Kuala Lumpur: Robb Montgomery and Peter Ong pose in front of the Petronas Towers. (Photo by Kevin Anderson)
My pal, Steve Dorsey, e-mailed me recently about a job he was posting on on the discussion boards and asked me if I was tired of globe-trotting yet. I didn’t quite know how to answer him except to think to myself “I used to spend more time traveling.” Since 1993 I spent a lifetime commuting to jobs at the Tribune and Sun-Times.
I had a long newspaper career as an office-bound designer and editor and I can certainly appreciate how glamorous it may seem to suddenly have the flexibility to travel to wherever there is a job to do. I was a traveling musician before I went to college and discovered journalism - so a part of me has always belonged to road.
In May, June and July I logged over 30,000 air miles to produce social media and multimedia blogging projects in Europe, Africa and Asia.
The definition of multimedia is certainly outpacing many of our old ideas, and I’d like to offer this as my recently revised definition:
Multimedia journalism demands that social media tools and editing techniques be integrated completely.
The interactive, networked and on-demand experience is a media habit that has been formed already for people in their 20s. Just like the media habits of earlier generations, these adults will carry that habit with them their entire life.
I hope the concept and execution of these recent international multimedia journalism projects interest you as much as the travel it took to produce them.
Photos by Stephanie Grace Lim
1) STOCKHOLM
In Sweden, I presented a seminar on Web video and also volunteered Visual Editors resources and development expertise to SNDS in order to produce a live and public multimedia blogging kiosk from the floor of the SND/Scandinavia annual conference.
Visit the multimedia The SNDS Stockholm Blog
The project involved producing a custom-coded Word Press blog and persuading Apple to loan us a few iMacs so that delegates could multimedia blog/report from the conference while attending the conference.
The iMac kiosks were configured so that delegates could walk up and upload and caption their photos to Flickr, videos to Brightcove, YouTube, or Blip.tv, and enter them into the blog with text and annotated Google mashup maps.
All of the multimedia reports were metatagged “SNDS2007″ and our videos were added to a custom VodPod movie player widget.
Many photos, annotated maps, a few videos and some text reports were filed by delegates. The social media scene is still quite new to many senior Scandinavian editors, but they were thrilled to see it can all come together in this open way.
During the conference, all the the social media RSS feeds and Flickr photo feeds were fed to a live update window on the Visual Editors home page.
2) CAPE TOWN
The World Editors Forum contracted with Visual Editors and me to help them produce and direct two video projects - one of which was an ambitious live conference video blogging effort with journalism students from a South African university.
The Cape Town Video Blog
The Paris-based WEF directors, myself and six amazing postgraduate journalism students from Stellenbosch University worked together to film, edit, report and file 11 videos to YouTube during the three day conference.
We used the metatag: “WEF2007″
I was responsible for designing the system, a prototype, graphics, workflows. As is the nature of any journalistic endeavor - we trained the students on the fly.
The whole scheme depended on these very smart and tech savvy kids who only needed to be shown once how to do some pretty crafty work. All the YouTube videos were embedded into the live blogging reports at the editorsweblog and the conference Weblog in the Visual editors blog and aggregated in the Visual editors VodPod player widget.
VIDEO LINKS:
—> VodPod/
—> VizEds blog
—> WAN Cape Town blog
—> Editors Weblog
A second video team was dedicated to filming one-hour-long sit-down interviews with editors-in-chiefs. We asked them about 100 hundred questions about “Integrated Newsrooms.” John Burke conducted all of the interviews except one. He asked me to interview my friend, Mario Garcia, about how the integrated newsroom concept is challenging journalist’s and editor’s expectations.
This video project was built on the knowledge and experience gained producing a pilot project on video/social media with the World Editors Forum in June 2006 in Moscow.
—> http://www.visualeditors.com/moscow
As a bonus: I also got to produce and blog/document exclusive podcast interviews with Adam Pasick, Desmond Tutu and NYT editor Bill Keller.
PODCASTS and photos
—> Podcasts
Listen to them in Canadian Newspaper Association my one hour long ‘Web video is not television” talk expanded to two hours with a lot of really interesting questions and requests for demonstrations. The thirst for multimedia expertise in print newsrooms is palpable - I just really enjoy sharing this material.
IFRA/Asia assembled a great group of Asian editors in Malaysia last week to explore the state of social media and networked journalism. I joined Kevin Anderson of Guardian Unlimited and Steve Yelvington of Morris Digital Works to teach a three-day workshop on social media, citizen journalism and the keys to engaging networked communities.
Kevin is a dynamo, When Steve was presenting he was live-blogging and when I was presenting he was full-time video editing and amplifying key points with rich detail. I would have needed a case of Red Bull to keep up with Kevin. Everyone was inspired by his expertise and insights.
Below are links to the items he blogged:
Live blogging from Kuala Lumpur
Ways that mainstream and citizen media can cooperate
Steve Yelvington talks about networked journalism
The highlight of these workshops for me is always the practical exercise at the end. This is where as a trainer and presenter you get to see if your lessons, videos, diagrams, anecdotes and illustrations made any impact in people’s thinking. There were some great ideas presented in that last session and many smiles and proud picture-taking. The delegates have been invited to post up some of their photos from the week to Flickr and use a common tag to share their collective experience.
– http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ifrakl2007/
Update from Singapore
Jen Teo just of IFRA Asia just e-mailed in the feedback from the workshop:
The feedback forms gathered showed that the participants rating this training ‘A Great Deal” as it had accomplished the workshop stated learning objectives, meeting their expectation and information appropriate to their needs.
4) Traveling to Evanston
My next tour stop is Saturday, Aug. 11 where I will be at the Medill school at Northwestern in Evanston.
The AAN member workshop planners have asked for a design presentation and coaching time in visual journalism.
Nice to have a gig I can actually drive to and not have to take my passport to get to. My poor old car is feeling neglected since I gave up my Loop commute two years ago.
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