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.

New York Times coverage of Obama's speech - a different reporting form

• The New York Times used the tools of the web to bring the story of Barack Obama's speech to Congress last week in a different and innovative way.

The web offers journalists many opportunities to report on events in ways that we never could have done with another medium. Witness the New York Times coverage of President Barack Obama's speech to Congress last week.

The Times had a straight news story on it, certainly, with all of the accompanying reactions and standard forms that print news stories are supposed to take.

But reporters and editors put together information about the speech in an innovative way that shows what can be done when a bit of creativity and imaginable are combined with the tools that the web gives to good editors and reporters. The screen shot to the right shows how the Times combined:

• a video of the speech;
  
  
• a marked timeline of the video so users could select a particular part of the speech if they wanted to;
  
  
• a transcript of the speech so readers could follow along the video or simply read it without the video;
  
  
• commentary and information from the reporters and editors about each part of the speech.

This package undoubtedly took some fancy coding to set it up correctly and some testing to make sure that it worked. No news organization could invest this kind of time and effort in anything less than a major story.

But here is an alternative to the straight narrative, and it is impressive.

Reforming the J-curriculum: beginning at the beginning

• To really reform a journalism curriculum, you have to begin at the beginning.

The faculty of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee decided at its first faculty meeting of the semester in January to make some definite moves toward revising our curriculum to recognize the realities of the changing media environment and to prepare our students for those realities.

During the past few years, the UT faculty had done what other faculties have done -- lay on a couple of extra courses about web journalism. Some faculty members had made some moves within existing courses (including changing the names of the courses) to include more about the web.

We had even taken a step beyond that in starting a student-operated news web site, the Tennessee Journalist (tnjn.com), that is a central part of the curriculum. The site operates independently from any single course and thus is open to being used by all courses.

All of these were steps in the right direction, but they have not achieved the fundamental changes within the curriculum that we have sought. At our January meeting, we resolved to take a big step (bigger, I think, than even most of our faculty realized) and change JEM 200, the introductory news writing course that is required of all majors and taken by many other students as well.

Because I am the coordinator of all JEM 200 sections, the task of rethinking and re-envisioning the course has fallen to me. We offer 11 sections of the course and enroll about 200 students each semester. The sections are taught by lecturers and graduate teaching assistant and occasionally (though not this semester) by full time professors.

In our new plan for the course, the beginning six weeks of the course have not changed substantially. During those weeks we introduce students to the following topics. (The links here take you to the weekly lecture notes for each of these topics that are posted on JPROF.com.)

• Introduction to media writing
• Basic tools: Grammar and style
• Writing in the media environment
• The inverted pyramid
• Basics of reporting and journalistic writing: sources and interviewing

What came next in the old syllabus was two weeks of writing for the web. That has been expanded to four weeks. My draft proposal for how these four weeks will go follows:

Week 7, Feb. 16-20
Writing sections: continue writing in the inverted pyramid form; emphasize efficiency and conciseness. Have the students learn HTML tags with this tutorial and this exercise.
Lecture: Writing for the web I Introduction to the web | The web as a word medium | How readers use the web | Important concepts | Headlines and summaries.

Week 8: Feb. 22-26
Writing sections: Write short (no more than 200 words) but information-packed stories; introduce and practice with writing headlines and summaries using the tutorials and exercises. Assign the preview story reporting/writing assignment that will be due for next week.
Lecture: Writing for the Web II The Tennessee Journalist | Important concepts (continued) | Technology | Writing for the web - the basics | Headlines.

Week 9: March 2-6
Writing sections: Reporting assignment (preview story) due on the first section meeting; upload that assignment to the TNJN server. Practice uploading pictures and writing cutlines as well as sidebar material if possible. Look for live stories on the Tennessee Journalist to show as examples for sidebar material. Pay particular attention to the "related links" function of TNJN and have students find appropriate links for their stories.
Lecture: Writing for the Web III Inverted pyramid | Visual variety | Lists | Summaries | Microcontent | Links


Week 10: March 9-13
Writing sections: Writing assignments should include writing headlines and summaries, creating links and lists, and taking pictures and writing cutlines. A second reporting assignment -- another preview story if you don't think they're ready to do anything else -- would be good.
Lecture: Writing for the Web IV Twitter | Photojournalism | Audio | What you need to do to get ready to work in the web environment.

That will take us up to spring break. During the week after spring break, you should continue doing whatever your lab needs. One idea is to assign them to do a photo story over spring break.

After spring break, we will devote three weeks to "writing for broadcast," but that will change from the broadcast writing section that we once had.

This draft plan has been written for the lecturers and lab instructors of JEM 200, but I am posting it here on the JPROF blog so that anyone who reads it can weigh in and help us with our deliberations. I am especially interested in hearing from anyone who can suggest additional resources -- readings, tutorials, exercises, examples, etc.

Resources:

Writing headlines for the web

Basic HTML tags

Finding links

The art of linking

Writing summaries

Guidelines for the student photojournalist

Audio slide shows

Qualities of the digital journalist

Steve Outing, a well-known thinker and writer about online journalism, has envisioned the not-so-distant future digital newsroom in his January 28 column for Editor and Publisher. (The All-Digital Newsroom of the Not-So-Distant Future)

The whole thing is well worth reading and, journalism profs, recommending to your students.

Of particular interest is what Outing says will be the qualities of those who land jobs in this new space. They will be:

• people with understanding of and enthusiasm for new forms of media and storytelling
  
  
• multifunctional journalists who can use all the tools available, particularly audio and video recorders
  
  
• social networks users and people who know how to gather an audience
  
  
• people who can engage with audiences and are comfortable sharing personal information

Underlying all of these qualities is an affinity for practicing good journalism.

Someone asked me today what I thought the Knoxville News Sentinel (the local paper) would be in 10 years. I said I thought there would be a 24/7 web operation with a weekend print edition. That's based on what has happened in the last few weeks.

But who knows what innovations await us? We can only say with certainty that paper will no longer be surpreme.

Editing for the web: discussion notes for journalism instructors

These notes are designed for editing instructors who want to conduct a section on editing for the web or online journalism instructors who want to teach their students about the special considerations for editing for a news web site.

An example of taking a "for print" story and making it into a "for the web" can be found here at JPROF.

Begin with the basics

Any discussion of journalistic editing should begin with reminding students of the basics of copy editing that do not change no matter what the medium:

• Grammar, spelling, punctuation -- These are always considerations for the editor. It is just as important to be technically perfect in use of the language on the web as it is in any other medium. Two common mistakes in punctuation: direct quotations and forming possessives.
  


• AP style -- Style rules are not optional in any journalistic setting.
  
  
• Syntax, sense, repetition and redundancy -- All of these are problems that need to be dealt with in any writing, web included.
  
  
• Accuracy -- Always, accuracy. (See JPROF's notes on Achieving Accuracy.)
  
  
• Structure and emphasis -- The basic form for news on the web is still the inverted pyramid news story. (Checklist for inverted pyramid news stories.) Readers of the web want their information immediately; writers and editors need to give it to them.
  
  
• The five Ws and H. Editors should make sure that there is a clear statement of who, what, when, why and how in the story. (Where and when, too, certainly.) These things tend to get lost in all the verbiage that we are likely to produce.
  
  

So, what's different about the web? Well, here are a few things:

Conciseness

Wordiness is one of the chief editing problems that a web editor must attack. (See discussion notes for Attacking Wordiness.) The web demands -- and readers demand -- that information come packaged in the fewest words possible. They want detail, they want color, but they also want efficiency. Read the before and after stories in the editing for the web example (referred to above) and see how the editor has attacked the verbiage of the writer. Has anything been lost or left out? Was it that important to understanding the story?

(You may want to talk to your students about a broadcast writing approach if you have not done so already: simple words, simple sentences, telling the story quickly, getting out. We don't really have to go that far on the web, but we do need to emphasize conciseness.)

Visual aspects

On the web, one of the most important aspects of writing is how it looks. Computer screens are sometimes difficult to view, and text on a computer screen takes some extra effort. In addition, many readers are in the habit of "scanning" rather than "reading." As editors, we need to offer them visual cues that interrupt their scanning to concentrate on the words that are on the screen. An editor needs to ensure that the presentation of the words is as legible and easy to understand as possible. Here are some ways to do that:

• Paragraph separation -- A pretty standard presentation on the web is to have a line of white space between the paragraphs. Some programs do this automatically, but if they do not, the editor should see that this is one, as long as it is consistent with the visual style of the web site. Here is a good time to bring up the value of WHITE SPACE in design; white space is what allows us to see items on a page or on a computer screen. The web has unlimited space, so creating the appropriate amount of white space should not be a problem.
  
  
• Lists -- Creating lists, where they are appropriate, is one of the most valuable things a writer or editor can do for a web audience. Lists are easy to read because they are short and the white space is built in. But a good list should also be informative and should add value for the reader.
  


• Block quotes and indentations -- Block quotes, as long as they are not too extensive, are another device that makes reading easier. Like lists, they have white space built in.
  


• Pull quotes -- The pull quote is a graphic device used for many decades in print to create white space on a gray page. A pull quote can also be used to emphasize certain information. This is an important editorial decision that the editor should take seriously and give a good deal of thought to. A pull quote does not have to be an direct quotation, although that is often the way it is used. A pull quote can be anything that editor deems relevant and worth emphasis.
  


• Story box -- A story box is like a pull quote in a graphic sense: an insertion of larger type into the body of a story. The box doesn't pretend to be a quotation, however. It is an explanatory paragraph of list that adds something that is not in the story itself. It introduces both graphic variety and new information to the reader. An editor who creates a story box must spend some time and effort on it.
  


• Subheads -- Subheads serve the same purpose on the web that they do in print: to break long stretches of copy. Subheads should be consistent and logical in their placement, and they should be accurate in their description of the text below them. They should be general enough to cover what the text says in the next few paragraphs.
  

Links

Links represent one of the special powers of the web as a news medium -- the ability to put the reader in touch with additional information about a top. For more on linking, see The Art of Linking article on JPROF.

For the editor, two major questions about links arise:

Where can I insert inline links into the text? And from this question comes those of where will be link take the reader? And will the purpose of the link (that is, where it will take the reader) be apparent? The editor needs to construct inline links so that they fit into the copy flow but that they are also obvious about what the reader will get if he or she clicks on that link.

What links do I list separately (related links)? Why are they there? Sometimes the reason for their presence will be obvious. At other times, the editor will need to describe them succinctly but in a way that will inform the reader.

Chunking

Chunking is an inelegant term for breaking up information and presenting it to the reader. In print, we think in terms of a single "story" and possibly a few exras: pictures, graphs, sidebars, etc. On a web site, we should think in terms of a subject/event and the different pieces of information we have about it.

At this stage of the web's development, we still think of the central piece of information as a "story," albeit a shorter narrative that we might have in print. In the near future, we may see a reduction in the use of the "story" as the organizing center of a web package. It may instead be the video or the photo gallery.

Chunking means that we need to consider the pieces of our package. Many of these pieces may be put together in some kind of text/narrative, such as an inverted pyramid news story. Other pieces, however, may not fit into that genre, and as editors we should be intellectually nimble enough to handle them.

Jim Stovall (Originally posted on JPROF Feb. 7, 2007; updated Feb. 3, 2009)

ICONN: First take on the final day

The prevailing feeling I absorbed from the second day of the founders conference of the Intercollegiate Online News Network (ICONN) was this:

A good time was had by all.

We see a bright, innovative, exciting time for us (educators, professionals, students) and for our avocation (journalism). We look forward to an age of creativity and innovation. We see golden opportunities for our students to do good work, write and tell good stories, and make a difference for their readers and our society.

We are energized by meeting like-minded people who offer thoughts, ideas and plans on the things we are interested in.

During every session and every break, walk and van ride, there were dozens of lively conversations and exchanges. The tweets and blog posts flowed like a rushing stream (many of which you can find with an #ICONN search of Twitter or in some of the links below).

What a contrast from the dreary and dreaded staff conferences and faculty meetings where people struggle to defend their turf and fear the future. Economic realities and the threats of change are real, but the ICONN group in Knoxville (and many of their like-minded colleagues following the goings-on from afar) know that the future will be unlike much of what we have seen in the past.

And we're ready to take it on.

Below are some links where you can pick up a sense of what the conference was about.

During the weekend, I will be going through the audio that I recorded from various sessions and posting some clips from it. Participants should email me any reactions they have posted that I may have missed, and you are, of course, welcome to comment on any of this.


Links

ICONN and the future
UMass Journalism Professors Blog: Steve Fox: "It’s the second conference I’ve been to during the winter break — the other was at Western New England College where I was also asked to speak about the future of journalism. The mood at the two conferences could not be more different."

Live Blogging: Journalism conference as a participant observer
My Tennessee Home: Lisa Gary: "Collaborative connectivity was the theme behind the scenes, too. As panels discussed and students listened and took notes, participants from many universities used wireless connections to report from the scene."

Journalism Education Finds Its Iconn
instrumentlanding.com: Jay Baird: "The newsroom is broken. People on ferries taking pictures of airplanes in rivers are the new gatekeepers. How do we teach journalism students to collate, disseminate and guide media consumers through all of this? I think that the new model will be found on Rocky Top."

Photos

Photos by Ben Moser, TNJN.com. More of these at Flickr. From the top:

Photo 1: Jason Georges and Jeff Long (KPCC - Southern California) and the joys of the iPhone.

Photo 2: Tammi Marcoullier of Publish2 makes a point.

Photo 3: George Daniels of Alabama does the Twitter thing.

Photo 4: Bob Benz (Radiant Markets), Steve Klein (George Mason U.), and Steve Fox (UMass - Amherst) exchange some ideas.

ICONN conference, Day 2 - pictures of session 3

The first session of the morning of the second day of the Intercollegiate Online News Network is underway. Above are some pictures.

The people on the panel are

9:30 – 10:30 a.m.
Professional affiliates

• Tammi Marcoullier, Publish2
• Bob Benz, Radiant Markets
• Michael Marshall, UPI
• Jay Baird, Mochi Media
• Peter Gross, director, School of Journalism and Electronic Media, presiding

Re-thinking the old media forms

Yes, you can do the old forms on the web. But should you?

This "old media" type says we should re-think the forms of our content. This New York Times article by Virginia Heffernan is bit depressing but very perceptive.

She writes:

. . .they should think about what content suits these new modes of distribution and could evolve in tandem with them. For old-media types, mental flexibility could be the No. 1 happiness secret we have been missing.

Pulitzers to include online news organizations

This pretty much speaks for itself and can be filed under the "it's about time" category:

Prizes broadened to include online-only publications primarily devoted to original news reporting

The Pulitzer Prizes in journalism have been expanded to include many text-based newspapers and news organizations that publish only on the Internet.

The Pulitzer Board also has decided to allow entries made up entirely of online content to be submitted in all 14 Pulitzer journalism categories.

Update: Seth Goden has a good take on this. Essentially, there's not much of a change going on.

Link journalism - the shape of news to come?

Two web sites came onto my radar this weekend that set me to thinking about the shape of journalism on the web.

A friend recommended Publishing 2.0, an excellent and provocative gathering of articles about journalism put together by Scott Karp and Robert Young. The article from this site that got my attention showed up in my email this morning. It is by Josh Korr, titled Nervous About Link Journalism? Ignore Web’s ‘Cesspool’ And Tap Its ‘Natural Spring’. Korr makes a short, strong case for journalists making good use of the good resources of the web.

Then I came across Mahalo, which bills itself as the human-powered search engine (hat-tip to Jack Lail for this). Mahalo is a bit of a cross between Google News and Wikipedia. Wiki-like pages are build for news events -- even breaking news. Much of the information that is on the page comes from links. Mahalo has its own editors, but it is also crowd-sourced, so anyone can sign up and build or edit a page.

(The folks at Mahalo make that pretty easy, so I -- always in blatant self promotion mode -- built a page for The Writing Wright, figuring I would continue until someone called a halt to my nefarious efforts. So far, the anti-self promotion police have not arrived to haul me away.)

But take a look at some of the news event pages of Mahalo -- these, for instance:
The Knoxville Church Shooting
Napa Valley Wildfire

The way these pages are structure is what has me interested. There is a paragraph summary and then a set of Fast Facts. Then there is room for more explanations and information in whatever way the editor/journalist wants to divide it. There is also ample room for links.

So, I am thinking: Is this the mode in which we should be reporting our stories? It tosses the inverted pyramid and other narrative forms aside.

I am putting this question to my Journalism and Electronic Media 560 Advanced Web Publishing class on Wednesday evening. It will be interesting to hear their take on this.

The Newseum opens in Washington

Gannett's splashy new monument to journalism, the Newseum, opened in Washington yesterday. For the most part, I think, the reviews are good. (Check out this interactive guide at USA Today. And here's the review.)

(My old friend from Navy days, Thomas A.K. Kai, was there and sent me a link to the pictures he took, one of which is above. Tom has about 40 good photos of the place both inside and out.)

The place, visually, can't be missed, and its size and location will make it a tourist magnet. I certainly plan to try to get there the next time I am in D.C.

The hope is that people who know little and care little about the profession of journalism will show up and, after the visit, know more and care more. The memorial to journalists who have been killed doing their jobs is particularly appropriate and should not be missed by anyone.

Good journalism disturbs, unsettles and threatens people in authority. It frightens people who hold on to easy assumptions about the world in which we live and the people who inhabit it along with us. Whatever the technological and format changes that await us in the near future, I hope that there will be people who take on this calling in this very dangerous world.

So, good luck to the Newseum and to those who visit the place.

One note: The giant marble slab that contains the words of the First Amendment on the outside of the building comes from just down the road from where I live in Blount County, Tennessee.


Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.

Public Conversation on Web Journalism conference at UT

The University of Tennessee School of Journalism and Electronic Media is hosting a two-day conference titled "A Public Conversation on Web Journalism" on April 3-4. The conference is being funded by a grant from the Scripps Foundation. It will feature Rob Curley, vice president of WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive, as the dinner speaker on Thursday evening. Among the mix of academics and professionals at the conference are Steve Klein of George Mason University, Chip Scanlan of Poynter, Kenneth Knight of the Tampa Tribune, and Channing Dawson of Scripps Television. Find out more about the conference at the Tennessee Journalist.


Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.