Writing for New Media

Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Hallman Jr. came away from a dinner conversation with an editor and offered advice for those trying to break into or move ahead in journalism. At the top of the list, he writes in Quill magazine, is the ability to tell compelling stories:

Despite the changes sweeping our industry, it’s critical that we don’t forget that the foundation of this business remains storytelling, no matter how we do it: video, online or print....

What is a story? If you don’t know the answer, start learning and be able to define it succinctly. How do you focus a story? How is reporting for a story different than reporting a news article? What is the point of the story? If you can’t answer those questions, you likely won’t make that first cut....

A story takes readers on a journey. The mysteries, questions and answers are revealed throughout that journey. Putting it together requires in-depth thinking at each stage of the process: reporting, structuring and writing. The story doesn’t rise and fall on the writing, although that’s obviously important, but with the thought behind the story.

The folks at the Poynter Institute -- one of the best friends of working journalists - have just added a training module on multimedia storytelling to the NewsU site. The module is based on a course by Jane Stevens at UC Berkeley and should be a great aide to help you with your semester project. To get started, you'll need to register (free and easy), then under the Courses menu choose Online Multimedia.

A great blog named Innovation in College Media offers news, examples, interviews and more. Well worth an occasional look to see what's happening on the cutting edge of journalism.

Think that since your goal is to work for a newspaper, you won't need multimedia skills? Think again.

Asked what skills he would look for it hiring a newspaper reporter, Ryan Sholin lists these:

• I would want someone who knows enough HTML to write their own Web update into a content management system without needing training.
• I would want someone who has no fear of a digital camera, a video camera, or an audio recorder.
• I would want someone interested in using databases, maps, and public records as source material.
• I would want someone who knows how to tell a story.

Yes, that's for a NEWSPAPER reporter. He has a lot more to say about the skills you should have to get a job in online news. (via Mindy McAdams' Teaching Online Journalism blog)

In his column in Editor and Publisher, Steve Outing shares the same perspective:

Every hire counts at many small papers. It's long been common practice to look for people able to do multiple tasks, because the money often isn't there to hire people who are highly specialized, the way a wealthier metro paper might. But the Internet era requires more than finding people who can snap a news photograph and write a story and lay out the front page.

Small newspapers often look for recent college graduates to staff their newsrooms, in part because those employees won't demand high salaries. Hiring journalists and ad sales people right out of college makes even more sense today. Not only will recent graduates probably fit within your budget, but they'll have an understanding of the modern media picture -- at least, they will if they went through a credible journalism or communications program.

My advice is to ONLY hire people whose skills cross media platforms. Look for people who not only understand and are enthusiastic about online media, but who also can serve the print edition well. If a job candidate says she has always aspired to be a newspaper reporter, and doesn't come in the door with some multimedia skills and experience such as video and audio production, frankly I'd keep looking. You might even go so far as to look skeptically at candidates who look great when it comes to new-media skills but lack the experience or motivation to work on the print side, if you simply can't afford that much specialization.

The oldest newspaper in the world ... is no longer being printed on paper. Sweden's Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, founded in 1645, became a Web-only publication on Jan. 1. Many people in the news business think it's just the first of many "papers" that will stop being delivered on paper.

Beginning this semester, saving your work to My Documents will send it to a partition on the local computer's hard drive (notated as the D: drive). That will give you access to that work ONLY from the one specific computer you saved it on.

If you want to get access from other lab computers, you need to use SAVE AS to send the file to your V: drive as well.

1) Go to your home page using Internet Explorer.
2) Right-click on the page and choose View Source.
3) In the window that pops up, change the current URL (http://mcom407.blogspot.com) to the URL of your blog.
4) Save the file to a new folder on your computer -- something easy to remember like mcom407. Name it Welcome.html
5) Download (if you have not already) Filezilla. Using it, transfer your new Welcome.html file into the WWW directory in your Tiger account.

That's it! If you already have Filezilla installed or you're working in the labs, this should take about two minutes.

Rob Curley is widely regarded as one of the most technologically innovative people in the newspaper business. During the last decade, he has been involved in lawrence.com, naplesnews.com and now is at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. But as much as he lives for technology, he tells Presstime magazine that the best career advice he ever got was

it’s not about the technology ... our industry really is about is connecting with our audience. Technology is nothing more than developing new ways of connecting with our audience and giving them something that they never knew they needed, but love having.

Bill [Snead, of the Lawrence Journal-World] always said we have to give our readers these little gifts and surprises whenever we can. The key is the connection, not the delivery method or the software. With every project, I now ask myself a million times, “How does this connect to our readers and what are they getting out of this?” Taking newspapers into the digital world isn’t about the coolest software; it’s about the coolest connection we can make with our audience.

If you keep that in mind, you'll do a great job in this class.

UPDATE: Rob Curley's work at naplesnews.com recently won FOUR major prizes in the Newspaper Association of America’s Edgies competitions: Best Overall News Site, Most Innovative Multimedia Storytelling, Best Advertising Program and Best Local Shopping & Directory Strategy. His earlier site, lawrence.com, picked up two additional awards: Best Design and Site Architecture and Best Local Guide or Entertainment Site. Check out those and the other winners for lots of great ideas.

And here's a peek at what Rob's up to in his new job.