Audio journalism III: Teaching j-students about recording, editing and distribution

• Beginning journalism students, in their first news writing classes, should be taught the basics of audio journalism and should put those basics into practice.

The concept of audio journalism takes us beyond the medium of radio and requires that we think about sound itself as an increasingly available and important tool of the journalist (as we argued in the first two essays in this series -- see Audio journalism I and Audio journalism II).

How then do we as journalism educators train our students to use this tool?

At the University of Tennessee, we are trying to turn our curriculum more toward the web and away from the traditional media forms of print and broadcasting. This is a systemic change that will not be accomplished by simply adding one or two courses on web journalism to the curriculum or even by creating a sequence of courses. Instead, it involves changing our approach in our most basic courses.

One of those basic courses is JEM 200 Introduction to news writing. This course is required of all journalism majors as the gateway course to the journalism curriculum, and it has traditionally introduced students to the concepts of good writing, AP style, attribution, the inverted pyramid and other skills necessary for a start in journalism. We are now putting more emphasis on developing skills for writing for the web -- conciseness, headlines, summaries, lists, linking, etc. -- and in the section that was once "writing for broadcast," we are now teaching the concepts of audio journalism.

Here's what we are including:

• Audio journalism
  The importance of sound. Sound can be an excellent way to go beyond the pictures and text a reporter produces in covering a story. Sound gives voice to sources in a way that text cannot.
  Formats. We reviewed some of the formats available to audio journalists in the second post of this series. Sound can be a complement to the other reporting or it can be the dominent form of the report. The web is allowing us to develop new formats, such as the audio slide show.
  
  
• Writing for audio
  Traditional radio formats. These forms of presentation of news and information including the drama unity broadcast story structure are still important for students to learn and use.
  New forms of writing for audio that web journalism offers. We have already referred to audio slide shows, but we also must give some attention to writing introductions that alert readers as to what they are about to hear and to describe links included with the sound stories.
  Writing scripts, questions and outlines. Most of what is broadcast in traditional media begins with and follows a script. Good scripts promote the efficient presentation of news and information, and they are likely to continue to be necessary on the web.
  
  
• Speaking clearly
  Enunciation and beyond. In previous times, training in this area could generally be ignored by most journalists, particularly those going into print. No longer. Journalists now need to use their own voices. Their accent, grammar and pronunciation skills must be developed beyond the normal level of speaking. Their speaking habits must exclude the use of the word "like" after every third word, and they must speak with the confidence that allows them to drop the hesitant pauses, the "uhs" and the "you knows."
  Developing habits and practices that enhance the clarity of sound and the quality of reporting. We might jokingly call this our "radio voice," but it is no longer a joke. Journalists -- all journalists -- must be heard and understood.
  Acquiring the skill of the short, concise question. Asking well-formed, concise questions -- and then shutting up -- is a rare skill, but it is one that should be developed by all of our students.
  
  
• Recording
  Tools and equipment. Basic recording equipment is inexpensive and simple to use. Every journalism student must have some kind of ditigal recorder and must be aware of its capacity.
  The importance of sound quality. Sound quality does not have to be an obsession because of the good equipment that is available. Still, journalism students must learn to make their equipment produce clear, understandable sound on all occasions.
  Ambient sound and music. The qualities of ambient sound and music can enhance the reporting. They are special products of audio journalism that cannot be duplicated by any other medium.
  
  
• Editing
  Putting audio files together for presentation. Editing audio can be as simple or as complex as the reporter and editor choose to make it. Some audio reporters, such as NPR's science reporter Robert Krulwich, develop their stories through complex and highly sophisticated editing techniques (see Darwin's Very Bad Day, for example). Our goals for beginning journalism students are more modest. Simply producing a clear, coherent recording would be enough.
  Multiple tracks. Student should have some basic understanding of mixing sound tracks.
  Importance of beginning and ending. Writing good introductions and planning the sound story from beginning to end is basic to good audio journalism.
  Standard constructions and techniques. Students should learn the standard techniques of audio editing as the well as the terms, such as fades, cross-fading, establish music, segue, transition, voice out, music up, and voice wrap.
  

Covering these areas in just a few weeks of a writing course is ambitious. Not all of these subject will be areas in which the students can acquire any mastery, but their introduction and practice can show students their importance.

Note: I post the lecture notes for the lecture section of JEM 200, and at this writing I have posted the notes for the first of three lectures based on these essays about audio journalism. Two more sets of lecture notes are planned.

Audacity

The one piece of software that students should learn for audio journalism is Audacity.

While editing sound has a wide array of possibilities, it has been rendered simple and easy by Audacity, a free and downloadable piece of software from SourceForge.net. Audacity comes with a set of tutorials, the basics of Audacity can be grasped in just a few minutes by those who simply use the software. Audacity allows users to add and delete portions of a soundtrack and to place new soundtracks into a file. Its visual dashboard (below) includes all of the tools for basic sound editing, and it is likely that student will be able to learn the program to create audio files very quickly.



Podcasting

Podcasting is a term sometimes used for the general idea of audio journalism, but in reality it has a much more specific meaning. Podcasting is a means of distributing audio files through RSS (really simple syndication) feeds. Students should be taught the basics of using this system for distributing the audio files they produce, but we will refrain from going into details about it until a later post.

Read the two previous essays in this series on audio journalism:

Audio journalism I: Defining the field - the power and importance of sound

• A clarion call for journalism instructors to think beyond the strictures of radio and to teach audio journalism -- using sound as a reporting tool -- to all of their students.

Audio journalism II: Forms and formats

• Creative journalists can use the tool of sound as an effective in their reporting. They can start with traditional formats, but the web will allow them to develop their own.

Audio journalism II: Forms and formats

• Creative journalists can use the tool of sound as an effective in their reporting. They can start with traditional formats, but the web will allow them to develop their own.

Reporters and journalism students must stop thinking about sound as an exclusively radio format -- an argument made in the first of these three posts -- and adopt it as a reporting tool that can be learned and used to effectively deliver information to readers or listeners.

In this post, we will explore some of the forms and formats that are available in this new era of audio journalism.

(A third post in this series looks at how journalism students should be trained to be audio journalists.)

We begin with two principles:

• Every journalism student should know the basics of recording and editing.
  
  
• Sound can be the dominant form in a story package, or it more likely will supplement other parts of the web package.

With that, we should examine the formats that are available to online journalists who want to use sound as a part of their reporting.


Sound supplement formats

The audio clip is the first and easiest for the students to master. This is simply a short piece of sound, maybe as short as 15 seconds or as long as two minutes, that accomplishes a single purpose. It allows the audience to hear the voice of a source answering a question or making a salient point about the subject of the story. It is easy to produce and requires little or no editing.

(A good example of the use of an audio clip is in this profile story on a University of Tennessee soccer player.)

Given the ease with which audio clips can be produced, it is surprising that their use is not more widespread. Their absence shows that reporters are simply do not think about using audio, not that the hardware or software is difficult.

Another format is the reporter interview. Here, someone on the news staff other than the reporter interviews the person who covered the story. These interviews vary greatly in length, but they rarely run past five or six minutes. The New York Times (image at right) uses them on a regular basis to give background information on the story. With a minimum of scripting and editing, these reporter interviews can also be easy to produce and effective in enriching the story.

A variation on the reporter interview is the reporter round-table. Here several reporters who have interest and information on the same topic can tell what they know, ask each other questions and exchange views. Length on these pieces may vary, and they should be long enough to give a full airing to the information and views of the reporters. On the other hand, as with everything else on the web, generally shorter is better.

Yet another format is the reporter round-up. This format allows the reporter to tell the story in a one- to two-minute sound clip, much like a radio version of the story. The story is told as completely as possible and is read from a script written by the reporter.

These formats have many variations that will depend on the story that is being covered and the
inclinations of the reporter. At this stage in the development of audio journalism, reporters and editors should be encourage to experiment with these formats and even try to create new ones that may aid in the storytelling.


Sound dominant formats

Sound dominant formats take the audio tool from being simply a supplement to the text or pictures of a presentation to being the major way in which the story is presented. Such formats include:

• radio stories, which derive from the longstanding conventions and customs of radio. These stories are a mix of reporting, interviews with sources and ambient sound, and the best of them come from news organizations such as National Public Radio and Voice of America. At their best, these stories require high-quality sound and professional word and sound editing skills.
  
  
• audio slide shows, a web-originated format that is growing in popularity. Audio slide shows mix still pictures with sound, often but not always the photographer's description of the pictures that he or she has taken. Audio slide shows require photography, writing, speaking and editing skills, but they can be highly effective and entertaining in their presentation of information. (Read more about audio slideshows on JPROF.com)
  
  
• long-form sound stories, those where time and brevity are not major considerations. These long forms allow reporters, producers and editors all the time they need to tell their stories. They can include all of the sound elements previously mentioned. One of the most creative of these long-form formats is This American Life, an hour-long public radio that deals with only one topic during the hour. This American Life gives ample time for sources to tell their stories, but its editing and production are intelligent and clever so that listeners can easily get caught up int he story.
  
  
• talk-show and call-in formats, where audiences are invited to participate. The talk-show format is a highly popular one for traditional radio, and it is growing in popularity on the web with the advent of sites such as TalkShoe.com. Journalists can create their own call-in shows, advertise them and increase their audiences. Some news web sites, such as the Tennessee Journalist, are experimenting with this format to see what it will add to the richness of the site.

The list of formats here is not meant to be inclusive or prescriptive. It simply shows some of the possibilities of the use of sound as a reporting device. Imaginative and creative reporters will undoubtedly develop other formats and standards as online journalism itself develops.

Read the other two posts in the series:

Audio journalism I: Defining the field - the power and importance of sound

• A clarion call for journalism instructors to think beyond the strictures of radio and to teach audio journalism -- using sound as a reporting tool -- to all of their students.

Audio journalism III: Teaching j-students about recording, editing and distribution

• Beginning journalism students, in their first news writing classes, should be taught the basics of audio journalism and should put those basics into practice.

Audio journalism I: Defining the field - the power and importance of sound

• A clarion call for journalism instructors to think beyond the strictures of radio and to teach audio journalism -- using sound as a reporting tool -- to all of their students.

Now that the web has freed sound from the confines of radio, audio journalism needs to be a part of the skill set of every reporter. This series of articles sets out the parameters of audio journalism and outlines some of the things that we journalism educators need to be teaching our students.

Audio journalism is reporting news and information with sound. Doing this was once the exclusive domain of radio, and truthfully, it wasn't much of a kingdom. Except for National Public Radio and the efforts of a few isolated individuals and organizations, radio journalism has been a vast and neglected wasteland. Even where radio journalism was good -- and on NPR it could be very good -- it was still confined to the medium and restricted by time, programming constraints and geography.

The emergence of the web as a dominant news medium has freed radio journalism -- what we can more properly call audio journalism -- from those restraints.

The advantages of learning and using audio as a reporting tool are legion:

• It is easy to produce. The equipment necessary for recording can fit into your shirt pocket. The software (Audacity is among the best) is simple and can be mastered quickly.
  
  
• Sound can take a story beyond text (just as pictures can). Sound gives readers/listeners to a story an added dimension that nothing else can duplicate.
  
  
• Audio literally gives sources a "voice." By using sound rather than text, their words, tones and inflections can be heard, not just described. Ambient sound can give these voices added context that increases the richness of the reporting.
  
  
• Sound allows listeners to "see" with the best lens of all, the mind.
  A personal example: For years, I have shocked people by telling them that as a baseball fan, I would much rather listen to a radio broadcast of a game with a good announcer (great ones include Jack Buck [deceased], Vince Scully, and Ernie Harwell) than watch the game on television. The reason: Video cameras are too confining; they do not give me a picture of the whole field or even a significant portion of it. If I am listening to it, however, I can "see" everything, and the experience is much more enjoyable and fulfilling.
  
  
• The idea of audio journalism at this point is largely unexplored. That means that the people who get into it now have an opportunity to define the form. They can experiment and be creative without having the burdens of "tradition" or the concept of "best practices."
  
  
• Audio is a presentation form that allows the audience to multitask. Reading text and watching video demand the full attention of the visitor. Audio lets the audience do something else in addition to taking in the information. As the demand for consumer time increases, this will continue to be an important consideration for the web journalist.

Finally, audio journalism is important because it is the dominant form of information distribution on The Next Big Thing in Journalism: mobile journalism. Despite all the current attention to texting, web site scaling and video on cellphones and hand-held devices, people generally use these devices to talk and to receive sound, either from other talkers or from audio producers.

All of these are compelling reasons why we journalism educators need to pay serious attention to the concept and forms of audio journalism. We need to teach our students how to use sound effectively in their report, both as a main form of storytelling and to supplement text, pictures and other formats at our disposal.

Two subsequent posts will outline how we can begin this process:

Audio journalism II: What journalism students should know - uses, forms and formats

Audio journalism III: Training journalism students - recording, editing and distribution

(Updated March 7, 2009, to include link to Audio journalism II.)