Electric Fishwrap

Throughout October and November, Western Washington SPJ has been hosting its fall continuing education series. On Nov. 3, Seattle PI breaking news reporter Casey McNerthney taught the video workshop.

McNerthney went over some basic tips about video from his personal experience. It is worthy to note that he does not have any fancy equipment and all of the software he shared is free. In this realization lies the value of his training: You don’t need expensive equipment. Anyone can do this.

His equipment/tools:

• Canon Powershot
• Windows Movie Maker (WMM tutorials on YouTube, or iMovie)
• A computer for editing, nothing too fancy

Most importantly is the attitude he brings to every story. McNerthney said he bought his Powershot about a year ago. Since then he appears to interview most, if not all, of his subjects with his Powershot running. His reason for videoing everything: “Sometimes daily stories turn into something big.”

(Note: I record audio of almost every interview I conduct. Not only does it help me keep quotes straight, I also have the option of using the audio later for a multimedia project. Obtaining audio in this way requires no extra effort on my part and I can only imagine if I had a small video camera with me all of the time, it would be just as easy.)

He shared one particular example of video he shot recently, about a crane operator who helped police nab a fleeing fugitive:

McNerthney talked about what shots you need to get if you’re going to record your interviews. Check out the crane video. It only takes a few seconds to get b-roll (the flavor shots of the crane in the middle of the story).

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Those who follow me on Twitter already know that I moved in mid-September. It was a cross-town move, from Snohomish to Everett, but either way I hate moving with a passion. Part of the frustration was trying to find an apartment within the allotted 20 days my former landlady gave us to move out (she needed our unit for a family/friend emergency).

I set out to search for an apartment online. Using Google Maps, the Community Transit Web site (we had to pick a place near a bus stop for my husband to commute to UW), ApartmentRatings.com (to avoid the really bad places) and Craigslist. But after a while I felt bad about using Craigslist because a lot of people feel it’s contributing to a decline in classified ad revenue.

I sought out a local paper when my husband and I stopped at the grocery store. Lucky for me one of them was doing a subscription drive and I got one for free (no I didn’t subscribe, sorry!). I opened the pages and found a typical three-line ad for an apartment for rent, no address, just brief platitudes and a phone number.

I’m not going to call someone to ask for an address, plug it into Google Maps to see if it matches up with an address within a 1/2 mile radius of an acceptable bus stop. I realize classifieds are still sold by the line, so I understand the reason for brevity. Not giving up hope, I checked news Web sites in the region, and none in my search area offer expanded classified services for those who bought space in the dead-tree edition. (Question for readers: do any Web sites offer expanded classifieds online?)

Why can’t newspapers print a reference number with each ad (sort of like the old personal ads), which customers could then type in at the Web site to see the full online listing? Someone buys a classfied (or any) ad and they are given a login to copy and paste whatever information into the online ad that they want. (Maybe local newspapers already offer that, but none of the listings I saw online indicated that this was the case.)

As an aside, I could swear I saved some blog posts that talked about this very topic before the move, but my desktop computer unfortunately went to the big server in the sky and thus is unable to assist me in this search. My Google-fu has also failed me.

So you have a great idea about how to save the news industry but your editors aren’t listening? Or maybe your editors like the idea but there’s no manpower/money/upper management support?

With the Knight News Challenge there are no excuses. For those not in the know, the Knight Foundation is in its third year of funding innovative ideas in news reporting and delivery. This year the pot is $5 million. There are just three rules:

1. Use or create digital, open-source technology as the code base.
2. Serve the public interest.
3. Benefit one or more specific geographic communities.

Not sure if your idea qualifies? Visit the Knight News Challenge Garage, where prospective applicants can talk about their ideas before they apply. Here are some applicants who have already applied.

My favorite past winner of Knight funds is Spot.us:

“Spot Us” is a project of the nonprofit Center for Media Change that allows an individual or group to take control of news by sharing the cost (crowdfunding) to commission freelance journalists.

Other past winners here.

Hurry, that idea floating in your head has to be on paper by Nov. 1.

Note: I’ve been meaning to blog about this for almost a month. In trying to get my blogging mojo back I’m going to do some quick hits in the next few days.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know everything. Reporters shouldn’t have to know everything, but they should know how to find out the answers. Enter Kent Fisher, education blogger/reporter for the Dallas Morning News. What Fischer didn’t think was a big story became national news after he questioned his blog readers about grade inflation.

Read a breakdown of the whole affair at Beatblogging.org here and here (including an 18-minute audio interview with Fischer here). The Dallas Independent School District called foul, and said the documents were preliminary.

DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander claimed that what Fischer and The Dallas Morning News had published was in fact a draft copy of the new grading policy. FrontBurner blogger Tim Rogers called on the Morning News to print a clarification, and scolded Fischer and the Morning News for making a big deal out of a draft policy.

Just as Fischer’s blog readers helped break this story open, they also helped slap down district spin.

Fischer eventually posted letters to parents explaining the policy and a PowerPoint presentation for principals, all submitted by readers of his blog. The conversation drew in dozens of teachers who had not previously read his blog before.

If you haven’t yet, listen to the audio. Fischer also talks about the difference between blogs (anonymous comments) and print standards (sourced comments), because he had to re-report some of the details from the blog for the dead-tree edition.

This is an inspiring example of how reporters work sources, and a great way to use a blog to pose a question to the experts — in this case the blog readers.

On Tuesday, a man shot and stabbed his way through his neighborhood in the small town of Alger, about 15 minutes from my newspaper’s office. Six are dead, including a Skagit County deputy, and four are wounded. Countless others are deeply affected. Prosecutors accused Isaac Zamora of six counts of first-degree murder and four counts of first-degree assault. In court Friday, Zamora said “I kill for God. I listen to God” (article and audio here).

Skagit County has been swarming with state and national media since the attacks. Our paper, the Skagit Valley Herald, has been packed with stories since the day after the attacks.

Nothing like this has ever happened here. People are in shock. It is times like these when communities need their newspapers most. As gruesome as the details are, people want to know why this happened. People need to be able to process the tragedy.

Yesterday as I walked into a church that held an open prayer service, someone told me that they appreciated the newspaper and what we are doing. Before that, a barista at a coffee shop said the same thing when we were making small talk. People are also visiting our forums to talk about the tragedy and what the community has lost. This is why quality journalism will never die.

Information is part of the grieving process, too.

Since Tuesday, I’ve produced two videos (here and here), helped other reporters uncover hard-to-find sources, shot still photos, ran to court to get essential documents, made copies, written or contributed to three or four stories and helped other reporters produce audio and video. It’s been a wild and heartbreaking week.

Yesterday I wrote my first education story since Tuesday. It felt comfortable to write about something other than the killing spree that drew the nation’s eye to Skagit County.

I’ve spent my spare time for the last week learning how to use Sony Vegas on my laptop. There are a lot of good tutorials on YouTube, and here’s the list I subscribe to.

A couple of weeks ago I took a dam tour of the Seattle City Lights hydroelectric project with two friends. I wanted to give my Canon HV30 a test drive and see how it did. I was impressed with the sound quality of the on-board mic, but it does need a wind screen.

It seems I list to the left when shooting and I’m not sure why. I should also use a tripod, however since I was there for recreation and I didn’t want to carry a bunch of stuff with me, I left the tripod at home.

If this would have been for work, I would’ve brought a tripod and not talked during the video. All in all, the video is an accurate representation of the trip and not bad for the first try. Suggestions are definitely welcome by the way.

I’ll be posting less frequently in the next couple of weeks because I’m trying to learn Sony Vegas, a video editing program for PC. Last weekend I took a tour with some friends to Diablo Lake.

Yes, it really was that green. The color is caused by the glacial flour of Skagit gneiss, made up of mica, feldspar (the reddish color on the rock faces) and quartz. The day was amazing. Even though it was 100+ degrees out the 36-degree water kept the trip relatively cool.

I took some video with my new camera and some stills (see eight pics I took on my Flickr photostream). Until I know how Vegas works, though, I’m not going to be doing much else other than learning how to edit. I didn’t have my tripod during the trip so it’s a little shaky, but I’ll try to post something from the trip in a week or two.

You don’t need a big budget to learn multimedia. There are plenty of low-cost tools to get you started.

Watch Kirk Mastin’s test of a $3,300 Canon XH A1 camcorder vs. a $120 Flip Camcorder (he also used a an iPod nano with a mic to record audio for the Flip video). Mastin is in the University of Washington’s masters program for digital media. Compare the footage between the two cameras. (He syncs Flip video and iPod audio with a hand clap in front of the camera and then match the audio spike in a video editing program.)

Mastin’s comparison has been making the rounds as of late, even though it was posted back in February. (There’s also a three-part Mexican Wrestling video shot with a Canon Powershot SD800 by Max Morse of ESPN.)

Also, lots of people are posting training tips lately:

• David Nolan at Multimedia Evangelist has posted several reports from a $2,000 training he’s attending on how to shoot video. Quick tips: shots are at least 10 seconds with no pans or zooms, get lots of b-roll and shoot many angles of the subject to help compress time for the viewer. (Thanks to NewsVideographer for the heads up.)
• Video for newspapers, by Mindy McAdams. This is an incredibly useful list of links, including shooting video for editing, what makes a good video and examples of video you have to see (like the Spokesman Review’s video of a paraplegic dog).
• 17 video tips, by Sue Robinson, guest blogger on Mindy’s Teaching Online Journalism.

It won’t win any Oscars, but I, and my newsroom, learned quite a bit from this experience.

One of my editors asked for a volunteer to go to the fair and “find a story.” I love the fair, and I like open-ended assignments like this. The first thing I did was grab a video camera and checked the charge on it. Another editor flagged me down as I was walking out the door. My video assignment: I was to use only the newsroom’s computer to edit and produce the video.

Let me explain. All of the video we’ve run on the site so far has been produced on home computers, usually by our interns or one of our editors. The reason they’ve done so is because our work computers aren’t as great. They have iMovie on them, which I learned is not a terrible program. Like anything else there is a learning curve to using it. I’ll admit my total ignorance here and say I’ve never in my life edited video, but I have read about best practices in producing video.

This video was fun to produce, but I shot way too little B-roll for it. I groan when I watch this, but I think the girls (and the adorable calf) make up for it. If I would’ve spent even five minutes getting better B-roll it would have been 100 times better.

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Of all multimedia skills that a reporter should know, video is my weak point. Sure, I’ve taken classes and read blogs about video, but how many times have I actually shot video for news purposes? It’s so low I’m embarrassed to say.

That will soon change. Friday my Canon HV30 will arrive in the mail (including a UV light filter to protect the lens). I probably spent at least eight hours last weekend researching which camera I should get and which store I should buy it from. I’ve been lurking a lot on the Canon HV20/HV30 user forums, too.

The hardest part is finding an editing program that works for me. I’ve never used video editing programs. Currently my laptop is Linux based, so I installed Cinelerra. But I hear Cinelerra doesn’t process HD video well. I think my best option is to reinstall Vista on the laptop and get a copy of Sony Vegas (at least platinum). Any suggestions for other programs to consider are very welcome.

I have a list of links a mile long on how to shoot video. As for editing it, I’ll probably search YouTube for tutorials on whichever program I end up using.

My plan to learn video is to just do it. Shoot lots of video. Try to edit at least one clip a week. The subject doesn’t matter, as long as I practice at becoming faster and more efficient with each try. The good clips will end up here.

Now to wait until Friday.