For Samford Crimson journalists

College Media Innovation is ramping up for another online content contest:

Multimedia

1. Best audio slideshow – Recognizes excellence in combining photographic images with audio to create an enhanced story. Judges will look for strong visual imagery and strong audio storytelling that integrate well together. Audio must include elements of the story (i.e., not a musical soundtrack to a slideshow).

Submission must include URL for slideshow entry to be judged.

2. Best breaking news video – Recognizes excellence in using short-form video on the web as a storytelling medium video that focuses on a breaking news event, produced by an individual or team.

Submission must include URL for video entry to be judged.

3. Best video package – Recognizes excellence in using longer-form video on the web as a storytelling medium video, produced by an individual or team.

Submission must include URL for video entry to be judged.

4. Best overall multimedia – Recognizes excellence in use of audio, video, hyperlinks and animation in the presentation of web-based stories. Judges will pay special attention to the use of available technology to complement and enhance the story content.

Submission must include URL for site to be judged.

And a whole lot more at the link. Which of these do you see the Crimson competing for?

Paul Bradshaw gives us plenty to think about when it comes to using social media in the practice of our journalism. He finds there is a small amount of extra work, but a worthwhile reward.

As journalists we used to be active in seeking those people out – and we used reliable, often official, channels to do that, meaning we were often too reliant on particular sources. Now sources are increasingly coming to us and the work is in making ourselves visible, accessible and trustworthy; and in filtering and verifying the information they provide.

That’s not ‘more passive’ journalism, it’s getting out of your silos and making contact; it’s moving from being a conduit to a stimulator. It’s moving from a linear production process to a networked one, and too few journalists are doing it.

The feedback, the better angles and the better reporting you can produce will be worth the effort. Doing so will also help you build a better brand for your newsroom and for yourself as a journalist.

Chris O’Brien is writing about the new newsroom they’re looking to build at Duke. It sounds like they have the sort of situation where they can customize it to their needs and wants from the ground up. While that is great news for The Chronicle, it also makes them think about what they want the principles of their newsroom of the future to be:

Community: The community should be at the center of a newsroom. That can mean physical spaces for training, spaces for public events, and social spaces. But it also means making the community an integral part of the news and information gathering, discussions and production.
Multi-platform: The ideal newsroom should embrace all platforms — online, print, broadcast, mobile — on an equal footing. Any newsroom that organizes around a single platform, and considers the others to be secondary, risks becoming stagnant as those platforms change and new ones emerge.
Innovation: We’re entering an era of increasingly rapid change. The ideal newsroom today won’t be the ideal newsroom of 2012. So any newsroom needs to make innovation a priority and find ways to create the capacity for constant experimentation.
Collaboration: Because any newsroom will be one among many in its community, it’s critical that it figure out how to work with others in the news and information ecosystem, whether that’s linking, teaming up on strategic stories, or finding other ways to cooperate when its strategic.
Transparency: The explosion of information and news creates an enormous challenge for people to figure out which sources they can trust. The best way for a news organization to approach this problem is to become as transparent as possible. In the case of some new newsrooms we examined, that meant a transparent structure that allowed the public to see inside and invited them in. But in terms of content, that also means being as open as possible about your processes, sources, decisions and content.

Think they got  everything? Overlook something? Overthink something? Those are sound concepts, something they’ll likely be very proud of as they grow into their professional careers.

You can see their complete plan.

If she had it to do over again she might react differently, because this is the sort of fly-off-the-handle that will follow her forever.

An intern for KSTP-TV did not take well to being fired. She began hurling threats at an executive producer and kicked out the glass of a conference room door in an attempt to get at her, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday.

Jennifer Nicole Anato-Mensah, 21, a University of Minnesota student, was told about 7:15 p.m. Oct. 13 that things weren’t working out for her.

“This is a young girl who was not understanding concepts in a television newsroom,” said Danielle Prenevost, 33, executive producer of the station’s early evening newscasts. “I said, ‘I don’t think your level of college experience is enough for this job.’ “

At that point, Prenevost said, Anato-Mensah “just lost it.”

[...]

Several newsroom employees heard Anato-Mensah shouting, yelling obscenities and threatening Prenevost …

Not the sort of thing that’s going to help her find employment later.

Marc Wood at ACP has posted a nice collection of college newspaper’s Wednesday editions. Have a look at some of these on Flickr.

Have you seen the Reporter’s Cookbook? Think of it as a meeting place and a support group for swapping hints and tips on general journalism, but most importantly computer assisted reporting.

Lots of great stuff on that site to keep in the back of your mind.

We’re going to soon be talking about this a lot. We’ll discuss ways that we can think beyond the newspaper paradigm and how we can use the tools already in place to help you develop audiences, cultivate brands and how that will ultimately help your portfolio.

One such little idea is by using Twitter. Here’s a post from Amy Gahran about Twitter for journalists:

Twitter can be quite an effective radar screen for news or relevant issues.

[...]

Twitter can help you engage people on a personal level, and to demonstrate your interest in them. This is something that, IMHO, many journalists resist — but that can benefit journos and their work significantly once they loosen up about acting like human beings in a public venue.

Twitter is going mainstream now. Early this year I started the Twitter stream at al.com. In a matter of days we had more than a hundred followers — when few people around here were on the service. In the first week we broke two big fire stories via Twitter …

Gahran’s also got tips for how you can get started — which I’d encourage you to do. I’d also encourage you to follow (to follow is to friend if you’re in a Facebook frame of mind) relatively talkative people. Follow those who fall into your interests and they’ll tip you off to ideas and great new things.

Also follow a few people of different and varied interests, just to get a nice slice of the conversation.

You can follow me too, if you like.

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