Cher Phillips
Views on online media and journalismArchive for September, 2007
PTR: Sept. 27 read, examine, listen
READ
PTR: (Points to remember)
1. Videomaker
- Natural sound makes scenes seem more real, gives them context
- Abbreviations: “NAT SOT” = natural sound on tape, “Sot Full” = full volume sound,”BG” = background sound and serves as the glue for the rest of the audio
2. Newslab
- Figure out your story structure early
- Look for the strong close asap
- leave an extra recorder running for wild sounds
- mic the peeps
- ask double-barreled questions to get ‘em talking, make observations — sounds like natural conversation and easier for them to respond
- collect sounds from different location
- it’s OK to look stupid — like any reporting
- collect more than you’ll use – like any reporting
- OH! log your sound before you edit
3. Transom
- Comparisons of eight mics – all too expensive for me right now
- I liked mic B – the Condenser hypercardoid
- Handheld is better than a lavalier and the transom people can’t spell: “…they’re almost alwasya a comprimise.” [sic]
Examine
Chicago Tribune: The Art of Listening
I didn’t like the intro on this. For some reason, Jesse explaining herself seemed out of context to me. The last two-thirds of the sound slide was smoother. In the Jesse intro, the lack of images and long pauses in the transition from image to image didn’t make sense. With the images of the animals, it gelled. My question: would it have been better with the statement “I’m Jesse” at the end? Or set back a little? The structure didn’t work for me. The quality of the recordings of Jesse weren’t as good as her recordings of ambient sound. That leads me to another point. It seemed like most of this work was Jesse’s and not Matt Pope’s.
Listen
Normally, there is something about the sound of NPR that makes me feel … like I am in a vacuum. Therefore, the ambient sound, birds and walking, in the koala piece is nice. You can hear a number of different locations, too. But am I going to hear a koala at all? Ah, finally. And they closed on the koala. Very smart.
Photo editing: GIMP
My brother Tony suggested an open-source, photo editing program to me yesterday, GIMP — the Gnu Image Manipulation Program.
He said Kathy, my sister-in-law, uses it in addition to Photoshop to retouch images. She worked as a freelance photographer, shooting weddings, etc. They both work for a prominent photography corporation, although not as photographers. Tony said Kathy’s used GIMP to put hair on a bald man and completely remove someone from a picture.
Granted, I realize photographic hair implants are a big no-no in our world.
But I was very intrigued by the idea of Photoshop-style shareware. Adobe programs can be really expensive, and it’s hard to find huge chucks of lab time if you don’t have the program at home.
I downloaded GIMP today and checked it out. It’s got most of the same things Photoshop does without the price.
I edited a photo I shot last week for my assignment.
I was able to use an auto color feature, as well as adjust the levels and curves manually. I cropped, adjusted image size and resolution. One thing I found that was missing is the save-for-web feature. It also did a weird export thing when I was trying to save as, at one point. Since I didn’t read the directions and just jumped in, it could have been a user-interface error. (My bad!)
Otherwise, it’s a decent, cheap version of the real thing. Hot keys like control-z, etc. even seemed to work in GIMP the same way they work in Photoshop. I found it to be comparable to PS, especially since GIMP is free and Photoshop costs $400 on a good day with an education discount. (Actually, I found it on sale for $289.)
There were a number of different places you could download it. I choose the automated installer for Windows, and I downloaded their GTK+ 2 Runtime Environment first. If you are interested, you can click through the windows to find the download. I also noticed that GIMP is available is a wide number of other languages. I had to look to find English when I installed it.
I know Kathy uses a Mac with PS and with GIMP. I’m a PC girl, myself. But Tony says she really likes it.
I’d love to know if anyone else has had experience with GIMP and what you think.
Online images: the other option for graphic images
I’d be interested if this thought occurred to anyone else when they were doing the reading this week.
I was reading about the selection process and graphic photos, specifically the suicide of R. Budd Dwyer that the editors around the country choose not to run. My initial thought was this: “Oh well, I’ll just Google them on the Internet.”
Maybe it’s me, but I always tend to want to run the more graphic picture. I don’t think it’s because I am grotesque. I just like the idea of getting it all out there for people. I like knowing more, understanding as much as I can about a story. So, I tend think other people want that, too.
Does anyone remember when the Mohammad cartoons that were inciting riots around the world? I followed this closely and was grateful for the sources who put that information out there online so I could find it, see it and know more about the source of all the angry reactions in the world.
I kind of feel this way about a number of images.
I guess I have to wonder if maybe this isn’t part of the role of bloggers and others online, to tell what the newspapers won’t tell to keep from upsetting their readership? Kind of like Sanam’s friend, Arash, who gets images out there that would otherwise be lost to the world.
Thoughts?
Lessons in collecting online material
I went to the press conference Tuesday on the Taser fallout out of sheer curiosity. I took my tools with me and made some grand discoveries about myself and how the online media collection process for me differs from print.
I reported with my camera and audio recorder. I didn’t use my mic because I was trying to get the whole room while Machen addressed the press. I’ve found from McIntosh it doesn’t work as well for picking up voices farther away with the mic, even with the settings switched around. I had my camera bag, which meant cell phone, money, extra batteries. But no pen and no paper.
Lessons:
1. I recorded and photographed everything I collected. I got back to my office and I couldn’t tell you the name of the central subject I was interested in. Why? Because I recorded it and didn’t write it down. I don’t grok quotes and names and details the same when I am not writing. I’ve always been a visual learner. I’m not sure where I would have carried it paper and a pen. But this is something I have to work out. It’s probably a practice issue.
2. I also think that this impacted the way I wrapped my head around the story. I will have to think on this some more. But I didn’t pick apart the key issues the same way as I feel like I do with print. I wonder if this is because I am using other senses and keying in on story elements differently.
3. Taking pictures while moving around. This is hard. I was disappointed with some of the images I ended up with. I do believe Mindy had a very strong point when she told us to plant ourselves and lock down before we shoot pictures.
4. This one is lesson specific to my camera.
I was trying to take a picture of a UFPD Taser on a cop’s belt in detail like the dragonfly wing in the header photo. The officer in question was being VERY cooperative, given the situation. I didn’t the supermacro setting right and ended up with blurry pics of guns and Tasers.
Besides all that, I had a blast.
Public affairs photo: dealing with the dull factor
One of the problems with photos from a public affairs meeting is that they can be seriously boring. The McIntosh meeting photos I’ve taken in the past have been poor in quality due to light quality or vibration. My new camera solved both of those problems, for the most part.
What it doesn’t solve is the boring issue.
I found a useful tip a couple pages between last weeks readings in Kobre. The chapter was talking about meetings, and I couldn’t resist reading it. On page 51, there is a small graph about Washington Post photographer Ray Lustig noting that a wrinkled brow, a curled lip, hands and faces reveal emotions. I think we might have talked about hand movement in class, too. Or maybe I imagined that because I read it that morning.
Either way, when I was photographing the council meeting last Thursday night, I found myself waiting for officials to start moving their hands and for the emotional moments to come up in the meeting. If you wait long enough, someone will get angry, or forget that I’m there and start talking with his or her hands.
A long-standing issue in McIntosh remains how to control speeding. The speed limit in town is 20 mph. The town tried speed humps, but residents are still unhappy about how fast people travel on the main roads that intersect the highway.
In this photo, McIntosh Town Councilman Lee Deaderick suggests that the town just buy stop signs. Granted, you’d need a caption to explain this isn’t a high five.
Another point on page 51 of the Kobre book involves how news value can increase depending on who’s who and the personalities involved in the picture.
The context of this photo is what falls into the who’s who category of news value. To an outsider, it looks simple enough. In the forefront, LPA chairwoman Charlsie Stott advises the council her committee approved a rezoning application from June Glass, who is watching in the background. But what makes this photo ironic is that Stott and Glass strongly disagree on about every issue about the town, quite possibly the universe as well. Later in this very meeting, they interrupted council discussion arguing between themselves about how much Stott should have to pay for garbage pickup. Getting them together in one image agreeing that June’s land should be rezoned is something of a landmark moment.
On covering McIntosh… the Edna box and breaking the photo barrier
I’m a fan of Edna Buchanan.
I love her books and jokingly call them “reporter porn.” They’re mysteries where most of the time the reporter is the good guy, the hero or the heroine, the smart one who solves the mystery, gets the story, the girl or guy, escapes from the clutches of the bad guys and all around wins when they play by the rules of fair reporting and good ethics. Basically, reporter porn. Some of Carl Hiaasen’s books are the same but more kitschy and … lacking Buchanan’s tips.
One tip I picked up from Buchanan is to carry your tools in your car. Her character Britt Montero keeps a Miami city directory in her back seat, as well as a change of clothes and shoes.
Being computer geeks, you would think that we would be able to find ANY phone number online. When you are covering a town that’s circa 1880 and socially stuck in the 1960’s, folks give out their phone numbers out like this, “I’m at 3551.” In McIntosh, the 591 prefix is a given. My home number is 591-3551. (Don’t bother calling me though. I rarely answer and keep a landline for the sole purpose of having DSL.) McIntosh is a dinky little historic town. A large segment of the population consists of retirees. The town is so small that some people and businesses just don’t show up in Google searches. This presents a problem for me periodically.
So, I created an Edna Buchanan box for the backseat of my car. I keep a McIntosh area phone book in my car and in my office at UF.
I also keep in my Edna box: a camera tripod, a mic stand, phonebooks for McIntosh, Ocala and Gainesville, a Florida Sunshine Law manual, a copy of the McIntosh Land Development Code, a copy of the McIntosh Comprehensive Plan, extra pens, notebooks, batteries for my digital recorder and camera. I take my camera bag in and out of the car, because I don’t want the electronics in the heat, or to get stolen. This is Florida, after all.
I carry the camera tripod because my old digital camera had such a terrible vibration problem. This paid off for me once. Last December, I ran down to the little grocery store in McIntosh. While shopping, someone ran into the store and yelled for someone to call 911 because a car struck a man outside on U.S. 441. I was able to take pictures of this scene. It was just past dusk with my earthquake camera, so the images were pretty bad.
Ironically, some residents chastised me for posting them, even though I decided against running the image I had that was more of a close up. I was also caught in a tug of war between local residents who wanted me to post his name and residents who didn’t. One woman told me that if it was important enough to run his name, The Gainesville Sun would do it. The Sun never mentioned the accident, and I finally put the name in the comment section under discussion, where it would be less likely to show up in a Google search. While the town has done little about crosswalks at U.S. 441 as a result of the story, the broken street lamp directly over where the man had been hit was promptly fixed.
There are a number of reasons I’ve rarely used photos in the my blog. Some of them have been the negative reaction from the community. But the main reason is that my old camera took such horrible pictures. I bought a new Canon a week or so ago that I’m loving, which means I’m going to start posting more pictures in the McIntosh blog. We had a council meeting last night where I took a whole bunch of shots. Posting them means facing the sensitivity in the community, so I’m giving some thought today and this weekend on how to use them.
I’d love to read about what other reporting tips the rest of the class has like the Edna box.
Separating the Pros from the Rest of the Internet
My core objective in taking Journalist’s Toolkit is to better learn what separates the amateurs from the professionals.
I have a laundry list of practical and theoretical practices that I’d like to learn about collecting audio, photos and video. What I really want to walk away with is an understanding of how to produce professional, credible online news. Anyone with an Internet connection can put content out on the Internet. But that doesn’t make it professional journalism.
The first reason for wanting to understand this line in the sand is practical. I want to work in the field one day.
Another reason I would like to understand this line better is more personal. The process of collecting news to present in a blog has always felt shy of journalism to me, even though I do it myself on a regular basis.
For the last year or so, I’ve been keeping a hyperlocal blog on the municipal government in McIntosh, Florida called the McIntosh Mirror. I started the blog when there was great deal of angst in the community because residents didn’t understand what was going on with the town council. I used a blog as my venue for the sole reason that it was cheap, free and easy.
A year later, there is still a great deal of angst in the community. I’m not sure residents understand their town government any better. Readers in the comment sections can be vicious to each other and to me. What started out for me as a method of giving people a voice has had some unexpected results. A year ago, residents were turning up in record numbers to vote. This year, the town has had a hard time getting people to run for public offices in town. Some blame the blog. For these reasons, I spend a lot of time thinking about what my role as a community journalist is and should be.
The McIntosh Mirror has been an incredible learning experience, but the blog itself was not something I’ve kept up as part of an academic project. For that reason, it’s something that I am very alone in doing. I rarely get to talk about the McIntosh blog with other people who study online media academically.
Blogging is intensely connected to community and that’s one thing I’d like from this class blog. I would like to build a community of other people like myself who have an academic and professional interest. I’d like to post about some of the issues that come up with the McIntosh blog.
Finally, I’m hoping to finally produce decent photos. I’ve taken two photojournalism classes as an undergrad. I never could get film to perform for me. I need to be able to make more mistakes and see them as I go along than film allows. I just bought a new camera, and I’m hoping to jump that hurdle this semester.
