.
• Review JPROF's series on photojournalism, especially the part about writing cutlines.

You will be asked to take enough pictures to select 10 to 15 good ones (which means you should be taking 50 to 100 pictures, at least) and load them into an album on your hosting service. (Picasaweb is good for this because it lets you create new albums at will. Then, it can automatically make an embeddable slide show from that album.)

You will need to write cutlines for all of the pictures that go into your album, so part of your assignment will be getting cutline information. We'll talk more about that during lecture.

Your photos should include examples of long range, medium range and close-up pictures. You should have more close-up pictures than anything else.

This is a graded assignment, so do some thinking about it before you come to class. Some of the best advice you can follow are these guidelines for the student photojournalist.