Old Reporter, New Multimedia Tricks

I've been teaching students to research, report, shoot and edit their own video stories since 1991, but I've always had a technical assistant to teach the part about operating the camera and editing equipment. Now I'm ready to take on the world as a one-woman band. The Poynter Institute's hands-on workshop at RTNDA in Las Vegas was intended to teach old dogs, like me, a few new media tricks. However, I was the only seasoned reporter in attendance. The rest of the participants were fresh-faced college students, eager to show off the skills they had already learned! All of the participants were female, until three journalists from Ghana joined the group and two of them were men.

My assignment was to put together a story on RTNDA efforts to push for the release of journalist Roxana Saberi, wrongly condemned by an Iranian court to 8 years in prison on espionage charges, with no public trial. More on that in another post.

I felt confident of my ability to seek out interesting interviews and video, but the problem was HOW to do it. I fumbled with the multiple cables and the unwieldy tripod, accidently kept hitting the Canon camera's on-off button, and had trouble ingesting my footage into the Final Cut Pro editing system because of video frame drops. It's probably unrealistic to expect even the most technical geek to learn an editing program in an hour or so, but I got it almost all done by the time I had to leave the session to catch my plance home. Many thanks to my longtime colleague, CBS photog Les Rose, and new friend Lynn French from KPNX for guiding me through it.

With a little more practice, I'm confident I'd become an expert. I think back to my early days on the streets with an ENG crew of up to four people: a camera man, audio box operator, truck operator and me as the reporter and mother hen. I used to long for my newspaper reporting days of covering a story with just a pen and a notebook. Now, armed with some new skills, I'm even more prepared to coach my students and clients to take on the multimedia world!

For sale: Maldives Media

Regular readers of this blog know that I spent several months training newscasters at Television Maldives and Voice of Maldives last year. I was the lead consultant on a highly successful training program that prepared young broadcast journalists to provide free and fair coverage of the Islamic republic's first democratic election, including a candidates' debate. Although we made more dramatic progress in TV than in radio, the program brought a positive change to state-run media that previously had broadcast little more than propaganda and had never granted airtime to the opposition. Voters went to the polls and elected a former opposition leader to replace the president who had ruled for decades.
However, the election result appears to have derailed media reform. Although I cannot view TV Maldives newscasts from the US, some Maldivians have told me that the programs have reverted to reading government press releases with less emphasis on independent journalism. The state-run TV and radio stations are now run by a board of the new president's appointees and the BBC is reporting that Anni, as he is popularly known, is visiting the UK to seek private investment in the public channels. Here's the link: http://tinyurl.com/d3rnxj. There is no longer talk of a broadcasting bill that would create a true public service broadcaster, such as PBS and NPR in the United States or the BBC in the UK.
I am not Maldivian, so I can't say what the people want. From an American perspective, President Nasheed doesn't seem to have an idea of what to do with TVM except to control it or to sell it. I can only hope that the people who got our training will someday rise to the top or the next government will be more aware of the role of the press in educating the voters. It may be difficult for Anni to find investors. A public service station cannot be profit making and will always require some kind of funding from the government, such as the public broadcasting we have in the US or UK. Private stations can make money by running Hindi music videos or whatever, but there should be a state broadcaster to provide quality cultural programs and independent news in Dhivehi. I doubt any private investors will be interested, because TVM doesn't make money and I am guessing they would be required to provide programs in Dhivehi, which cost money to make. An investor would want to buy cheap programs from other countries and sell lots of ads. But the potential audience is only about 300,000 men, women and children. Rich tourists provide the country's major revenue, and would be an attractive target for advertisers, but tourists don't go to resorts in an island paradise to watch TV in a language they don't understand.
The DRP, the party of the former legal reform minister and the losing side in the election, had the foresight to fund journalism education for the young TV and radio reporters whose skills are needed to inform the voters in this emerging Islamic democracy. I'd welcome the opportunity to work with the new government in requesting US support for additional journalism training to strengthen the TV and radio newsrooms of both public and private stations. Here's hoping that the party now in power won't lose sight of the importance of broadcasting that truly serves the public interest as Maldives defines its future.
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Update: Read an excellent post on this issue at: http://www.mnasheed.com/2009/04/on-the-maldives-national-broadcasting-corporation/

Missing the Mark

Today I'm going to rant. I go a little crazy when someone, under the banner of the esteemed Nieman Journalism lab, gives out really bad advice. Here's the link, http://tinyurl.com/dy2p3d, but let me save you some time. This guy's thesis is that online journalism doesn't need conventional video storytelling, chiefly the techniques that are familiar to all of us from television newscasts, including standups. I checked out the source on the internet, and it turns out that Richard Koci Hernandez is a former still photographer from the San Jose Mercury news, who now seems chiefly involved with posting artsy videos online. I suspect he doesn't think standups are necessary because he probably couldn't do one himself if his life depended on it.
The fact is that technology has changed but human nature hasn't. We still want stories that have a beginning, middle and end. We still want to know our storytellers, look them in the eye and judge their credibility. There is much more to online journalism than the tag words in a search engine. Just like the early days of TV news, when newscasts were little more than glorified radio in front of a camera, online storytelling will evolve. But let's hope for something better than what this guy is envisioning.

The Daily's Big Day

First there was the Shack. Then the Storke Publications Building. But now Stanford's independent student newspaper has a new home: the Lorry Lokey Stanford Daily Building, right in the heart of campus behind Old Union. The dedication ceremonies on April 2 kicked off with a keynote from New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, who likened the event to a ribbon-cutting at a Pontiac dealership, but went on to predict that newspapers will survive in some form because the internet will create a new appetite for real journalism. The ceremony brought together the past and present, from the 1930s to today.

There was a great turnout of 1970s staffers. Kudos to Christy Wise, Charlie Hoffman and Harry Press for devoting their time and energy to the Friends of the Daily and making this wonderful event possible. The Daily launched many distinguished careers in print journalism and it's an honor to be part of this amazing group. Check out the complete photo album on Facebook!