The 2011 Kiplinger Fellowship is all about social media. Fifteen lucky journos who land this gig will spend a week at Ohio State University (March 9-16) honing their social media skills and learning about the joys of SEO, strategic tweeting, and other wonders of the Interweb.

Fellows don’t have to pay anything – it’s all free, baby. The Kiplinger Foundation even pays your travel and lodging. Pretty sweet deal.

If you’re interested, then fill out this online application. The deadline to apply is November 30, 2010.

Emily Sweeney is a staff reporter at The Boston Globe. You can follow her on Twitter (@emilysweeney) and find her on LinkedIn among other places.

Last month, I was at the mall when I saw some security guards tackling a woman with a baby in one arm and a purse stuffed with clothing on her other arm.   At that moment, I wished I had my Sony Cybershot camera with me.  I never thought I’d see  a struggle in front of my eyes.

What I do know is two things; that video of the security guards and woman could have come in handy on a story on shoplifting, and I should have had a Flip camera in my purse.

Most of us will try to use the best video camera we can on a story, but in a pinch—a Flip camera is not a bad tool to have in your bag.  There are several versions of this small camera, including the Flip Ultra HD that costs about $200.

It’s easy to use, because you press a button and you’re recording.   It’s very convenient when you need to upload your video right away, because it has a flip out USB connector.  You can plug your Flip camera right into your laptop. Yes, it’s that easy. 

You can also buy an underwater case for your Flip camera.  This is great if you want to take shots in a pool.  I bet it would come in handy right now for those reporters covering the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.   

I found this video blog by a citizen journalist who uses a Flip camera for her reports.  It’s an excellent tutorial:

http://dev.freevlog.org/

Here are some basics on the Flip:

FLIP ULTRA

-Fits in your pocket

-Records about 2 hours of video on 4GB

-Uses double A batteries

-Any standard tripod can be used with Flip

-Also has microphone

FLIP ULTRA HD

-Fits in your pocket

-Captures about 2 hours of HD video on 8GB built-in memory

-It comes with rechargeable AA battery pack

-Also has a microphone

-Any standard tripod can fit the tripod mount

Search YouTube for more tutorials on the Flip camera.  Good Luck!

Rebecca Aguilar is a freelance multimedia reporter in Dallas.  She has 29 years of news experience and has been awarded numerous awards, including several Emmy awards.  She’s also on the board of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.  Rebecca conducts reporting workshops around the country (Finding Sources and Stories, Networking, Live Shots, Getting the Best Interview, Writing to Video, and The Basics Of Multimedia.) She can be contacted at aguilar.thereporter@yahoo.com.

Are you a journalist looking to pick up some practical multimedia skills? Are you tired of reading about all the cool new stuff in this new-media world and thinking, “I wish I knew how to do that”?

Look no more. SPJ has just what you need.

The SPJ Digital Media Committee — the group of people who contribute to this blog — has published its Digital Media Handbook, Part I. And it’s available here, now, online — and at the low, low price of FREE. (Download it for free as a PDF directly from this site, or you can see it here on Scribd.com.)

Want to know how to Twitter? Start a Facebook page? Make an online slideshow? Use Google Wave? Screencast? You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers — on those subjects and more.

We hope to bring you more in a second part later in the year.

Creating and publishing interactive charts no longer requires expensive software.

Forget about building simple line graphs. Using Chartle.net you can create any number of visual charts to display your data online.

Here are a few examples of the types of charts you can make using Chartle.net:

Using Chartle.net does not require registration and is free.

Every chart you build can be published, shared and embedded on your website or blog.

Data for your chart can be entered manually or inputted using an excel spreadsheet via the ‘import’ feature.

You can also adjust the size of the chart you create to fit your site.

Before you publish your Chartle you’ll be asked to give it a

? Title

? Author

? Description

Click here to view an example of this interactive Chartle.net chart.

Need to make a modification to your chart? You can create a new chart using the data stored in a currently published chart.

Hilary Fosdal is the Interactive Content Manager for Barrington Broadcasting Group. She blogs at hilaryfosdal.com and tweets @hilaryfosdal.

UPDATE: (2/22/10) The company Page.ly offers a one-stop shop for self-hosting blog set-up. Leave the technical guesswork to them. Service is about $15 a month. They’ll get you blogging and will install all the SEO, plug-in, meta-tagging, social bookmarking gadgets for you.

UPDATE: (2/22/10) I came across this article, which has the steps for moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org.

You don’t have to be a coding guru or Silicon Valley veteran to start blogging with some bells and whistles.

I started from scratch last year and my goals were simply to have a blog or site where I could post text, embed links, upload multimedia, and while I was at it, add some of those social media and bookmarking buttons to easily share my pages.

I don’t know much about metatagging or SEO, have no idea what FTP sites have to do with anything, and CSS is beyond me.

This blog post is about my recent experience with WordPress.com and GoDaddy — no special treatment for those companies, they are not paying me or anything, it’s just what I use and know. Do a Google search for “domain registration” and “web hosting” for other companies to work with. Typepad and Moveable Type are other blogging companies similar to WordPress. The key is finding a one-stop shop place to connect your domain and site to a host.

First, I secured several domain names with GoDaddy and then I opened a WordPress.com account, where I keep my online news directory InOtherNews.us. Through WordPress.com, I easily connected that domain to the blog. The instructions are clear and it can be done in a few clicks. WordPress.com hosts the blog.

After several months of getting familiar with WordPress.com functioning, I started noticing limitations, namely, customization. I wanted to “trick-out” my blog with widgets and plug-ins and play around with themes. I also wanted to add social media buttons to posts and sidebars. WordPress.com blogs allow for those, but the selection is relatively small.

So I went over to WordPress.org — note: it’s DOT ORG — which is the natural next step to custom blogging. With WP dot org, you have to find a host elsewhere, and once you do, there are thousands of site design themes to choose from and a plug-in for just about any function you would want to add to your blog.

And this brings me back to GoDaddy, where my domains are registered. GoDaddy offers site hosting packages, I chose the $6.99 a month Deluxe plan. The hosting can be used for myriad blogging and Website frameworks such as Joomla and Drupal.

Once the hosting service transaction is complete, follow the quick GoDaddy process for downloading a WordPress blog and connecting a domain to it. I did this and was soon playing around with sophisticated themes and browsing hundreds of plug-ins for my new site (and I mean new — it’s a work in progress) NewsRedux.us.

The one-stop shopping at GoDaddy removed a lot of anxiety and frustration with getting my new self-hosted blog on the internet.

And if you get stuck, there’s always the 24/7 tech support phone number.

NetWorked committee member Jessica Durkin is a former old-school print reporter going new-school. Jessica is the founder and editor of InOtherNews.us, a directory of online, independent news sites around the country. She is based in Scranton, PA, and is a regional director for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

O.K. -  so you just shot some footage with your digital video camera.

Now what?

Well, if you’re one of those kids who can’t afford a slick Mac, and you’re stuck with an ol’ PC (like me), you can still edit and produce decent videos with Windows Movie Maker. It’s a standard video editing program that comes with most Microsoft media software packages. Nothing fancy, just basic tools and enough features to allow you to create some nice-looking clips.  It’s a good program to practice on – once you know how to use one video editing program, you pretty much know ‘em all – IMHO, they all pretty much work the same way.

Now then, the only way to learn to edit video….(and sorry for sounding like a sneaker ad here)…. is to just do it.  Here’s how you can get started, in seven easy steps.

1.) First things first: Connect your camera to your PC and transfer your video footage to the computer.  Import the video files into Windows Movie Maker.

2. ) Once you have some video footage to work with, click and drag the  clips to the storyboard at the bottom of the screen. (If you have a lot of footage, it’s a good idea to write an outline ahead of time, so you know where the scenes should fall on the timeline. Oh yeah…and once you start editing, don’t forget to save your Windows Movie Maker project!)

3.) Trim and arrange your clips as necessary. To shorten a video clip, use the “split” button on the bottom right hand side of the screen. Delete the bits and pieces you don’t need.

4.) Add some audio. Mosey on over to the Movie Tasks Pane, look under Capture video, and click on Import audio or music. Drag your song of choice to the video clip where you want the soundtrack to kick in. (If you need to raise or lower the volume, right-click the music on your timeline, and then click on….can you guess?….Volume. Then adjust accordingly.)

5.) Or maybe you want to add a voice-over. To do that, you can record a sound track separately, or connect a microphone to your PC, click on the  Tools menu, and then click Narrate Timeline, and do it right there. You can record your voice to go with individual clips or do the whole movie all at once – it’s your call. But whatever you do – make sure you write a script beforehand. Seriously. Believe me, it’s worth it. If you wing it, and try to narrate your vid on the fly, it’s not going to sound good. (Believe me, I’ve tried. Don’t repeat my mistake. You will not save any time.)

6.) Add titles and credits.  To add written words to your video, just click on the clip where you want to add some text. In the Movie Tasks pane, under Edit Movie, click Make titles or credits. From there, you can choose how many lines the title will have and how it will move. You can also change the size and color of the text.

7.) Preview your movie. If you like what you see, then it’s time to produce your video. Use the Save Movie Wizard to save your project as a .wmv or .avi video file. Once your video file is ready, you can upload it to the web  for all to see. If you don’t have a place to show it off, you can always post it on a free video hosting service such as YouTube or Vimeo.

So that’s my 7-Step tutorial on Windows Movie Maker.

The main sources of information for this article came from the Windows Movie Maker product guide and tutorials on the Microsoft website, and from my own personal experience. FYI, I’ve been editing video for over five years now, and during that time I’ve used many different programs – Final Cut, Cyberlink PowerDirector, Avid, and (of course!) good ol’ Windows Movie Maker. But I must confess, Windows Movie Maker is not my first choice, and I don’t use it that often. So if I missed anything here, please let me know.  I’m especially interested in hearing from any regular users out there – if you have any tips/tricks/hacks to share, please comment below.

————————————————————

Emily Sweeney is a staff reporter at The Boston Globe. You can follow her on Twitter (@emilysweeney) and find her on LinkedIn among other places.

Sree Sreenivasan is dean of student affairs at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, a social networking whiz, and an all-around cool guy. He recently stopped by The Boston Globe to talk to reporters and editors about the joys of Twitter and how to tweet efficiently and effectively. He showed us some handy Twitter-related tools that journos can use to locate sources, find story ideas, and get more people to check out your work. Here’s a quick sampling:

1.) HootSuite – web-based service allows you to track tweets, manage several Twitter accounts at the same time, and schedule when your tweets will be posted (so you can tweet into the future)

2.) Twiangulate – Find out who the people you follow are following. Great way to discover new sources.

3.) FriendorFollow – Find out who’s following you back (and who isn’t)

4.) Twitcam – Live video streaming. Looking forward to trying this – sounds really cool.

5.) Twitpic – I use this service. Easy way to share photos and images.

6.) Search.twitter.com – Find trending topics.

7.) Monitter.com – Search tweets by location. Another site worth checking out is Trendsmap, which lets you view trending topics in any location, in real-time.

For more tools and tips, check out Sree’s Social Media Tipsheet and his Twitter Guide for Newbies & Skeptics.

…and YO – a word to the wise!  As you probably know, there are zillions of Twitter apps, tools and services floating around out there, and new ones are being created every day. Many of them require that you type in your Twitter username and password to use them. So be careful! Don’t hand over your Twitter housekeys without doing some due diligence first.  Before you type in your Twitter account information and password into any website, make sure it has a solid rep and has been reviewed by some reliable media experts (like Sree, or the good folks here on SPJ’s Digital Media Committee

———————————————————————————

Emily “Spikey Em” Sweeney is a staff reporter at The Boston Globe. You can follow her on Twitter (@emilysweeney) and find her on LinkedIn, among other places.

Argentine journalist, Sandra Crucianelli knew something was missing when she attended the IRE conference in Miami in 2008. She couldn’t find a book on digital media tools for journalists in Spanish.

Crucianelli has now written the book in Spanish called “Herramientas Digitales Para Periodistas.”  It’s been published by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, and is available for free in a PDF that can be downloaded. Here’s the link: http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/hdpp.php

I looked over this online book and strongly feel it’s a great resource for reporters who work in Spanish language newspapers or online news sites.  It’s also handy for reporters who are learning Spanish in hopes of someday working in Mexico, Spain, and South or Central America.

The book includes chapters on accessing databases and official documents, using social networks, video conferencing, photo galleries and blogs.

Rebecca Aguilar is an Emmy Award winning freelance multimedia reporter in Dallas. She produces videos, digital slideshows along with her reports. She is currently working on an Associate’s Degree in Multimedia Development.  She can be reached at aguilar.thereporter@yahoo.com

Think you know all you need to know about Google? I thought I did — but last night I learned I only knew about a fraction of the cool things Google can do.

Jake Parillo, Google’s Midwest Global Communications and Public Affairs Manager, walked us through dozens — if not hundreds — of ways to use Google. Here are some of my notes:

- Google results are ranked by an algorithm, which take a number of factors into account.

- On a search results page, click “+ Show Options” to specify your search results.

- A few cool search tricks: don’t worry about capitalization, put a minus sign in front of terms you want to exclude from results (example: vacations -chicago will show you all vacation results that do not include Chicago), and search for content on a specific site by using site:chicagotribune.com (example: bears site:chicagotribune.com will show you all Bears stories on Chicago Tribune’s Web site). More search tips.

- Google’s search pages will continue to evolve. For example, when you preform certain queries, Facebook and Twitter updates are included in search results.

ADVANCED SEARCH

- Look into Advanced Search when you have time. Here’s where you’ll learn to include certain phrases, exclude others, etc. This is also where you’ll find a list of topic-specific search engines from Google including a U.S. Government search (google.com/unclesam), which will show you results from government sites only. Also check out Google Scholar.

- You can also find sports scores (search a team name during a game for scores), times around the world (“time (city)”), stock quotes (search a stock symbol to get up to get market results), and weather (“weather (city/ZIP)”). Google can also be used as a dictionary (“define (word)”), calculator (1+1), currency converter (“dollar to (currency)”), and a unit converter (“inch to (unit)”). You can also type in your flight (“(airline) (flight #)”) to find out if the flight is on time. Google contains so much data, that you can even search “population of China” and a graph and number will be the first thing to pop up. Click that to enlarge the graph to compare it to another country’s population – or the world’s.

- There are also language tools to translate a Web page. You can find these by using Google’s Chrome browser or downloading the Google toolbar.

HOT TRENDS

- Check out hot trends to find out what people are searching for right now.

- View Hot Topics to check out the larger-picture queries.

GOOGLE INSIGHTS FOR SEARCH

- It’s a tool that allows you to see the interest of a term on the Web over time. You can specify search, location, date range, seasonality and category. You’ll also see where that search term is the most popular. Type in several terms to compare the results against each other. (See: Thanksgiving)

- You have the option to turn on and off news headlines, which help give context to your graph.

ALERTS

- Keep tabs on your beat (or your reputation!) by turning on alerts — from news stories, blogs and more — to get immediate, daily or weekly updates on any search term you’re interested in. (I’d suggest your name and/or your social network handle)

NEWS

- Customize your Google News page by picking and deleting which sections you want — and don’t want to read about. You can specify the news to be just from your location (Detroit, etc.) or you could decide to have the headlines focus on your beat (ex.: health, or more specifically cancer).

- The Google News archive: Google’s constantly working on digitizing offline content; however some of the archived information does come at a price.

READER

- Set up your reader to have all of your favorite blog and site updates sent directly to you in one place.

MAPS

- Jake suggested using maps a number of ways including for before and after photos (referenced the Buffalo plane crash house, Haiti), creating an area map that readers can tag specific locations (ex.: potholes, wildfires, etc.)

- Jake also showed us how you could scroll through a time line of Google Maps satellite images (for example you could go through the building of Chicago’s Trump Tower) — but I forget how he said you can do this. If anyone remembers, please mention it in the comments! He said some of the maps and satellite images available go back to the 1940s.

- Google will soon offer bike directions in Chicago (in addition to walking, driving and public transit)

- If you have GPS on your mobile device you can type in coffee (or anything you’re looking for) and the map will show all of the coffee houses closest to you.

DOCS

- If you’re not a fan of Microsoft products, and don’t use them (like Google), try Google Docs for all of your word-processing, spreadsheet, presentation and form needs. Jake said the Docs are so secure that government agencies rely on them. Another plus is that since you save your documents online, they’re available to you everywhere you log in.

Some last cool tips, tricks:

- Try Google voice and video for free Internet chat

- Call 1-800-GOOG-411 for free search results over the phone

- You can text a query to Google, and it will send you answers

That’s about it! Jake promised to send us materials from the session, so we’ll try to post those too.

In the meantime, check out what folks had to say about the event on Twitter — and flip through photos from the evening.

Did I miss something? Have questions? Leave a comment!

Amanda Maurer is a digital news editor at the Chicago Tribune, who specializes in social media. She blogs at acmaurer.com; you can also follow her on Twitter at @acmaurer.

Here are photos from tonight’s Google 101 for Journalists: Getting the Most from the Web

Google 101 for Journalists in Chicago

Every day, millions of people around the world use Google’s search engine to find what they’re looking for…Tonight, a room full of Chicagoland journalists rediscovered Google. I was among them. Read more…