SubscribeOn getting out of the way
June 10, 2008 at 4:26 a.m.
My Saturday gig sent me to Tennyson High School this week where alumni celebrated the school's 50th anniversary. I was tasked with adding unspecified multimedia to an already-written print story. I went, grabbed photos, audio and nachos, and built a slide show that I'm in no way happy with.
Here's where I think I went wrong: I tried to tell a linear story, and I fell all over myself doing it.
First, Soundslides was the wrong tool. It was wrong because, for the most part, it is a tool for telling stories that go from beginning to ...
Product, not Process
June 1, 2008 at 1:41 a.m.
Journalism, like so many crafts, is often about the process more than the product. A good story will show the trail of reporting and let the reader in on the oblique conventions of policy or public happenings.
Online, too, there is a need for engagement, for openness, not just by those we cover, but by us, the journalists.
But in many ways, the process of getting newspapers from ink on paper to text and multimedia online is getting bogged down by process, when more people really ought to be thinking about the product.
I spoke to a reporter yesterday who ...
Everything and nothing
May 26, 2008 at 3:02 a.m.
Ryan Sholin asks in this month's Carnival of Journalism:
What should news organizations stop doing, today, immediately, to make more time for innovation?
A scene from the Grey's Anatomy season finale I saw last night comes to mind:
A young man is trapped in quick-dry concrete, which he jumped into because he thought it would impress a girl. While he's moaning in ER--the cement is leaching water from his body, burning his skin, crushing him slowly--the team of doctors, who are all highly gifted and well-trained, is arguing over what has to be done first.
Finally, the ...
