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The Stan and Madeline Stauffer Multimedia Newsroom blog.
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Lisa, Matt, Maha and Brandi, all 694 students, spent extra time discussing the project brief with me after class. The team - which consists of visual designers and information architects - is developing a plan to guide the class during the creation of the new KUJH-TV Web site. This brief will serve as a roadmap for the designers, information architects, developers and content providers.
Amanda, working in the foreground, is updating her 694 blog with this entry.
Years from now I plan on getting married. I can already tell you what we'll serve at our wedding: chicken and molé (MOW-lay). The two work so well together, you could not imagine a world where one was served with out the other. They're perfect complements.
The same can be said about TV news and the Internet. Ten years ago the opportunity was not there. The Internet was in its infant stage and TV news stations were more worried about losing viewers to newspapers and radio stations than computers.
But today, the Internet gives TV stations the opportunity to reach an audience beyond its viewing area 24-hours a day. Successful TV managers see the web as an opportunity and not a threat. Their Web sites are more than a page where you can see that night's stories. They go beyond the 5:00, 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts, offering viewers an enhanced experience. Their approach is simple. They have hired a team familiar with the countless programs capable of enhancing the broadcast.
It's programs like Flash, fireworks and Quicktime that can make a Web site more than a rerun of the evening news. Managers are investing in a staff capable of combining several programs to create a single feature for the site.
The best example of TV investing money into their TV sites happened prior to the current war in Iraq. TV stations such as CNN wanted to "own Gulf War II."
"They've built interactive maps with satellite imagery, multimedia slide shows, timelines, transcripts and an extensive array of background resources. The site's Iraq Tracker updates users with snappy summaries of the latest developments," wrote Corey Bergman of the Online Journalism Review.
But CNN and MSNBC and the other online bigwigs were not the only TV stations making preparations for an online presence. An eMarketer study found that 50 million people across the United States use the Internet as their main source of news during office hours. This prompted many local stations to improve their Web site.Nancy Cassult, vice president of content for Internet Broadcasting Systems, summed up the role both media play in covering this war:
What the Internet can do that TV stations can't is offer viewers more depth and interactive content. TV will show emotion of the war and tell stories of the people involved. The Web will display facts, figures and resources in a graphically appealing way that invites viewer participation.
The preparations TV stations made prior the invasion of Iraq should reflect the bond between television and the Internet. They are often seen as separate media. Now, just like chicken and molé, it's hard to imagine a world where one is served without the other.
Web journalism is to broadcast journalism as magazines are to say, photography. The web encompasses broadcast journalism but can offer a great deal more. Entire TV packages, entire programs may be offered online, and what's more, the web producer can archive past programs in such a way that users can access past stories to help provide context for today's story.
Also, as we've discussed, the web producer can make use of materials that were previously confined to print. Barney McCoy mentioned the limitations of the broadcast package: some of the most important stories may not be visually arresting, and so a TV package may not do them justice. But online, we can post whatever print documentation may be necessary to flesh out the story in a way that the one or two-minute package cannot.
McCoy's list of local schools' fire drill compliance provided the perfect illustration of this principle; this information was useful to every parent in the community, but would have been unwieldy in the context of a news broadcast. This way the reporter or anchor could draw parents to the station's website during the newscast. Thus both media supplement and reinforce the other.
I think our prospective website, if it is designed well, can enhance the educational and vocational opportunities for students. Broadcast students will have the chance to show the world what they can produce beyond the short package. Any worthy material they may produce that doesn't fit the rigid format of the nightly news, they can post on our site. This will give them a reason to promote the site on the newscast, it will increase the news output of KUJH, and it will expand our students' portfolios so they can demonstrate their diverse talents to employers.
Watching a broadcast newscast is like being a passenger in a car on a road trip. You can get a glimpse at cool billboards and buildings from the window, but if you want to stop and explore, you are out of luck.
When you watch a newscast, all of the news of the day is shrunk down to a thirty minute "trip" of one or two-minute packages with a (sometimes too) concise explanation of the skeleton of a story. If you want more information, you are left to figure out another way to answer any questions the story leaves you asking. It's like passing by an amusement park on the highway. The magnificent roller coasters hook you, but they all too soon passes into the horizon before you can say "are we there yet?"
The web takes you out of the passenger seat and makes you the driver. With side dishes, what we have been experimenting with on the KUJH website a television website can allow the viewer to take a rest stop and find out more.
The website can serve as a roadmap that can guide you off the highway and into the amusement park, so you get a closer look to see what you may have missed. Or it can take you through the back roads, allow you to travel around and encounter more than just the rides, if you so choose.
Convergence helps make a newscast not a destination, but a journey. With links, added photos, extra video or audio, graphs, tables, and whatever other added interactive feature that web producers can concoct, web journalism can augment a typical newscast into a intense expedition on the information superhighway (sorry I had to use it).
How can the Web and broadcast complement eachother without repeating one another, you ask? Hmmmm, I wonder where that is happening? Try looking right under our very own noses! Yes, I am talking (typing?) about our very own in-class project, the soon-to-be new and improved KUJH-TV Web site. You might be thinking I'm copping out by writing about it and not researching another site, but I cannot think of a better example of collaboration than this. In fact, if I could, I would just refer you to the creative brief for the site that is slowly (but surely) coming together as I type. It basically outlines how the Web can implement the best of broadcast and improve its weaknesses, such as time constraints and lack of permanence.
We've heard about convergence and lateral thinking to the point that it invades my sleep sometimes. It was as true then as it is now. The Web has so many benefits that will improve traditional outlets of media. I think it's entirely possible for the Web and broadcast news to work together without getting redundant. Not only does the Web allow a more in-depth appeal to broadcast stories, but it gives the opportunity to even add to the story through links and sidebars. It doesn't just stop there. We, the information architects (and visual designers) are coming up with so many ways to improve traditional broadcast news through the KUJH-TV news site. How does creating your own newscast from the best of the top stories of the week sound? Or how would you like to get a behind the scenes look at how a real newscast is produced? Maybe you'd like to know more about a certain reporter and stories they've done, or find more stories like the one you see on the KUJH-TV site from the "Kansan" or even the "Lawrence Journal World", just with the click of a mouse. Yes, these are only a few of the many ideas that keep the wheels turning in our heads.
The possibilities of how the Web and broadcast news can collaborate are endless. Well, maybe not endless, but there are more opportunities than you'd think. The Web will give broadcast a sense of permanence to boast about that previously only print could do, because these stories will now have a place to live. It will add capacity, releasing constraining time limitations that will allow reporters to thoroughly cover a topic. This teamwork will also give a sense of ownership, or at least more interaction, to the audience that broadcast didn't have before. This means that the audience will now have a choice, a response to what they see. In this week's chapter, it said that broadcast is the medium that is the most distant from its audience, but also the one with the most immediate impact. That doesn't have to be the case anymore. Because the Web can handle audio and video formats, broadcast journalists can now include things they weren't able to before, like an entire interview rather than just a 12-second sound bite. They can link more information to their source, or even create a sidebar story relating to their package. Package may not even be the right way to describe it anymore.
Can you see where this is all leading? The only thing I see standing in the way is the broadcasters themselves. Chapter nine said that broadcast news stations weren't using the Web to its full capacity, taking advantage of all it has to offer. It seems that too often television news sites seem to be in some form or another just shovelware sites, not implementing and expanding the stories to their full extent. This is the next level we are moving towards, exploring the Web and what it can do for broadcast, moving away from the redundant. The Web and broadcast don't need to be competitors, or repeat and reflect what the other does, rather, they should be partners and work together to produce (and proliferate) a better, more extensive avenue of news delivery.
Amanda has discovered coding. Her eyes have opened to the exciting world of possibilites. She did most of the work in both this post about ancestory.com and this one - with photo galleries (of her own photos). This is what the eHub is all about: breaking down barriers, trying new things and not being afraid. I am so happy, and so proud.
Congratulations Amanda. It's not so bad afterall, is it? I knew we would make a coder out of you eventually.
Ernis Mamyrkanov, Director of the Osh Media Resource Center, along with Kuban Mambetaliev, Chairman of the Kyrgyz Republic Public Association of Journalists, and their interpreter, learn more about the Multimedia Newsroom during a visit with Dick Nelson, KUJH-TV Newsroom Coordinator. The men were visiting The University of Kansas and the Kansas City area as part of an international program arranged through the International Visitors Council of Greater Kansas City.
The group sat in on our morning 694 class, which turned out to be a good class for them to visit because we spent most of the period looking at multimedia slideshows. I wonder how much of the discussion was lost in translation? Did they understand Rick's discussion of the "girls gone wild" community photo galleries, and all the innuendos that implies.
Today was a good day. No. Today was an awesome day. We finally got around to discussing last week's essay assignment on photo galleries. In a week that was tragically cut short by fall break, we managed to pack a lot in. Today's 694 class discussion lead us to an important ephiphany, one that should lead to new and exciting developments in the multimedia reporting curriculum. Stay tuned.
The Multimedia Newsroom gave KU graduate Roger McCoy a warm homecoming when he returned to KU and his hometown for a class reunion. McCoy, a reporter with the 10 Investigates unit at WBNS-10TV Eyewitness News in Columbus, Ohio, visited classes to speak about his converged news experience. Before coming to Columbus, McCoy had anchored and reported at WIBW-TV, Topeka, KCTV-TV, Kansas City, WKBD-TV, Detroit and WILX-TV Lansing.
In Columbus, he reports for broadcast and turns his investigative reports into print stories for The Columbus Dispatch, but not every story he investigates gets into print. But, he added, those stories that do cross media have a bigger audience and more clout.
"Convergence can keep eyeballs with your product," McCoy said.
Every outlet that publishes a converged story, means more people see the reporter's work. McCoy said about 17,000 people saw a story aired on television, but a cross-platform story was viewed by about 200,000 people.
Future journalists should realize that convergence makes the journalist's role even more valuable because they have the opportunity to reach a larger audience, McCoy told students. And, he added, sources respect that power.
After spending several days scanning, downloading, sizing and designing a photo gallery, as meager as it is, it seems only logical to examine it. The gallery on my blog consists of 10 pictures of dead or dying people. It adds depth and understanding to my blog, which is on covering and photographing death and tragedy.
Those who know the technology can see I converted a PowerPoint slideshow into a QuickTime movie. I did this by building a slideshow in PowerPoint, setting the transition time and using a PowerPoint tool to convert the slideshow to QuickTime. (Ohh, the glory of technology.) The photographs advance after 10 seconds without the need for a next button. While this works pretty slick, it could be a drawback if the user wants to stop on a particular photograph. It's important to note that this movie format where the user cannot stop on a photograph makes it harder for someone to download the photo to their computer -€“ an important issue for media organizations that like to protect their product.
The photos, which are both haunting and iconic, are the predominate element of each slide. Each photo has a title that helps the viewer understand what the picture is. Also, words beneath or to the side of the photo help explain what the story is behind the photograph. I also added the source of the photo and, in some cases the photographer's name, below each picture.
While the design is very basic, I think the gallery gives the viewer a very good sense of the topic at hand as the slideshow progresses. There is no color, except for the color photographs. The text is Times and is not always consistent in size. Compared to The New York Times galleries mine seems unprofessional. The New York Times uses different software than QuickTime, which adds to the professional look of its galleries. The Times has the user advance the gallery with a next button. The MSNBC.com photo gallery also gives the user control through a next button. MSNBC.com also does not use QuickTime. MSNBC.com has fade outs and fade ins between photos, which lends an artistic feel to the gallery. The galleries have less copy than mine does, and they are still able to get the theme and feeling of the photographs across to the viewer.
Some days, when I have a break between classes, I usually go to the Union, not for any reason in particular, but almost always end up going to the bookstore there. Most, well, actually all of the time, I venture to the photography section and thumb through the multitude of photographic coffee table books. I actually have a few of these, including Life magazine's "100 Photographs that Changed the World."
Life magazine, though, doesn't exist in the way it used to. Now, it gets stuffed into newspapers every week and doesn't have the presence it had during the mid-twentieth century. Now, thanks to changing economics, photojournalists don't have a way to showcase a collection of photos for a story. Most of the time, it's only one or two pictures that an editor chooses to tell the complete story.
"The ink costs too much," they'll say. "There isn't enough room."
Well, kudos, again, to the Internet for changing that.
The New York Times and MSNBC are perhaps the most reputable news organizations that are utilizing the Internet to take photojournalism to a whole new level.
Most people are familiar with MSNBC's Week in Pictures, an interactive slide show that lets the user navigate through a collection of pictures that best define what happened during the week. Last week, after Hurricane Ivan's wrath, the Week in Pictures had emotional images of a girl crying after she discovered that her childhood home was left in ruins, but also had pictures of a cowboy riding into the sunset after a small town rodeo. Rather iconic, but almost no one would have seen that picture if it wasn't on the Internet.
The New York Times, though, takes the standard slide show format in some cases, but for some stories it combines audio and photographs to make a not-a-movie-but-not-just-a-photo-gallery-either type of thing it calls an audio slide show. Very cool. Granted, it doesn't allow the user to surf through the pictures themselves, but if it's done well, you can't take your eyes and ears away from it.
To me, what most news web sites do in terms of a "photo gallery" is nothing more than shovelware; they take the pictures from the story, add all the ones that didn't make the final edit, and write cutlines. Still effective, but nothing compared to what the Times or MSNBC are doing.
For photojournalists, the Internet is a godsend. Finally, they can display all the photos they want and not kill more trees and waste more ink. Finally, they can tell the complete story and not rely on one or two pictures to do the job.
I'll still buy my books, though. They do look good on my coffee table.
Finding a photo gallery is a little bit more difficult than I guessed it would be. There are so many out there, it's hard to choose just one. I went to all of the news sites that I normally go to, and I was surprised to find that most of the photo gallaries on those sites were rather simple, just click on the arrow to get to the next one. Not a whole lot of cool flash technology, but it gets the job done.
Another observation I made as I scanned through more and more images was that photo gallaries are one really great way to see the world around you. I went to the National Geographic site, and found a little area called "Culturally Speaking" and it has a few little photo gallaries with pictures of different cultures around the world. There really aren't a whole lot of pictures to every gallary, but the pictures that were chosen were really great. And I liked the fact that the photographer wrote a little cutline to sort of give a bit of background. Although the pictures were fantastic, I realized that I was wishing it was presented a little better. I know that the clicking arrow to direct you to the next photo is easy, but I think that presenting these photos in more of a slideshow technique would have been a little better, maybe with some transitions here and there. And since they are pictures of different cultures, it would have been neat to put in some music from those countries, and maybe have a bit of narration from the photographer. I suppose that I was thinking a little bit of the New York Times slideshow about the bike tour through New York City. That sort of technique I think would really have made the most of the pictures displayed here.
I do think that photo gallaries are an interesting alternative to showing the news versus package or using video footage. To me, the point of a picture is capturing a moment in time forever, freezing it. You could either gain a little or lose a little with motion video because with motion you get context. Watching a slideshow of pictures, or even just clicking to the next picture seems like the viewer is more in charge, as is the theme of the web. I think having a photo gallary on a site is a useful and great option to showing the news, and that we should definitly make sure to include them in our website.
I'm not authoritative on the history of photojournalism, but I would make a fast bet than up until the Web, photojournalism was primarily a photo and a caption - the end. Maybe a magazine would have a section for the week's news in photos, but for most news stories, the reader is lucky to get even one black and white photograph per story with just a hint of story from the photojournalist called a caption.
The Web, however, acts as digital steroids for news stories. The reporter can link other information, add video and can have as many pictures as it takes to tell the story. While a lot of innovation is still taking place with photography and the Web, I've watched Jen Friedberg for some time and really like her take photo/audio slide presentations.
Simple slide shows should probably have some sort of template we can use for any ol' variety news story that happens to be visually stunning. But when it comes to more feature driven stories, I think Friedberg's style is something to look at.
Friedberg always offers more than pictures. Quite often she has sound in the background and her pictures will change according to the story told on the soundtrack. But she may also have links, more story to tell and video available as well. These are more feature driven items for a story, but they give the power of well thought design.
If you really want to see something professional and progressive I think visualedge.com may have some inspiration. It is a slide show on cocaine. The basic model is from Flash and it includes pictures and video by selection. This is what happens when Poynter and journalism students get together, and I think what they've done is slick.
While I enjoyed perusing slide shows, I think one of the more useful gems I found for someone who really wants to keep up with what's new in multimedia presentations was a little site called joeweiss.com. I found several presentations here quite fascinating.
My concern for visual presentation on the Web is the inherent download times. People have only so much patience on the Web for even the most stunning display of pictures. I'm guessing 10 seconds is a threshold of patience many happy clickers aren't willing to cross. The growth of highspeed capability helps curb the concern, but a news site is supposed to be for everyone's use.
KUJH-TV's site may or may not need this same line of thought. If our core audience is on campus, then highspeed really isn't an issue. The same applies for students at highschools thousends of miles away. They are probably on some broadband as well. However, we should never intentionally find it acceptable to lose our low-fi audience. Careful attention to Web optimization should help in this category.
I love photoblogs. And I visit several daily. They're a unique breed of photogalleries because they're not just about taking view-worthy photographs, but about recording the aesthetics of everyday life.
A few I particularly like: Ephermera, Heather Champ, Satan's Laundromat, Dooce's daily photo.
But perhaps my favorite is Matt Haughey's Ten Years of My Life. Matt's plan is to post a photograph every day for ten years. He started on his 31st birthday and plans to have quite the archive to reflect on by his 41st. It's been a year so far.
I love the deliberate introspection that fuels this site. It's a bit self-indulgent to publish it online, but I've already admitted that self-indulgence is my fuel, so that's hardly a negative by my judgment. If I had the ability to maintain a daily project, I'd love to do the same. If a picture's worth a thousand words, even a year's worth of archives tells volumes more than I'd normally write.
Each day's photograph has a bit of background and a title. Tiny, unobtrusive links under each photo take you to recent ones and the full archive, which has a thumbnail of each photographs posted so far (which means it loads slow, but I think Matt's still playing around with the archives). Clicking through them gives you a better idea of what he's been up to than what little he writes in his archives.
Matt uses MovableType (plus a few plugins) to make Ten Years of My Life work. If you want to do the same thing without having to set anything up, check out TypePad (the dummies' version of of MovableType), which has a photolog feature as part of its CMS. It's not free, but it's an extremely user-friendly and elegant system for publishing your photographs online.
My youngest brother is a senior in high school. The fact that the baby of the house will be leaving the nest soon has inspired my mother to thumb through the hundreds of pictures we have in our basement. Many are yellowed or stuck together, and almost all of the photos are out of order.
They all represent stories and memories -- just in slightly tattered and discombobulated way.
Since I bought my digital camera this summer, I have made it habit of immediately downloading my pictures and burning a back-up CD. Because of online photo galleries, I no longer have to worry about losing photos; I can easily email pictures to friends, or print photos out with as high of quality as I could get by developing them at Walgreens.
Creating online photo galleries this summer for GAME is what prompted me to make this move into online photo galleries.
These photo galleries also help me to tell stories about my personal adventures, and professionally in adding another dimension to my reporting.
In taking part in both a little shameless self-promotion, and self-analysis, I'm examining the photo galleries I have produced for the Lawrence-Journal World and Lawrence.com.
Both galleries have more of an ultra-local focus than many national publications do.
This summer we took pictures of the youth of Lawrence playing baseball and softball. Most of the emails we received from readers (second only to name corrections) was requests for the reprints of the photos taken of their kids.
For the past few weeks, I have been taking pictures for a new photo gallery that we are in the process of launching. It highlights the nightlife (sometimes debauchery) and fashions that can be found at Lawrence bars.
Now I could see why the GAME photo galleries were popular. However at first, I asked myself, how is Lawrence.com going to benefit from having this random gallery of pictures of drunk college students at bars? But very quickly I found the answer. People like to see themselves, their friends or people who do the same things they do. What results is a site that gets a lot of hits from the target audience.
These galleries follow a very simple template, and it satisfies the needs of the audience by providing more visual stimuli than newspapers don't have space to accomodate.
The captions appropriately identify the photos, and the viewer can easily pick and choose the photos they enlarge. This website also allows consumers to view the entire photo gallery in a slide show format, also with captions.
What I like about the Lawrence.com photo gallery is the fact that it is not just a photo gallery, but it also markets the other components Lawrence.com offers with a very visible right rail.
The photo gallery itself tells the stories that words can't. Which is more exciting? Seeing someone ride a mechanical bull or reading about it?
I decided to look for a photo gallery about the debates, in the interest of newsworthiness. The best one I found, however, did not originate from Cleveland or Miami, but from Plano, TX -- this was the presidential debate for the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science, which took place a week ago.
If you want to find the latest in display technology, I say, look not to CNN or the NYT, but to the high school science geeks.
This one caught my attention immediately because it required no work whatsoever on my part. As soon as I linked from the Google listing, a slide show began. It advances from one picture to another automatically; the user can set the speed, stop, reverse direction, loop, or resize. Users can also select a transition mode, like "blend," "pinwheel," or "pixellated," to name a few. This last option seems like overkill, but maybe I wouldn't say so if I could just get it to work. Overall, the slide show DOES work, even on my slow dial-up connection, which is no small feat.
From a news perspective, what this slide show lacks is context for the viewer--the who, why, where, when, and what. Cutlines and captions, or audio narration, would be necessary to convert this into a news product. I think a slide show like this one is preferable to a simple photo gallery IF you have a narrative to tell through the pictures. Text or narration, and a logical sequencing of visuals, will keep the viewer interested, assuming the subject matter is interesting to begin with.
The photos on this slide show are unremarkable, and there are too many (61) for one sitting. But they are arranged chronologically, so you have the potential for an interesting narrative here. If the web editor decided the pictures were interesting but that there was no reason to arrange them in a narrative sequence, then a thumbnail photo gallery would be preferable because it would give the user more flexibility.
In general, I must say that a debate does not provide the best material for a slide show or a photo gallery, since the participants usually remain stationary. Friday's "town hall" debate between Bush and Kerry might be an exception, if the candidates are allowed to move about the stage. Or if they come to blows.
Soon, it will be January 2005. It will mark the beginning of a new semester. More importantly, Rick and Staci will be celebrating ehub's 6-month birthday.
Instead of rejoicing with cake and ice cream, they'll be passing out syllabi to the new team of online editors.
Throughout that semester the team will attempt to refine the relationship between the Kansan and the Multi-media newsroom. They will also try to recruit what Rick calls "tweeners" (Strategic Communication majors interested in News) and work to accomplish other convergence goals.
But next semester will be different than this semester because we will have built a foundation for them to work from.
In a dream world, Everyone will get their online news from the ehub Web site. The University Daily Kansan, KJHK and KUJH-TV News would all contribute their information to this site and it would serve as an example of the school's ability produce award-winning online news.
Unfortunately, this scenario won't happen in the near future. Revenue and marketing boundaries have constrained this idea of online convergence at the University of Kansas.
The ehub site should be managed through a formula driven by education, not revenues and profits. The site should offer an educational experience to all the students involved in the operation, including the Kansan and KUJH-TV staffs.
Converging campus media into one Web site requires a group effort. And the biggest contributors must be the students. Students within the individual media need to become more familiar with other campus media. A solution to the current situation would be a news meeting where the Web team, the Kansan and KUJH-TV hold morning budget meetings together. This effort would unify the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
In addition to student efforts, the faculty must also help a school that promotes convergence actually converge. Now, it looks like individual campus media will be competeing online.
Our class is in the midst of redesigning KUJH-TV's Web site. We need to showcase our ability to create a successful Web site that is more than just shovelware and place for reader comments. The success of this project might be the best way to converge the Kansan and the other campus media.
Convergence can't happen overnight. Our class will have created a comprehensive plan for managing and maintaining the ehub Web site through our redesign project, so next semester's class has a better chance of converging this school that is supposedly the front runner in convergence.
I regularly read the E-Media Tidbits that are delivered to my Inbox thanks to Poynter. And, today, I just had to hit the comments links to put in my two cents on "What's blogger, not this."
Here's what I said
Lately, I too have been struggling - no obsessing - with the definition of "blog." Although I still can't write a straightforward explanation, what I've come to realize is that there are different ways to look at the meaning of "blogs" "blogging" and "bloggers." There's the act of "blogging," the no-rules-free-as-a-bird-to-write-whatever-you-want-everybody-and-their-dog-is-doing-it-it's-just-an-online-diary-read-my-"blog". Then, there's "blogger" the technology. Which is merely a means to an end. At the KU School of Journalism we have adopted blogger.com's tools to provide our students with a unique opportunity to learn how to become better journalists, without sacrifcing journalistic standards. In the struggle to help journalism students understand the world of online media, we have gone back and forth about how much code is too much code to learn. That's where blogger software came in...we very quickly and easily set it up to provide our students with their own mini-content management systems - without them having to understand databases or scripting languages. We don't consider them bloggers, and I think you would agree that these multimedia reporting students are definitely doing more reporting than blogging.
More than 40 people attended today's dedication of the Stauffer Multimedia Newsroom in honor of Stanley and Madeline Stauffer, whose generosity made the newsroom possible. Representatives of several news organizations, J-School faculty and staff, and KU administrators were here. But where were the guests of honor? The reception was scheduled for noon; it was nearly 12:30 and the only Stauffer in attendance was Louise, who had just this morning been reminded that the event was taking place. She was here almost as an afterthought, to see her grandparents.
The guests who were here included several J-School professors: aside from Dean Ann Brill, Dick Nelson, and Rick Musser, the emcee, there were James Gentry, Linda Davis, Peggy Kuhr, Susanne Shaw, Chuck Marsh, Malcolm Gibson, Carol Holstead, Sharon Bass, Patty Noland, Barbara Barnett, Doug Ward, and Bob Basow. Other KU personages in attendance included Vice Provost Don Steeples, James Mechler of the Endowment Association, and Lynn Bretz, director of University Relations.
The newsroom was abuzz with casual conversation and media interviews -- media people interviewing media people about the media. Channel 13, the Capital-Journal, the Journal-World, and the campus media all had representatives in attendance. It was a collegial, insider's atmosphere.
At the same time the business of the newsroom continued. KUJH writers and producers, along with 694 students like myself, had to maintain our focus as much as possible while surrounded by visitors. Producer Marc Ricketts had only a few hours to put a broadcast together, as he does every Friday afternoon. He remained bravely at his post as the room filled, knowing he was on display. I was trying frantically get ahold of Sgt. Ward at the police department so I could fill out the police log; yet once Dean Brill's presentation started, I was crossing my fingers that he would not call back until it was over. Fortunately he complied. Brandi Mathiesen and Natalie Flanzer, also of the 694 class, went about their usual duties, helping 415 students upload their stories to the web.
Dean Brill finally decided to begin the presentation without the Stauffers, letting Louise act as representative of the family. She spoke, then gave the floor to Prof. Musser, who presented Louise with a framed drawing of the newsroom, and a card for the Stauffers signed by all the students who work in the newsroom. Louise accepted the gifts on her grandparents' behalf. And then, the signal came from the hallway--the guests of honor were here.
Ultimately, the fact that we had to wait for the Stauffers only enhanced the drama of the occasion. They made a grand entrance, greeted by a rousing ovation from all the guests and students.
Mr. Stauffer himself was gracious but concise. "This is the new media," he said, and that said it all.
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Picture it (cue the foggy haze and dreamy music): Reporters, TV and Web, working at computer terminals side by side, each writing up a story about the bank hold-up that happened that afternoon. Producers of both media finding out more information on stories and putting the finishing touches on others while also making sure reporters are getting their stories in on time. Even a newspaper reporter runs in from time to time. Everyone is moving around the newsroom, like a fine, well-oiled machine, with the same goal in mind: Produce the news. "Keep dreaming," you might be thinking to yourself. But this vision might not be as far a stretch as you might think.
What we are doing in our little eHub multimedia newsroom is the first step towards making this dream a reality, a multimedia reality. Having all types of media working together under one roof is probably the best and smartest idea since milk and cookies (Whoever came up with that combination is a genius). It seems strange to me that this hasn't happened sooner. I mean, having all types of media together in one place seems to me to be the best way to get the news out, be it reading it, hearing it, or seeing it. Think back to the days of kindergarten when all you knew how to do was simple arithmetic. The equation here is simple addition: good + good = more good, broadcast + newspaper + the Web = the best and comprehensive look at news.
I feel surprised and proud that here in the Midwest, in little old Kansas, we are light years ahead of other school's journalism programs, the so-called more "prestigious" schools, and even actual news stations around the nation. Surprised because places such as Columbia School of Journalism didn't have much of a multimedia newsroom to speak of, if any. And sure, the station that I interned at this summer had a nice looking web site, but all of their content was pretty much shovelware; there was no real original content to be found. I'm proud because this journalistic and technological endeavor the level of cooperation between different media that we are trying to accomplish is astounding.
By the end of this semester, I think this class is going to form a sturdy foundation for creating a more converged newsroom, and perhaps we'll set an example, maybe even the standard for what a newsroom will and should be in the future.
Change is scary because it is new and unknown. That said, I still think it is in the best interest of the J-school to converge the three media outlets into one website. But I do not think it will be the eHub as it exists today. The reason, because this school prides itself on innovation, a converged website with a built-in communication network would be innovative. What better way to showcase the talent of the up-and-coming journalists than to show that they are not afraid of moving with the industry?
I hate to be so blunt -- no wait, I don't. This is how the industry is evolving.
Newspapers and television station owners want to own each other. It is a logical business move. By gaining control both the newspaper and television news outlets you gain control of the business. The resulting convergence can and will be showcased on the web. As students, we should be preparing ourselves for this. We go to school to prepare ourselves for the "real world." Shouldn't journalism schools all over the nation be predicting the future of the industry and preparing the student journalists for the future? Is that not why we are here?
Now, back to the J-school. In time the students will realize that a converged website is needed. The question is whether we are ahead of the game or behind it.
When the website is converged, what will happen to the eHub website? I think it will still exist much like it does today. It will be needed for internal use, a communication between editors, television and web producers.
