The future is unwritten

This course did not so much introduce me to the tools of the digital age as it reinforced and re-educated me to the inter-connective powers of blogging and linking, but especially to the social media network that is developing exponentially.

Previous Experience:

I have experienced the power of blogging. Four years ago, while embedded with a local Army Reserve unit in Iraq, along with the daily articles and photographs I sent to the newspaper, I sent blogs on a daily basis that were more of a personal diary, sharing my perceptions and experiences with the troops and on the forward operating base. I believe that I received more responses from the soldiers' families about the blogs than I received from the newspaper's readers about the articles.

Here is a gallery of photos from my embed in Ramadi, Iraq:

http://billschaefer.smugmug.com/Journalism/Journey-to-Iraq-Ramadi-Iraq/7562956_NHsN2#488768250_LPC6g

My experience at the newspaper has inclueded producing a number of photo galleries and a few audio-slideshows using the software Soundslides and Audcity.


Pros and cons of multi-media

It affects my work in both positive and negative ways. The positive is in the way it improves the way I tell the story, whether I'm recording ambient sound or interviewing someone, sometimes while capturing the audio the subject reveals something that has remained hidden until that moment and then I know to stay on the watch for that moment to capture it with my camera.

The negative is that it is rare to find the time necessary to capture all the facets of multi-media, photos, audio and video, let alone find the production time to adequately edit all those components into a cohesive, linear story.

Where do we go from here

But, as I wrote in my lead paragraph, it is the power and potential of the social media networks that this course has opened my eyes to understand. As journalists we have to incorporate blogging, linking, RSS and multimedia, in our daily work, it is the next wave of reporting, 21st century journalism, and it is the social media network that we must utilize in transmitting our work.

You can make better use of all these tools by constant use. It's like a language, as you use it more you become more fluent and more proficient. And as you use it more, you will develop more connectivity to an expanding community, a community that has no borders, no borders and no restraints, other than the ones you impose on yourself.

Media Convergence in the digital era

I struggled with how I wanted to approach this exercise. Eventually, I decided to approach this assignment as an exercise to show how journalists and visual journalism are using the web to not only place stories on the web but are using the web to promote themselves in their efforts to find work, not just commercial work that will pay the monthly bills but meaningful work that is issue driven.

When Worlds Collide

• Media platforms converge in the digital era

• Websites bring newspapers, magazines, radio and television under one umbrella, one platform;

Online websites are an amalgamation of all media with news sites composed of print, video, audio and multi-media productions that combine all elements into one production. With this emerging digital revolution comes expanding access to information around the world without national boundaries or censorship to hinder the transmission.

With the developing growth of online websites, commercial, and independent, freelance sites comes the ability to offer more information, more variety of information than the standard media platforms from the past.

National Public Radio is an example of an evolving medium utilizing print, video, still photography and slide shows to augment what was in the past a strictly audio presentation of the news.

http://www.npr.org/

The above link takes you to the NPR website where you can listen to previous programs and even download previously aired programs. Some of the audio segments are supplemented with video, still photography and slide shows. The website has a section called "the picture show," that supplements the audio story telling with video, photos and slide shows. Examples are Andrea Hsu's "Seamstress By Day, Songstress By Night," and Claire O'Neill's "The Birds And The Bees . . . And The Plants," an essay with an accompanying slide show. Both stories are linked below

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/

They even have a You Tube site called "Radio Pictures" where the convergence of multi-media, audio, video and still photography, along with some written text presents the stories of people, sometimes in their own words, sometimes in narrative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIz2loDW1jw

The digital era has presented a new arena for freelance photographers, videographers and reporters to present their work and to solicit work.

The company Story4 is a multimedia organization of journalists that have moved from press journalism into multi-media reporting.

http://story4.org/

Examples of their work linked below, include stories about poverty in California's Central Valley, "Sowing Change" and a story about Big Sur, an area along the California coastline, south of San Francisco, in Monterey County, "The Nature of Well Being." Much of their work is done for non-profit organizations.

http://story4.org/portfolio/

http://www.bigsurlandtrust.org/

Another example of multi-media reporting in the digital age is the website MediaStorm. Brian Storm is the originator and creator. The site is sponsored by the WashingtonPost.com. Storm's style of multi-media reporting is at times advocacy journalism and he is unapologetic about his desire to use the media to effect change.

www.mediastorm.org/

http://mediastorm.org/0025.htm

This is a small sample of the work proliferating on the web. As the world of journalism evolves so does the platforms we have to do the reporting to the world. As one door closes, another opens, and with the global accessibility of the web many doors open.