There was no video or audio, because the judge in juvenile court decided it was better to sentence the 16-year-old girl who killed her father without pictures and sound. I covered the story as I had other court stories for years.
It was one of those stories, that after you were through, your stomach hurt. I should have taken time to ask myself: “Could that story turn into an interactive nightmare?”

Newspapers all over the country have been debating how they use reader comments, including at the New York Times, which edits them.

The tragic story of abuse inside a Wichita family that led to a teenage girl shooting her father to death pointed out why we should think about them.

We were busy working on the next day’s news cycle, when the girl’s lawyer, Laura Shaneyfelt, called and asked if we’d been reading the reader comments on the story. They started out with comments from what looked like regular readers. The story was shocking enough. But as the morning turned to afternoon, personal comments began to emerge. Although we had never named the juvenile girl, her name suddenly popped up.

Then someone blamed the slain father’s mother, by name. It was apparent that a family feud had fired up on-line at Kansas.com.

We shut the comments down. I soon received a call from a woman who said she’d tried to find the comments, after someone told her about them, and couldn’t find them. I told her they’d gotten out of hand and we needed to eliminate them and stop the discussion.

“Thank you,” she said.

Other crime stories have drawn racist remarks on our pages.

We’ve been told that legally if you edit individual comments you can limit your defense should a bad one slip through.

We have issue similar to reporters at other paper I talk to: you can write a story about quilting and someone, somewhere will eventually leave a comment about how quilting promotes illegal immigration. What are you going to do?

Some problems, however, we can head off before they start. We now have the option of clicking a “no comments” box before sending our stories to the desk. I thought that was a box to signify we’d tried to talk to a cantankerous politician. I’ve been assured it removes the opportunity for controversial comments from readers.

We now have a list of stories we should consider in checking that box, including stories that name victims or defendants.

We also check the box on stories “likely to produce ribald comments,” although as I tell our editors, those are my personal favorites.

As we tackle the large learning curves of melding layers of our coverage with audio and video, we should also remember to read the comments on our stories each day.

I’d be interested in hearing what other papers are doing.

To do that, well, leave a comment.

It’s easy to be seduced by video and audio slide shows. They are like magic to print reporters who, until now, have been confined to words and the dreaded “info” boxes to relay information.

But multimedia isn’t just about pictures that move or fade, zoom or pan. We now have all sorts of tools to convey a story. We don’t have to do this all by ourselves. Photographers will produce better visuals. Graphic artists and designers will make it look prettier. But it will be up to us to bring home the information, the details that give the artist’s canvas color and detail.

Just as we’ve learned how to make graphic requests and photo assignments, we need to understand the tools.

Rule No. 5 of Multimedia: Embrace Google Maps.

Go ahead. You can even make one.

Get started right away with Atlas or MapMaker.

Mindy McAdams has blogged about this in detail.

There’s a great tutorial to learn the basics.

Look at what my colleague Hurst Laviana did last week on a story about unsolved homicides. Each point gives a thumbnail of the cold case. All he needed was an Excel spreadsheet with the location, and pretty much the map programs did the rest.

OK, nothing’s perfect. Our programming goddess Katie fixed all the random dots that turned up in another hemisphere, even though the spreadsheet specifically said Kansas. Doesn’t Google Maps know we have a street that runs right down the Sixth Principle Meridian? The street is even called Meridian. It’s not in Arizona somewhere.

So everything has bugs. But Katie is skillful in Google Maps, so if there’s a problem, she can fix it.

To learn more about Google maps, courtesy of the experts at NICAR, especially Matt WaiteJeremy Milarsky: and

Read this, or at least talk someone in your newsroom into reading it: “Beginning Google Maps Applications with Rails and Ajax: From Novice to Professional,” by By Andre Lewis
Michael Purvis, Jeffrey Sambells, Cameron Turner
(Apress 2007)

Check out the Google Maps blog. If you want to go even deeper.

Google Maps Mania: The Beatlemania of Google Maps. Kind of.

While we don’t have to know how to program all this, we at least need a basic understanding of what we’ll need to set up your spreadsheet, so someone else can map it easily.

We’re just training in Flash. Pretty soon, we may be able to do the kind of cool stuff they do in Oakland.

That’s what I’m talking about.

If you haven’t checked out the “On Being” series at the Washington Post, it’s a very cool project.

And this one in particular is one you should watch:

Of course, I’m biased. Jessica is my stepdaughter. I had nothing to do with any of this, except that I was smart enough to marry her mother. Still, we’re all very proud.

Oh, and to make this a tiny bit instructive, Jessica said she spent about two hours in the interview for this piece. She’s a Fulbright Scholar and is planning on taking video gear with her to Yemen and an eye on producing a documentary as part of her Fulbright project.

Whenever I hear about basic video shots, I think of the old television show “Dragnet.”

I brought this up in our video training class the other day, and Stacey, our instructor, and everyone else looked at me strange – except for our photo editor Brian Corn, who has been around as long as I have. Not that I remember the first-run “Dragnet.” I did grow up watching reruns and, yes, saw it the second-time around when it revived in the 1960s.

The show that made “NYPD Blue” and “Law & Order” possible always started off the same: a wide shot of the Los Angeles skyline glistening in the sun, or in the ‘60s, smog hovering overhead.

“This is the city,” Jack Webb’s voice would intone, “Los Angeles, California.”

Cut to an exterior shot of the LAPD headquarters. Cut to inside the office.

“My name’s Friday,” the voice would say, as you would see Webb’s character walking through the office door. “I carry a badge.”

Those are the basics:

An establishing wide shot to set the sense of place, time and even weather conditions.

Gradually tighten the shots, bringing us to where the scene will be set.

Show the characters and their faces.

Catch action: people doing things, moving about. Otherwise, why are we shooting video?

You look for wide shots, medium shots and close-ups. That’s really all you need to get started, when someone hands you a point-and-shoot video camera to take on a story. If you do them in that order, you even spend less time editing them, because the scenes logically go together.

“You need a sense of location, and you need action of what the people are doing,” Stacey said.

Pick up the sounds of what’s going on, and a couple of interviews with people that you can roll behind your other shots, and you’re off to a good start to produce a video that will enhance your multimedia coverage.

It sounds simple but consider this the next time you want your favorite movie. You’ll be surprised how often you see this simple progression.

“Gone with The Wind” opens with a wide shot of the mansion of Tara. Cut to two men with their backs turned talking of war. They step aside to sit by the young lady they are talking to and the camera zooms in to reveal Scarlet O’Hara.

“Manhattan,” displays with the New York skyline and the roar of the clarinet opening Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” The camera cuts to a sign flashing “Manhattan” followed by close-ups of a corner café, people bustling about the streets, people milling about a street market, as Woody Allen describes his love for the city.

These are fictional, scripted and directed. Still, we learned how to write narrative journalism by reading the short stories of Hemmingway, Twain and Chekhov and applying their tools to our way of presenting the facts. It’s the same with visual narratives.

I also like the BBC’s “Five Shot Rule” – close-up of the hand, close-up of the face, over-the-shoulder and two shots from other angles.

Be careful, though. This can become addictive. You’ll be watching movies and documentaries, saying to yourself, “Establishing shot … close-up of the hand …”

Just don’t say it out loud. People will stare.

The problem is not that we aren’t eager. People are begging to learn about multimedia, especially video, as Angela Grant pointed out recently. What they’re not receiving is training.

Although decision makers in newsrooms move more slowly, we’re scrambling to learn as much as we can as quickly as we can.

My newsroom is providing training, and that seems to be a rarity. Especially print reporters in the unfamiliar area of video are going to need to know how to react when we’re handed a camera and told to “bring back some video.”

So let’s use this blog as a starting point. Come train with me.

Your teacher: Stacey Jenkins.

We were lucky to find Stacey in Wichita. Stacey trained as a documentary filmmaker, which is exactly what we needed. The web is opening up these great opportunities to tell stories in different ways. And when it comes to video, the trend is leaning toward more of a documentary model than the historic television model. Stacey has that kind of background. She’s from Canada and worked for public television there and Portland, Ore., before her husband took a job for Bombardier in Wichita.

The first session consisted of three photographers, our photo editor, and me as the only reporter.

Stacey began by asking how we decided what stories would use video each day.

“Uh,” we said. “We just kind of decide on our own.”

“It’s not discussed in the morning meeting by the editors?” she asked.

“Uh, no,” we said.

First, she said, we need to learn how to identify stories that could benefit from a video component.

If editors aren’t asking the question, the reporters should be. The photographers said they depend on communication from reporters, who despite being communicators, I admit, sometimes don’t talk to anyone.. Yes, I can hear grumbling. What? We already have to assign still photos, now we have to figure out video, too. Can’t we just write a story?

Multimedia takes planning. You can’t just dial a phone number, jot down a few quotes, write an inverted pyramid story and phone it all in – that’s how newspapers have bored people to death, and maybe caused their own deaths, over the past half-century.

Stacey outlined a quick thought process, which should take about three minutes out of your day:

- “Think about a story in terms of media,” she said. Do you need audio? Would a gallery of stills be best? Or a slide show? Or video?

- Any story with action cries out for video. Covering a new dance class? The aftermath of a tornado (I am in Kansas, after all).

- Even someone with a compelling story might be worth sitting in front of a rolling video camera. “Let them tell their stories,” she said. “There will be parts that you want people to see and hear, because it will never be as powerful reading it.”

This is what filmmakers and broadcasters know well. It’s called pre-production. It’s like outlining a story. It’s like deciding what interviews you want to do.

Not all stories may work with video. But ask yourself those questions. If the story fits, you might want to grab a video camera, or talk to a photog who shoots video – or another reporter you’ve seen learning it.

If nothing else, when – not if, but when – an editor hands you a video camera and tells you to add it to your tool box, you’ll at least be able to recognize when to whip it out.

Mark Bowden says he discovered this when he compiled for his paper what would become the outstanding narrative non-fiction book “Black Hawk Down.”

Before it was a book or a movie, back in the old days of 1997, it was a multimedia package.

Now, Bowden writes, such reporting crucial to our work:

“I think the print edition will probably endure to some extent, but, without any doubt, the future of daily journalism is digital, not because it is the latest thing, but because it is, quite simply, a far better medium than paper and ink.”

Bowden is one reporter who thinks video when he tackles an assignment for The Atlantic Monthly:

“Nearly every story I write today for the Atlantic, and every book I undertake, I do in conjunction with a documentary filmmaker.”

Tomorrow, we’ll review the basics of the shot.

One of the most debated aspects of the transition to multimedia is whether we reporters can handle it. Those who come from the visual background have mixed feelings over whether we can pull our heads out of our notebooks and survive.

Last week the conflict was apparent at the Baltimore Sun, where photographers went on strike over the idea of reporters carrying point-and-shoot cameras.

Storytelling has the same elements whether you’re writing a narrative or producing a documentary: interesting characters, conflict, resolution. With that, we do need to train ourselves.

Marcin Szczepanski made some great points in a discussion on Multimedia Shooter.

Marcin had said I oversimplified the problem confronting our newsrooms by saying that the conflict begins by people who want to cling to the old style of journalism rather than adapt to a changing business. Of course, I over-simplify. I’m a reporter. My job has been trying to oversimplify so people could understand complex ideas over their corn flakes in the morning.

Yet Marcin brings up some real problems that had me thinking all weekend, and that I hope spurs more discussion within our newsrooms. Marcin quoted Heather Hughes:

“I work at a sister paper for the Baltimore Sun, and our reporters got the cameras and video cameras last year, and all it has done is hurt the quality and look of our paper. Assignments are worse because the reporters don’t take the time to make it work for a photographer, and we get to spend time editing their crappy work to make it publishable.

“And yes, we still drive 45 min. for a building mug so that didn’t stop either. And yes, you can easily screw up a mug shot (most of them are out of focus, have trees growing out of their heads, under or over exposed, etc.) Even with their extensive 2hr long training class with our photo editor.”

Over the weekend, I spent some time with a book my wife, Gaye, had picked up years ago, “The Family of Man,” a mid-1950s photographic essay from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was then touted to exhibit the world’s best photos, from the pages of Life and Vogue, among others.
I will never shoot photographs like these. Nor will I approach the quality of the photographers at the Wichita Eagle. We need photographers and none of us wants to see a newsroom where there isn’t room for specialization. Collaboration of artistic skills still produces the best work.

But as we all venture into the world of multimedia, we as reporters have to refine our skills. That means learning how to handle a camera, even a point-and-shoot, professionally. That means taking care when we venture out of the office, whether it’s to be the first on the scene to capture a breaking news event or shoot a mug for our understaffed photo department.

Prepare yourself before you go out. Read the instruction booklet. If your photo department does give a training class, as ours did a year ago, by all means participate. You’ll need these skills. Talk to your photographer friends to get tips.

We have eyes. Use them. Appreciate the patterns freckles make on a face, or the way shadows and light dance across the landscape. Try to capture some emotion or a moment of truth. Don’t pose people. Snap lots of shots from many different angles, so maybe one won’t have a tree growing out of a head.

Even with a point-and-shoot, try to do something that at the very least won’t embarrass the real photographers in your newsroom.

We’re barely into this new world of live reporting, via the Internet, and already the some anti-constitution authorities are trying to stop us.

I’m not talking about federal prosecutors in California – I’m talking about sports brass.

One of the most hit-on news briefs at Kansas.com this past Sunday and Monday was the item where the Eagle explained that fans couldn’t follow the usual live game blog of the Wichita State Shockers in the NCAA super regional baseball games.

Seems the NCAA had outlawed “live representation of the game.” They didn’t want some newspaper blog interfering with people watching the game on television. The NCAA doesn’t seem to realize that fans of the Shockers, and most teams, will watch the game on portable televisions while sitting in the stands and reading the blog on their smart phones. Fan is, after all, a short for fanatic.

Not everyone agreed with the NCAA

Brian Bennett of the Louisville Courier Journal blogged anyway during the Cardinals’ game against Oklahoma State, and was tossed out of the press box.

As our columnist, Bob Lutz pointed out:

“It’s nonsense to ban blogs, especially since someone watching on television could produce a blog and the NCAA would not have any recourse.”

There was all sorts of talk a few months back on the Yahoo! Newspaper Video Group about how the Major League Baseball trying to ban newspaper video shooters from spring training.

I can, sort of, understand franchises and leagues can put a tight reign on video, just like they limit television rights.

But blogs? C’mon.

With so many people trying to stop us, we must be doing something right.

The Courier-Journal may take legal action, and I hope it does. I hope more papers out there will challenge this, and other kinds of new age censorship, the way they would open records and meetings. I would hope more reporters would take a stand and risk being tossed out of the press box.

As I write this, by the way, the San Antonio Spurs and Cleveland Cavaliers are tied in the third quarter.

I know that, because I’m watching the game on TV, and I’m looking at the San Antonio Express-News (home of our friend Angela Grant) which has a live game blog going.

Starting out in multimedia, especially at a newspaper that is just beginning to dabble in it, can be a humbling experience.

Since I’ve been concentrating on learning how to add audio slide shows and video to my reporting, I’ve written shorter stories for the print newspaper, or helped other reporters produce segments for their stories. Others may be stand-alone projects that have only been passed along by word-of-mouth, or from small refers in the paper.

Reactions have gone something like this:

“So, still at the newspaper?”

“I haven’t seen anything by you in a while … oh, you guys have a web site?.”

“I went looking for that project you said you were working on and couldn’t find it.”

Our readers aren’t used to looking for multimedia on our web site, and what we do have are simple links from the stories.

Then last night, I accompanied my wife to one of her professional/social outings, looking like appropriate arm candy, and reveling in how brilliant and well respected she is. Occasionally, someone my recognize me from covering the courthouse beat, or recognize my byline and comment on a story.

But this time, a guy who had just met me, who was not someone I had emailed a link to, or had looked at work through this blog, said: “Didn’t you do that thing on-line about the rescue.” He was talking about a slide show I did a couple of weeks ago of boy being rescued from a raging river while trying to show friends how well he could swim. He almost drowned.

I was shocked that a total stranger would be commenting to me at an unrelated function about something I’d done exclusively on-line.

“Yeah,” he continued. “I’ve been showing it to my kids, saying ‘Don’t ever do this.’ ”

The closest I’d come before was three requests for a video I shot and edited of a demonstration by our fire department trying to discourage people from smoking cigarettes while using medical oxygen. They came from health care clinics in Missouri and Great Britain wanting to help educate patients and from a man in Tennessee wanting it for his mom. I burned them some DVDs and we posted it on You Tube

Granted, they aren’t coming yet in the numbers that make my bosses do more than yawn. But I’ve gained some personal satisfaction that my work is having at least a small impact. And that’s really all I’ve ever needed.

From Salon, that was our favorite acceptance speech from the 11th Annual Webby AwardsAll speeches are limited to five words.

I’ve always thought that we should compare oursevles to the best. I’m always looking to see who’s excelling in what I want to do, so I pass along inspiration from the Webbys.

Salon shared best magazine honors with the always inspirational MediaStorm (Speech: “Stories are Timeless”).

For the first time, the Webbys included a video category.

Winning in the Video News/Documentary/Public Service division were:
Kevin Sites: In The Hot Zone from Yahoo News! (Acceptance speech: “War: What’s It Good For”) and SaveTheInternet.com: “Independence Day” (Acceptance speech: “Verizon, Save The Internet”)

Other awards for top web sites included:

The Guardian Unlimited (Newspaper), and NYTimes.com (Newspaper “People’s Choice” and best home/welcome page), BBC (News) and NPR (podcasts).

For more cool interactive presentations, see the Webby winners’ gallery. this week.