Technolo-J

Listen and learn: lessons on blogging, Twitter and covering the news live

I listened to the podcast the Guardian posted the other day on The Future of Journalism: Blogging, Twittering and Live Video. 

Fascinating and thought-provoking, it's 87 minutes long, so download it to your IPod and take it with you to the gym/ Or just make time to listen. I'm going to count it as the training hours for this year.

A few highlights:

• Dave Hill, writer for the Guardian, said there was "sort of mischief element" as he covered a mayoral race on Twitter.  People get to see the news-making and reporting process in its rawest form.” Part of the fun of it for me is the demystification of serious journalism, if you like," he said.
• Anna Pickard said when she began live blogging television shows such as "Big Brother" and "The Apprentice" people began sitting in front of their TV's with their laptops, responding to her posts. “Conversation is the best thing about the Internet, I think," she said. “...It’s introducing this idea of simultaneous multimedia. Everyone is taking everything in and splurging at the same time.”
• Andy Carvin of NPR called Twitter: “a conversation you keep in your pocket” and "the quintessential American diner."

They also talk about workflow and problems they experienced. These all illustrate my experiences when I was covering the murder trial on Twitter, only they explain it much more eloquently.

Now I'm blogging as part of the my job

My beat is in a courthouse, a building where human drama plays out in some form every day.  In eight years of covering courts, I'd often hear of interesting stories that wouldn't fit into what I was working on that day, or just didn't have a place for one reason or the other in the paper.

But I've found a home for those stories in the new courts blog the Eagle launched this week.  We call it "What the Judge Ate for Breakfast," after a well-known courthouse saying. It actually as an interesting origin, which we explained in the "about" section. Actually, one of the most difficult parts was researching the origin, which took the help of the University of Kansas Law School Library, to find the exact quote.

Now, I blog as a part of my job.  We also put my Twitter feed in the navigation, so I can continue to file microblogs from the courthouse.  Some of the posts publish to the blog first, and then developed into full stories for the newspaper.  Others update stories that we didn't run in the print edition.  It's a combination of original reporting from our courthouse and links to legal and crime trend stories from elsewhere.

So far, I've gotten good feedback from judges and lawyers.  We'll see if we can get the crime and courts news junkies from the public interested.

What I learned about crime reporting via Twitter

The Twitter trial was exhausting.

But the response was worth it.  That’s what I’ve found is usually true in this business. The most difficult reporting brings the best rewards.

I had to take a week’s vacation after the capital murder trial of Ted Burnett just to rest up and refuel.  After weeks of microblogging details of the brutal death of a 14-year-old girl, I didn’t have much left to even keep this blog up.  But thanks to all those who followed my coverage on Twitter and those who may patiently return to this blog to learn what happened, from a journalist’s standpoint.  You all keep me going.

Here’s some of the feedback I received from readers:

• “I’m addicted …”
  
  
• “I found myself checking in a couple of times per day just to read your postings.  Due to my schedule, I do not always get to spend time each morning reading the paper and rely on online news during the day.”
  
  
• “This was yet another great use for 2.0 tools!”
  
  
• “I very much wanted to follow the trial and when I came across your Twitter page I was delighted.  I thought at first it might be annoying to have to continually refresh the page to get updates, but found I could easily get work done and come back every 10 minutes or so and read through your updates.”
  
  
• “I loved being able to press the refresh button on my browser every minute for new ‘tweets.’ While I am emotionally involved in this case, I was not able to take a week off work and join my family friends in the courtroom. With twitter I am able to virtually be in the court room and know all of the little details that I had not previously known about.”

 
I had started using Twitter during jury selection, as a solution to some problems we’d had with trying to file live updates during the trial. We wanted immediacy, and we got it.

One day, I cut and pasted all my “tweet” updates into a traditional story file.  It measured 80 inches.  Now, I don’t think anyone would have read an 80-inch story from the newspaper on this trial, as compelling as it was. My editors certainly wouldn’t have run a story that long.  But what I found is that people will read an 80-inch story, given to them a paragraph at a time, 140 characters long.

In addition to Twitter, I also produced multimedia:  audio slide show such as this one of a co-conspirator explaining the killing of Chelsea Brooks.

Between the text descriptions from the courtroom over Twitter, and the multimedia, we were able to give people a feeling of being there that I had never before been able to do in my career.  This trial had a “press room” in the law library of an adjoining courtroom. 

I kept a Macbook Pro in there with Soundslides and Audacity, so I could edit audio files and organize photos on breaks.  I had the photographer on duty download photos to a memory stick I wore around my neck. That saved time.  Most days I was able to complete everything - including writing a story for the morning newspaper - at a decent hour.  The tweets during the day were really my notes that I used to fashion the newspaper story.

It wasn’t perfect.  I had my share of typos, filing live with no copy desk backup.  But no one complained about the occasional misspellings. 

Twitter had outages, sometimes during the most dramatic parts the trial.

Here are some lessons I learned that may help other reporters wanting to “tweet” live events:

• Keep a “cheat sheet” handy of key dates, addresses and names of those involved.  It will save time to keep looking them up in your notes.
  
  
• Don’t assume anything.  If you’re not sure you totally understand what you’re hearing, save that information until you can ask for further explanations.
  
  
• Remember, it’s easier for people to follow narrative stories.  Try to establish what the story is and filter information so that it fits within the storyline.  This was easy in a trial, because certain witnesses were there to tell what happened.  Other parts weren’t as easy, such as forensic evidence. With that, I had to work harder to maintain a story that wouldn’t lose people.
  
  
• When the event takes a break, tell people.  I always added a tweet that said “court is in recess for 15 minutes,” so readers wouldn’t keep refreshing the page, hoping to find information.
  
  
• Pay attention to the environment around you.  Don’t just report what people say.  Look for reactions and moods. 

• You will catch mistakes, most of which you’ll notice right as you hit “send.”  File corrections immediately and mark them as such.  It will keep your readers’ trust.

• Make time to rest, especially if it’s going to be an event such as a trial that lasts for days, even weeks.  You will be exhausted.

 
You may even find Twitter improves your writing.  When you have to stay within 140 characters, you're forced to write tight.

Update:  We got a big morale boost during the trial from the American Bar Association, which contacted us for this article in ABA On-Line Journal. The article gave us immediate credability with judges and lawyers around the courthouse, which will probably help us continue using this tool.

Making responsible journalists out of citizens

SPJ often gets mistakenly tagged as old school, a bunch of old print guys reminiscing over the days of manual typewriters.  The reality is, SPJ is embracing the future. 

The newest example is our Citizen Journalism Academy.  The first drew about small crowd of 25 in Chicago last weekend.  The crowd was small, but SPJ executive director Terry Harper those who attended gave the programming high marks.  Here’s how the Chicago Tribune reported it.

The point is to train the growing numbers of folks contributing to online projects about ethical and responsible journalism.

The next CJA is in June 7 in Greenboro, N.C.

If you know any budding citizen journalists, bloggers or others, tell them to check it out.  Maybe try to bring it to your town on the next go-around.

Get more information here.

Tweeting in courtroom provides a new way to cover a murder trial

The Twitter trial seems to be working.  So far.

It's a modification of what we began last fall: live updates of a capital murder trial in the killing of a small-town Kansas sheriff. It was a way of live blogging from the courtroom.  I would email updates from my smartphone and Bluetooth keyboard and send them back to the online team at the newsroom.  They would post them with time stamps.

Readers enjoyed it, but the workflow lagged at times.  The copy desk during the day is sparse, usually one person posting all the updates throughout the day. Metro editors were in meetings all day. I was filing faster than the posts were appearing.  That was a snag we were going to have to work out.

This spring, as another big trial loomed, the copy desk said they couldn’t handle another round of live blogging.  People are going on vacation.  We're short-staffed. There was no time to sort through my updates each hour.

The trial: Ted Burnett is accused of killing Chelsea Brooks, a 14-year-old girl who was nine months pregnant, in June 2006, during a murder-for-hire.

When jury selection began this week, I decided to start posting updates on Twitter.

Jury selection is usually the most boring part of any trial. 

“This is the part they don’t show on TV, it’s so exciting,” prosecutor Kevin O’Connor tells jurors.

Most times, we don’t even cover it.  But capital murder trials are different.  The juries not only decide whether a defendant is guilty.  If they return a conviction on capital murder, the jury also decides whether or not the defendant will receive the death penalty.  With life and death at stake, I like to know who is sitting on the jury.

But jury selection also seemed to be ideal to conduct experiments.  Who would notice? So I began tweeting portions of the part of the trial no one seems to care about.  Most were tidbits that probably wouldn’t make it in any stories I wrote for the print edition.

Some of the Twitter highlights:

Prosecutor told the judge one prospective juror "appears to be stoned."

•  "I don't know if this is a legal reason," O'Connor said, "but the state's position is he should be dismissed because he's a punk."
  
  
• Prosecutor: "Do you have any concerns about the criminal justice system?" Juror: "Some people in the system are criminals themselves."
  
  
• Lawyer: "Do you understand some of the things you've heard about the case may not be accurate?" Juror: "Sure, especially from the media."

You get the idea.

I didn't expect the reaction..

I received an email from a Wichita police officer following the trial on Twitter, saying "Keep it up."

A woman tweeted her friends, “Court TV is gone but Twitter has @rsylvester.”

(Actually, it’s now “In Session” on TruTV and I do some work for them, too).

But this is important to me, becaise they are local people, looking for local news. They’re not readers or viewers or audience anymore – in this world of social networking, they’re my friends. I like that.

I keep getting notices that more people are following me each day.

 Jill, my editor, is encouraging me .

 Katie, our online content developer, is working on a widget to put my tweets on Kansas.com, when the trial really gets going.

Here’s what I’m learning:

• Keep it professional.  Remain a reporter.  Resist the urge to comment or editorialize.  Just tell what’s going on and give context.
  
  
•  Pick the most engaging parts to report.  Remember, I have to take notes and try not to miss anything important.  I try to Twitter the parts that catch my attention and which I think are important from my experience on the beat.  Even in capital murder trials, there are lighter moments.  But also select the parts that will increase awareness and knowledge of the event.
  
  
• Keep it clean. I mean copy. You have to proof read yourself.  Remember, there’s no copy desk between you and publishing. And if I remember correctly, they don’t have time for this, anyway.
  
  
• Check to see if anyone is replying.  It’s tough to do on a mobile site that isn’t fully functional, as it is on a desktop.  I post with text messages but occasionally check through the Web to see if there are any responses. One of my new friends had to contact me on Facebook to point out I was missing her replies.  I also try to go back at the end of the day and see who I missed.  I don’t know if it’s bad form to reply something like 10 hours later, but I want folks to know I’m paying attention.

 Yes, it’s the same as Intro to Journalism.  Know your audience; get it right. But in this delivery system it’s live, and it’s fast.  I keep reminding myself, I can’t cut corners.  Good journalism should shoot for high standars, even in bits of 140 characters at a time.

And at a limit of 140-character, Twitter forces you to write tight.

It’s hard work.  I leave court feeling exhausted

And it’s only the first week.   The intense and exciting part – the real evidence of the trial - is yet to begin.

What, you want me to teach reporters multimedia?

Culture can change as quickly in the newsroom as an editor can slap a new lead on a story.

Just a few weeks ago, I wondered if anyone outside our online team – which I had been banished from sometime last summer – got or cared about Web-first publishing or multimedia journalism or Web 2.0.

Then through a series of b-and-moaning (me) and firings (someone else, thankfully), I was assigned to Jill, full-time metro editor, part-time blogger and sometimes Tweeter.

In addition to keeping up with my little experiments, such as my live blogging jury selection of a capital murder trial on Twitter, Jill wrote me into our team goals as a “multimedia trainer.”  Evidently, Jill figured my last year of learning how to use a video camera, editing software and hooking up microphones to audio records should be passed onto the rest of our staff.

Beginning this month, I’m supposed to begin showing the three other reporters in our corner of the newsroom the basics.  It’s the beginning of a newsroom DIY-training.

It seemed only weeks ago people with the title “editor” were asking me to cut it out with the electronic toys, as they had told me in earlier years to stop developing narratives and stick to the inverted pyramid.

Culture can change quickly in newsrooms.  So if you sometimes feel like one of the only ones trying to do something new, don’t get frustrated.  Just keep plugging away.

It’s kind of like that project I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, and now – because of a murder trial – has to be once again put on hold.  But news of the moment takes priority.  And there’s always news of the moment. Eventually, there will be time for enterprise.

Eventually, someone will grasp what you’re trying to do.

Meanwhile, follow my experiments on Twitter.  You'll hear about stoned "punk" jurors and what men facing a death penalty trial say about newspaper subscriptions.  Really.

TwitterLocal tells what everyone is talking about

For the past week, I’ve been watching the TwitterLocal Feed, recommended by Mark Hamilton. You subscribe to all the local tweets in your feed reader.

Back in the old days of some 15 years ago, I had a great editor who would make an effort to scour the town and find out what people were talking about in coffee shops and bars, around water coolers and parks.  He would constantly ask reporters, “What are people talking about.  That’s what where we ought to look for stories.”

With TwitterLocal, I can find out what people are talking about on my phone.  Every once in a while, they’re even talking about what we’re reporting.

We spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to use the new technology to serve our own purposes of disseminating information.  But I’m reminded we need to also take time to use it to learn more about the people we are hoping to reach.

Few in the newsroom can find strength in numbers through social networking

Jack Lail and I are now connected.  Jack is the managing editor of  multimedia for the Knoxville News Sentinel, a paper that’s been a leader in the push toward online.

 Jack blogged an invitation to “be sociable” and connect to him on Facebook, Linked-in and other social networks. So I did.

We’re a part of a growing, yet feisty group of people trying to meet the demands of a changing industry. And we need to stick together.

Ryan Sholin talked about trying to find the early adopters in each newsroom, and what a struggle that has been for him:

“The important part of the job isn’t speaking to the first 20 people on the conference call for an hour, it’s maintaining contact with the one person on the call who has the potential to Get It”

It’s a struggle for all of us.  Think about it.  If there’s only one, or two, or even a handful of people who are trying to make the shift in our mindset, that means there are many more resisting.  It can be a lonely space.  We need to support each other as much as possible.

So let’s connect, stick together.  I’m passing forward Jack’s invite to “be sociable.”

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A new multimedia project, in duet

Collaboration is to be the next step in my multimedia journey.

It’s a natural progression, and a welcome one.  The past year of learning has at times been a lonely process.  But it’s been necessary.  It’s hard to work with someone else, when you don’t know how the process works.  It’s one reason I took a Flash course.  I’m not a designer, but it helps to understand how it all works.  Reporters who don't at least understand the basics of audio and video, hoping the photo department will pick it up, is destined to frustrate some photographers and videographers.

Last week, photographer Jaime Oppenheimer and I worked on the drug court story.  This week, we got more ambitious and embarked on our new project.  We’re still putting the details together, and I’ll post it here once we finish.  But I thought I’d share the process as we go.

We went to prison.  It was a guided tour, but the state officials were gracious and pretty much left us alone to do our reporting.  We spent hours, and Jaime left her still camera in the car.  She shot everything with a Sony HD cam, and she’ll pull stills off the video.  She hooked up a shotgun mic to the camera, and lugged a heavy tripod along.

I took along my Edirol09 and a pair of earphones to collect some natural sound, interviews and pick up some parts that might augment Jaime’s video.

I was stoked with the information and images and stories we collected in those hours. Jaime, however, felt a little overwhelmed. 

It reminded me of the different roles we’d played in the past and how they’re converging in a world of online, multimedia delivery.  As a reporter, I can never get too much information.  I can pick out the best of the best.  I had collected interviews and documents for months.  This was just the color to trim out and dress up the other information.

Jaime had all the images and sounds swimming through her head. She’d filled up two hours of video cards.  How were we going to sort it all out?

Other aspects overwhelm me, such as the thought of actually editing the video.  To me, that’s the hard part.  No problem, said Jaime.  That doesn’t bother her.

That’s where collaboration begins.  On the long drive home we talked about what we remembered about the visit.  We listed the images that stood out in our minds, the sounds, the quotes.  We made a list.  Then from there, we asked ourselves, what would be better told in video?  In stills?  What audio stood out?  What anecdotes would be better detailed in narrative text?

Soon, we had outlined a short video, numbering the scenes in order and the audio bed that would go underneath it.  I don’t think either one of us had actually scripted a video before.  It at least gave us a starting point.

Jaime has the day off today.  I’m going to try to edit some audio tracks, and then give them to Jaime to pick out some images for another video or a slide show.

When I write the story, that will further cut down our material, because we’ve decided we want the multimedia to add layers and depth, not repeat what’s in the story.

Next week, we’ll begin putting it all together. I'm excited at the prspects  I think I'm going to like this role of co-producer.

A slide show before dinner, a video in an hour

A year ago, I sat in front of computer for hours, trying to make the sound synch with the movement of the lips in I-Movie, or make Final Cut Pro reach some sort of finality.  Usually, my frustration would hit its peak long before my wife sent me a text message wanting to know when I was going to get the hell home.

I don’t know when exactly I began to feel more comfortable with all this, but I know it came, the same way I learned to write over the years, because I was too stubborn to give it up. I am now trying to include multimedia in nearly everything I do, because I appreciate how those layers can add depth to the story.  Just as writing through the difficult times made me a better reporter, so is being persistent with multimedia.

Two stories the past week made me realize how comfortable I've become looking for the multimedia aspects of the stories I cover.

The first: a story about drug court. These kinds of courts are prevalent throughout much of the United States, but they’re new to Kansas.  Photographer Jaime Oppenheimer worked to get a couple of dozen photos, and helped collect audio. And as I’ve said before, I’m recording everything.

Between Jaime’s photos, some interviews I’d recorded and some live bits from the courtroom, became  an audio slideshow.  I like being able to hear the judge explain what he does and how it plays out in court. I was able to edit the audio and put together the slideshow, while me editor gave the story a first read.  I took a break from the multimedia, worked on the story, then went to finish the slide show.  I was home by dinner.

But multimedia is not only about audio and video. I especially liked getting copies of the essays some of the people who had gone through the program had written for their graduation.  Christy Johnson's essay has power to it I could not have conveyed in my story alone.

Today’s story was one of those assignments you get when you have a slow day on your own beat, and editors are asking for a story. This time of year, people purposefully set fires in Kansas, called controlled burns. It’s actually good for the environment and helps restore the native prairies on the Great Plains.

I’ve taken to carrying a video camera everywhere I go, so when I went on the assignment, I pulled it out and shot some video.

Howard Owens says reporters should take no longer than an hour to make a video.  The controlled burn video, well, won’t set anything on fire.  But it showed what I was writing about, something I couldn’t tell them quite as well as actually seeing it. And it took about an hour. 

I think shooting the video actually helped with what I ended up writing, because it forced me to pay more attention to detail, looking through the lens of the camera.  The video camera served as a notebook, and the quotes that didn’t fit in the video, went in the story.

Once again, I made it part of my workday.  I plugged the camera in and downloaded the video, while I wrote a rough draft of the story.  I pulled quotes out of the video for the story and put the audio track on the timeline.  I went and added the quotes to my story, and while my editor Jill Cohan gave the story a first read, I finished the video and uploaded it to the server.  Then I answered Jill’s questions, put the final polish on it, and went home.

All before my wife could send me a text message, asking where the hell I was.

A rant from Iowa State

Michael Bugeja directs a journalism school in 21^st Century America, where he preaches that the Internet and new technology is “the scorpion” that will poison and kill journalism.

In what I consider the best argument against tenure, Bugeja cursed the connected world that is rapidly passing him by in the keynote address at our Midwest regional spring conference for the Society of Professional Journalists.  The theme of the conference?  Convergence of new media.  

Yes, this guy.  Bugeja says new gadgetry has us chained to our newsroom desks, forcing us to do all of our reporting through the telephone and email.  By the way, he says telephones and telegraphs are not bad.  Apparently, he thinks any innovation that happened, say, after Henry Ford, is dooming us.

“I don’t know when he was last in a newsroom,” said Jared Strong of the Des Moines Register, who sat in on the panel “What I Wish I Had Learned in Journalism School But  Didn’t.”

If Bugeja had bothered to observe some modern newsrooms, he would know that technology actually allows me to get out of the office more, be where the news is, because I’m always connected through my smart phone, my email and my ability to deliver the news through a variety of media, including Twitter.

Of course, Bugeja hates Twitter.  And Facebook.  And really any of the ways that people like to connect now and trade information.

I began covering his speech on Twitter.

Andy Dickinson answered that maybe Bugeja is just trying to get attention.

The most disturbing part of Bugeja’s views is, he could be any of our bosses.  In many newsrooms across the country, people are resisting change with his same fervor, as the world changes around us.  In his speech, he kept referring to himself as “a reporter,” as if that some how brought him out of his academic daydream and down to reality with the rest of us.  It didn’t.

If he really worked as a reporter, in a world without tenure, he would have to face the realities of technology.  He would have to learn new ways or reporting, or he would soon be without a job.  He would soon be called into an editor’s office and be told to get up to speed, or be replaced.  But he doesn’t work in that world of declining circulations and ad revenue that’s moving to the web.  So he can stick his head up his campus and pretend that he knows best.

I felt bad for the journalism students I met at Iowa State who are bright and ambitious and having to listen to this. I felt bad for the older journalists in the room, meaning about my age, because some were nodding and smiling as if this were really making sense.

Still, Bugeja showed he has a glimmer of recognition for reality. For all his resistance, he understands the Web can produce transparency in journalism, allowing our audience to study our notes, our source documents, to hear our interviews.

Don’t feel sorry for his students, either.  They’re smart enough to see the ironies of the chancing media world around them and how out of touch the director of their school seems to be.

“The thing is,” one student told me about Bugeja, “you can only reach him by email.”

Your neighborhood news web site

The Palm Beach Post wants to deliver news to the neighborhoods.  I’m not talking about those old “Neighbors” sections that languished and failed so miserably in our print editions.

I’m talking about Backyard Post.

It took William Harnett and his crew 574 days to pull it off, but who’s counting?  It features an interactive map, where users can click on their neighborhood and find out about schools, parks, libraries, and even create their own pages to share news and connect with their neighbors.  What you see know is just the start of what Harnett and the Post envision.

“Why shouldn’t the local newspaper be the party that delivers that level of detail and organization to its community?” Harnett writes. “Think of the value you can build on top of that foundation of neighborhoods. Not just value for your users, but value as well for the 80 percent of local businesses in your typical market that don’t consume any form of newspaper advertising.”

 This is what newspapers sought to do, but couldn’t quite accomplish, with those failed “Neighbors” sections.

It’s an ambitious project but yet another idea of how newspaper web sites can reach through the computer lines and into people’s homes, no longer simply being the rolled up piece of paper at the edge of the curb.

Go live

Angelique van Engelen of ReporTwitters, and my newest friend on Wired Journalists, introduced me to a utility that looks like it could be very valuable to online reporters.

 Cover It Live is a new blogging tool to help reporters, well, cover live events.

“Your commentary publishes in real time like an instant message,” Cover It Live’s web site said. “Our ‘one-click’ publishing lets you drop polls, videos, pictures, ads and audio clips as soon as they come to mind.”

I realized the power of live blogging this past fall while covering a capital murder trial. It’s an easy way to get into the online conversation.  It’s a little unnerving for those used to waiting until the end of the day to write, and you have to be good at multitasking. But if we couldn’t do that we wouldn’t be in journalism.

Angelique’s ReporTwitters also seeks to help reporters figure out how to use Twitter as a professional tool.

Back to nature: rambling thoughts from an unplugged week

I unplugged.

I took the first week of vacation time during spring break from school, so we could play together, just chill, as the 16-yearold would say, and most importantly unplug from the various wires that keep us connected.

I twittered maybe once or twice the whole week.  We took everyone to Eureka Springs, AR, and my wife purposely booked a two-story cabin that advertised “no wireless internet” and “no cell phone coverage.”  It drove the teens a little nuts.  They would sneak out of the cabin and trudge up the road until one would hear the other say, “I’ve got bars.  Yes!”  At least it got them to hike.

The blog lagged but my life rejuvenated.  It reminded me we all need to unplug every once in a while.

When I returned, I found this post by Mindy McAdams with some excellent tips on how to plan and carry out a multimedia package.

It’s something we all need to think about. We’ve talked about learning the essentials over the past year, getting audio and video, trying not to let it take up too much of our time.  We  also need to try to pull all those elements together into a cohesive package for the web.

As Mindy says: “The best time to tackle these attributes of the package is at the beginning — not at the end.”

Also catching my attention in the reader, Howard Owens pointed me to this article in the New Yorker about the "death and life of the American newspaper."

Now I’m ready to plug back in again…

Newsflash: A reporter brings back compelling video without eating up her day

Lisa Fernandez of the Mercury News recently blogged on News Videographer about a video she produced to illustrate a story she reported about a toddler who died in a pond.

 Fernandez’s video is a great example of what reporters can do with multimedia without putting half their day into it.  Fernandez went to the sight where the child died and shot the pond from different angles.

 

“I pieced the shots together, no sound just the sound of the water running, and while this video is not a standalone (it needs to be read with the whole piece) I think it aided visually for anyone who wanted to see how this could have happened.

“Three editors came over to me while I was putting this together and said, ‘Oh, that’s what it looks like.’

She said it didn’t take any extra time out of her day.

You don’t have to have a backpack full of equipment or spend a lot of time to provide an interesting layer to your stories. It doesn’t have to rise to the level of documentary.  It can just be an illustration to help deepen understanding of the story.

Lisa’s video should stand as an inspiring example to those who may be intimidated when they’re handed a small camera and asked to “get some video.”  With a little thought, you can bring back a powerful piece.