Judge the NPPA Monthly Multimedia Contest

Just a quick reminder to all NPPA members to please log in and help judge the monthly multimedia contest by midnight EST Thursday. For non-members, you can view all the entries from around the country here.
There is a lot of inspiring work enter this month. As always, if you don’t have a lot of time to judge the [...]

A breaking news Google Map

 
Last Sunday, Spokane, Wash., received a record 12 inches of snowfall. It paralyzed the city. What’s an online developer to do when faced with a breaking news event that’s spread out over a large region? If you’re Ryan Pitts, online director with my newspaper’s website Spokesmanreview.com, you whip up a Google Map and solicit viewers to send in their snow [...]

Good video should connect emotionally to your viewer

 In order for video storytelling to be effective, I believe it has to connect with viewers on an emotional level. The hardest part about my job as multimedia editor is that I have to be the “no” man.  I get lots of requests from reporters  to shoot video to go with their stories. Many of these [...]

Mountain Workshop’s Killer Website

 

 
 

Last fall, I was a multimedia coach at the Western Kentucky University sponsored Mountain Workshops. The workshop, now in it 32 year, hosted more than 70 photographers, multimedia journalists and picture editors as they visually documented the small town of Danville, Kentucky. This was the first year that multimedia storytelling was added to the workshop. There were [...]

Do You Have a Video Strategy?

Having a strong video strategy for your newspaper is important, By Defining who is going to shoot the video, who is going to edit it and ultimately, the method of how to serve it out to the viewers, you will begin to set in motion a roadmap for change in the newsroom.
There have been a [...]

Goosebumps On My Eyeballs

 
Every so often a multimedia project comes along that just gives me goose bumps on my eyeballs.
“Twenty days. Twenty thousand still images. A single message. Toronto Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk captures the issue of global warming in a video created entirely by using still images.”
I have noticed more and more photographers using the intervolometers in their [...]

Random Final Cut Pro Tip

I am a serial unlinker.  Being able to move audio and video separately is one of the great benefits of professional video editors like Final Cut Pro. I was constantly mousing over to the button bar to click the link icon. That motion is a time waster. 
I had recently transitioned to using the [...]

Becoming one with the pod

 

Today I shot a news video (better quality version here) of a storage unit building going up in flames. As I was busting a move to get to the fire, I heard the words of Lenslinger echoing between my ears. 
From his recent comment in “Taking me To Task” post:
“As for tripods, any [...]

The Social Networking Universe and why it is important for the survival of newspapers

 
 
 
When I get in front of a crowd, I become a whole different person. I’m kind of shy in real life, but I explode with passion when I get to talk about things that I believe are important, like multimedia. 
Today was a multimedia training day at The Spokesman-Review. A photographer, two web producers and two mobile journalists [...]

NPPA Monthly Multimedia Contest

 
 

 NPPA members don’t forget to enter your multimedia videos, slideshows and projects by 11:59 p.m. on the 15th of Jan. The contest locks down and transitions into judging mode for the rest of the month. Make sure to log in and help judge after the 15th. For non-NPPA members, you can still view what everyone else has [...]