MIT Video Game Program

MIT created a somewhat simple program to create games. The program is called Scratch, which can be installed on both a Mac and PC. The use of games on news and information sites would likely become more prevalent if the process did not involve so much time, resources, and technical knowledge. Bonnie Bucqueroux gave me the tip about this program. Like YouTube, you can create your own projects, save your favorite projects, and friend other Scratch enthusiasts. The bulk of the material on the site is created by young people using the program to blast meteorites or dragons. I found other Scratch creations such as an imperial-metric converter and calculator.

One of the issues with the use of this program is that you can embed the image on your site, however it can be misleading. If you push the button/image, you can only play the game on the MIT site, which took more than five seconds to load on my computer before I could play the game. Test it on yours by playing the piano.

Writing captions for slideshows

Understanding how to write slideshow stories is still evolving, however people new to slideshow writing usually make a few common mistakes. When a person new to slideshow storytelling gathers information for slideshow story, they usually concentrate on taking photographs and recording interviews. However, they forget to gather details that can connect their audience to the story on a deeper level.

Details can also be added in captions/cutlines. People with newspaper backgrounds usually understand the art of writing a cutline. A cutline is an explanation adjacent to a photograph. A cutline can tell you information such as who is in the photograph or why the photograph was taken. Most photographers likely understand that they must do more than take a photograph, they must gather information that explains that photograph to readers.

Writing for slideshows requires the balancing of textual, visual, and aural information without being redundant. This means you do not want to repeat what is already revealed in the photograph or narration. So let’s say you recorded an interview and captured great moments on a camera, however a common mistake occurs when you forget to gather information about the pictures that you took. When you snap a picture, look at what is in the picture and ask the subject details about an object in the picture. So if they are holding a vase, ask the person when they got that vase, why do they like that vase, or why do they have that vase in their kitchen. These may seem like minute details, but those descriptive elements make the story come to life by providing a clearer picture of the subject you interviewed.

For more information on how to create slideshows, visit my teaching page.

Online journalism jobs

My expertise is in content analysis, and as a researcher, I love to address assumptions and tackle questions plaguing the field. One current controversy is related to what skills we should be teaching our students. There is controversy related to whether we should teach them software such as Dreamweaver or Flash. To address such controversy, I collected six months (January-June) of data from JournalismJobs.com Online Media job postings. I plan to analyze the data this fall.

Based on my observations, a significant portion of the job postings were not from news organizations, but rather from other organizations such as About.com, Grandparents.com, and AARP. If you teach online media, I would encourage your students to peruse these job listings to inform themselves that the other opportunities out there besides working for a traditional news organization because it is not always news organizations that producing great journalism.

Ryan Thornburg, a blogger and academic, has conducted survey research on skills desired by North Carolina newspapers. He found that working under pressure and news judgment were considered the most important skills of young journalists.

Online video is different from broadcast. Structure. Part 2.

Broadcast journalism students learn early on that there are three basic ways to structure broadcast stories: 1) Voice-over (VO): anchor narration under video, 2) Voice-over with Sound-on-tape (VO/SOT): anchor narration under video accompanied with an interview, and 3) Reporter Package: reporter narration under video accompanied with several interviews.

However, broadcast story structures do not work well in the online information world because powerful visuals do not work well with heavy narration. When I taught broadcast news in the past, I told my students that if you have important information to convey to the audience, you should use a wide shot or detached visuals because people can not cognitively handle interesting visuals coupled with important factual information. As I said in the last post, you should only use visuals when warranted.

Thus, instead of the narrated VO which runs :15-:25 in length, you should incorporate edited shots without narration. Here is a simple example.

Instead of the narrated VO/SOT with interviews which runs :25-:45 in length, you could chunk up your interviews and accompany them with text. Here is an example.

The reporter package, which traditionally ran from 1:15-2:00, is now more raw, relying more on visuals and sound, rather than narration. The ideal length online is 1:15-4:00 dependent upon the available visuals and characters. One of my favorite video stories is more of what you would expect to see in a traditional broadcast program and my other favorite breaks many shooting rules, but is still a great story.

Online video is different from broadcast. Part 1.

The creation of video content for online is different in many ways from creating content for a broadcast audience. Broadcast news organizations perform an important function by providing the top stories of the day. However, many of these stories are not visual and must convey a lot of factual information to an audience. Thus, they tend to be light on powerful visuals and audio.

In the online world, a news package can consist of text, information boxes, photographs, maps, games and video. Thus, video should only be used when the story warrants it’s use. Great video stories usually include a 1) character to represent the story, 2) powerful visuals and audio, and 3) material that encourages emotion. The video can be a separate online story or it can be accompanied with a text story or text summary. However, the text should not feature redundant information.

My first post

I have struggled during the past few years as to whether I should create my own blog. I have seen how it has consumed my colleague’s lives. They obsess for hours trying to write the perfect post. On the other hand, I have also witnessed how bloggers have helped so many people who are struggling with the transition online. Many academics and online information providers do not have many places to turn when trying to understand online journalism.

The goal of my site is to share teaching materials and ideas with other educators and information providers. I have witnessed the frustration academics encounter when trying to learn and understand how the presence of information online is affecting students, citizens, news organizations and academia. Not only will I share my teaching ideas and materials, as some great (e.g., Mindy McAdams) people have, I will also decipher research in journals related to online journalism. One common criticism I hear from some academics and professionals is that research published in journals is not written for the average reader. Just as history does, research can help explain, and even predict, how journalism will evolve.

Twitter Updates

follow me on Twitter