One exciting part of the growing technology in multimedia is finding new ways to tell stories.
My friend Jaime Oppenheimer put together this video last week from the Kansas State Fair, composed entirely of natural sound.
Besides being a talented photographer, and one of the first in our newsroom to embrace video, Jaime is also a percussionist.  She combined her talents to produce a Stomp-inspired piece that in 30 seconds give you the sights and sounds of the state fair, with a little rhythmic flair.
For more on “nat sound” see this tutorial video from “Melissa Worden’s X-Degree.”
Multimedia moral:  Use your creativity to let the technology set you free from your self-imposed boundaries of what journalism should be, finding new, inventive ways to tell stories.

A big shoutout goes to the New York Times for its recent decision to stop charging for access on part of its Web site content.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/business/media/18times.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1190347200&en=31453a7a0148ac4b&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

I believe the idea of charging visitors to view content whether it be current or archived is one of the major reasons news sites tend to fail. As the old saying goes, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”

Why would I pay X amount of money to pay for something that your competitor may offer free of charge? I understand the never-ending battle to make a Web site profitable is the “elephant in the room” no one wants to talk about, but why do these news sites take their money woes out on the users?

Visitors come to news sites to get information, but shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to try to get it.

I would like to think one day that an user’s ability to look at free content is more important than companies trying to reach their bottom line.

I hope other news Web sites follow NYT’s example. Call me naive, but I think word of mouth is the best form of advertising.

I’m not a gearhead, although I sometimes play one in our newsroom.

I’ve always thought it’s as important to learn how to do the best you can with whatever equipment is available than have the best, newest, shiniest, most expensive toys and gadgets. Not that I don’t want the best, newest, shiniest toys – I just never seem to get them.

As the industriy formerly known as newspapers, in particular, and journalism in general begins to move into the converging world of multimedia, planning discussions invaribly jumps to equipment. What do we need? What don’t we have?  What does everyone else have that we don’t?

My question is: what are we going to do with what we have, or what our budget allows?

I’m reminded of a friend who is a recording producer of real music that people buy.  He will talk at length about all the great music recorded with a couple of microphones on acetate tape.  Few over the age of 16 would argue that Little Richard’s music dwindles in comparison to Britney Spears, because she has more sophisticated recording tools at her disposal.  Only my kids, teens and preteens, would dismiss “Casablanca,” simply because it was filmed in black and white.

Still, you can read blogs and comments, and hear arguments erupting in newsrooms all over the country, that we need the most expensive tools we can find in order to make this new journalism work. But we’re talking too little about the stories we tell.

No wonder so many journalists, young and old, are intimidated about embracing the changing future.  You don’t have to be.

Just look at these videos. It’s an inspiring piece of work circulating around the multimedia discussion boards.  Peter Read Miller and Max Morse went to Mexico on assignment for Sports Illustrated to shoot wrestlers.  Morse shot the video with a Canon Powershot SD800.  It’s as good or better than most of what I’ve seen shot with more expensive equipment.

I’m not saying news organizations shouldn’t outfit their staffs with the best possible equipment.  I’m constantly sending our on-line editor links to the best buys on new audio and video equipment. I was thrilled when we got a $400 Mp3 recorder to replace the digital recorder I bought in 2002 for $40.

What in my bag?  Right now, some low-end equipment to get me started:

• A Nady Sp-5 microphone (bought three for $25, gave two away).
• An Edirol R-09 ($400, purchased by Kansas.com).
• A Nikon CoolPix, point-and-shoot (purchased on sale for $300).
• A Canon Elura camcorder (no longer available; the first video cam purchased by our newsroom for about $400, but it works).  There’s also various plugs and patch cords so everything hooks up together.
• For quick filing of breaking news, I picked up a T-Mobile Dash ($165 with contract extension; I needed a new phone anyway) and a Bluetooth folding keyboard. (about $90 with shipping).  I’m still hoping newsrooms will decide to reimburse reporters who buy these smartphones (especially mine).  I’m sold on them as a mobile solution.

This all fits comfortably into a briefcase.  It didn’t break anyone’s bank. I also carry a cheap tripod in the trunk of my car for video.

New equipment is on the way, as the company’s capital budget, and my own, allows.

In the meantime, I’ve even brought back some stories that people actually watched and enjoyed.

If  you’re a reporter who’s only had to worry about a pen and notebook for years, all this talk can be quite intimidating.

It’s comforting to know that with a few items that can fit in a briefcase, or even a purse, you can get your MoJo working. These days, that’s short for “mobile journalist.”  It’s also the title of an old school blues song, which to me sounds better with Muddy Waters singing it on a scratchy 78 than any version ringing with from latest digital gadget.

A few weeks ago, the Sun-Herald of Biloxi, Miss. posted video on its Web site, showing the beating death of a jail inmate.

The video shows, in graphic detail, Jessie Lee Williams being kicked, stunned with a Taser, hog-tied before being placed in a chair and struck several other times. (http://www.sunherald.com/388/story/136200.html) A former jailer, Ryan Teel, was found guilty of using excessive force in Williams’ fatal beating.

The public may have never seen nor heard about the incident, if not for surveillance video taken at the jail and the newspaper’s public-record requests asking that documents from the case be unsealed.

An editorial from the newspaper said, “We have known that the ultimate truth was contained on the videotape of that deadly night in the booking area, and we have resolutely fought to have the tape released so that its owners, the people of Harrison County, could see for themselves what had transpired in their jail.”

The editorial goes on to say, “Our unflinching efforts to obtain the tape, and to post it, are consistent with a newspaper’s duty to fight on behalf of the public’s right to know. In most cases, as in this matter, if we do not engage in that effort, no one else will.”

I think about other ways where video has put a face on some type of scandal. I think about Marion Berry taking a couple of hits on a crack pipe in a hotel room. What about former Virginia Sen. George Allen’s “Macaca” incident?

To put it in a different perspective, how would things have been different if Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward received video of people breaking into the Watergate hotel or a camera in the Oval Office with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky….or well, maybe not that one, but you get the idea…

In J-school, we were always told to “follow the paper trail.” Well, now that we are in the digital age, it seems like we should change that to say, “Let’s go to the videotape.”

To accompany a story about an increase in homes costing $1 million or more, The Des Moines Register created a cool multimedia project for the web.

Be sure to watch the video flyover of the homes using Google Earth Pro.

I can think of an array of applications and stories using this or similar satellite imaging. It’s worth a look.

Call us the power quartet of techno reporting. Ron, Kamal, David and Rod.

I’m Ron Sylvester, legal affairs reporter for The Wichita Eagle, and we hope this blog will make the transition to a web-based journalism world a little less daunting.

A few days ago media blogger Howard Owens posted some “epiphanies” that shaped his current thinking.  He challenged other media bloggers to do the same.  Here are mine:

In the early 1990s, I started to use the Internet to replace calls to the library to do basic research.  I found I could email stories to my editor, although at that time at the newspaper I worked for in Missouri, we had one computer capable of getting email.  I found a couple of early social networking sites called “community bulletin boards” and was able to reconnect with some old friends.

Within six years, I’d heard people talking about computer assisted reporting, and I loved the potential timesavings, looking through thousands of records on a computer.  Wow!  It took about two hours for the slow computer I had to load in a database and run the first query.  I hit “enter” and took a long lunch.

By 1998, I’d gotten rolling on projects.  I produced a restaurant inspection project, as many other papers had.  When I get started on learning a new skill set, I rarely break new ground, preferring to go with the tried and true, until I get more comfortable.  That’s what I did here.

The next year, however, I did try something different.  I learned the EPA was requiring drinking water suppliers to inform their customers about the qualities of their drinking water.  We had some 300 suppliers in our area.  I obtained the statewide database and, with the help of someone who knew more about computers in marketing, created a lookup table on our newspaper’s relatively new web site where people could type in their zip codes and get their drinking water report.

That project caught the attention of The Wichita Eagle, which hired me for an opening covering courts.

Since then, I’ve filed live from the courtroom of several high profile murder trials, including the BTK plea and sentencing, arming myself with a smart phone and a foldaway keyboard.  I blogged about my surreal experience during the plea and sentencing of the BTK serial killer.  Almost a year ago, I began seriously learning audio and video.

Then in the spring, I started blogging about my personal experiences at a blog I called Multimedia Reporter. I began doing this at the encouragement of Katie Lohrenz, our online content developer and my new media spiritual adviser, and Mindy McAdams, whose blog everyone interested in the on-line journalism world ought to have in their reader.

Then I got a call from Christine Tatum, who asked me if I’d like to move the blog.

And the quartet formed.

Hi everyone in the journalistic world!!! Before I start posting things in this blog, I guess I should introduce myself.

My name is Kamal Wallace and I’m Senior Producer for WRAL.com, the Web site for WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C. I’ve been involved in New Media for eight years. I graduated from UNC with a degree in journalism. Sorry, ladies, but I’m married with a son and another on the way. My hobbies include….

Sorry, before this turns into a MySpace or Facebook.com profile, I should get back to the actual title of the blogpost.

Nearly three years ago, I was a panelist at a conference for companies interested in creating Web sites and wondering how they can get their message out technologically. One of the questions I was asked was, “What was a blog and is it worth it to create one?”

Of course, the moderator asked me if I could tackle that question and I said, “Well, to me, a blog is like an online diary and I really couldn’t see the point of people talking online about their lives. I would be surprised if this blogging thing lasts very long.”

Oops……….Obviously, I was wrong. (Don’t mention that to my wife. I have a reputation of never being wrong!!)

The blogging phenomenon has revolutionized the Internet and the way we communicate. My misconception was I didn’t think people would embrace this form of New Media. Blogs by their definition allow visitors to interact with each other and, in most cases, create a happy medium.

So when SPJ President Christine Tatum asked me if I wanted to be part of a blog discussing technology and social/ethical issues of digital journalism, I saw it as my chance for redemption.

I plan to use my blog to talk about news stories concerning some aspect of New Media and toss my two bits in the mix. I invite you to leave comments and let me know what you think.

You’ll never hear me apologize or say I was wrong about something (that’s only happens once a century), but I want this blog to make people think and invoke some feelings.

And with that, cue the Black-Eyed Peas, “Let’s get it started!!!!!”