10 Multimedia and Social Media Journalism Resource Sites
Here’s a list of useful resources on multimedia journalism:
1. MINDY MCADAMS’ Reporters’ Guide to Multimedia Proficiency is a 42-page PDF of all 15 posts on her blog compiled since Feb, 2009. This is great mini-manual to learn multimedia journalism skills such as how to post an audio interview on your blog, edit video using iMovie or Windows Movie Maker or produce slideshows using Soundslides.
Follow Mindy’s blog, RSS feed, Twitter feed or Facebook account.
2. NO TRAIN, NO GAIN has a Multimedia Reporting section that posts some really useful updates. Recent posts on Liveblogging, Multimedia Story-telling, and Ethics in Social Networks.
3. MEDIA HELPING MEDIA has a diverse range of training resources. David Brewer and Craig Kanalley have contributed some useful posts on the social networks and online and multimedia sections such as 30 tips on online news presentation, multiplatform authoring, tips for livetweeting and “Grazing on Rumour, Feeding on Facts”.
4. MARK BRIGGS’ Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive is two years old but still a worthy resource. You can download the PDF or read it online.
5. KNIGHT DIGITAL MEDIA CENTER’S Tutorials page as a list of useful skills to pick up on such as FTP, creating widgets and geotagging.
6. POYNTER’S NEWS UNIVERSITY has various courses you can follow for free but you need to register first.
7. NEWSLAB.ORG has various tips on its Tools and Resources sections such as Multimedia Planning and Production, Learning From Hyperlocal Failures, and Getting More From Social Media.
8. DIGITAL NEWS JOURNALIST has some interesting tutorials including a 4-part piece on using Google Docs and Caption Writing for Web Slideshows.
9. RYAN THORNBURG’s The Future of News has some interesting how-tos and slide stacks eg: How to Edit for Online and SEO, Social Media and User Generated Content for Journalists and Reporting for Online Media.
10. JOE MURPHY, a Denver web developer and journalist, posts at his Joe Think blog. Some choice posts:
“Towards meaningful metrics”, “Tips on writing headlines”, “Getting your online news site off the ground in 7 steps”.
FOR MULTIMEDIA INSPIRATION visit these sites as suggested by Angela Grant: Kobre Guide, MultimediaShooter, Interactive Narratives, Las Vegas Sun videos, The Globe and Mail multimedia section and News Videographer.
BONUS: 10,000 Words
The girl in the window
(via Mindy McAdams)
A very moving story by Lane DeGregory of the St Petersburg Times of a feral child Dani imprisoned in her own home:
Just before noon on July 13, 2005, a Plant City police car pulled up outside that shattered window. Two officers went into the house — and one stumbled back out.
Clutching his stomach, the rookie retched in the weeds.
Plant City Detective Mark Holste had been on the force for 18 years when he and his young partner were sent to the house on Old Sydney Road to stand by during a child abuse investigation. Someone had finally called the police.
They found a car parked outside. The driver’s door was open and a woman was slumped over in her seat, sobbing. She was an investigator for the Florida Department of Children and Families.
“Unbelievable,” she told Holste. “The worst I’ve ever seen.”
The police officers walked through the front door, into a cramped living room.
“I’ve been in rooms with bodies rotting there for a week and it never stunk that bad,” Holste said later. “There’s just no way to describe it. Urine and feces — dog, cat and human excrement — smeared on the walls, mashed into the carpet. Everything dank and rotting.”
Tattered curtains, yellow with cigarette smoke, dangling from bent metal rods. Cardboard and old comforters stuffed into broken, grimy windows. Trash blanketing the stained couch, the sticky counters.
The floor, walls, even the ceiling seemed to sway beneath legions of scuttling roaches.
“It sounded like you were walking on eggshells. You couldn’t take a step without crunching German cockroaches,” the detective said. “They were in the lights, in the furniture. Even inside the freezer. The freezer!”
While Holste looked around, a stout woman in a faded housecoat demanded to know what was going on. Yes, she lived there. Yes, those were her two sons in the living room. Her daughter? Well, yes, she had a daughter . . .
The detective strode past her, down a narrow hall. He turned the handle on a door, which opened into a space the size of a walk-in closet. He squinted in the dark.
At his feet, something stirred…
Link to Multimedia Report by Lane DeGregory and Melissa Lyttle.
80 Useful New Media Tutorials
Here’s a list of tutorials for those who want to get started in new media:
SEARCH
01. Google Advance Search Tips
02. 10 Most Amazing Google Search Tricks
03. Top 10 Obscure Google Tricks
04. 7 Clever Google Tricks Worth Knowing
05. 4 Google Tricks
ALERTS
06. Customize Google Alerts to your email box
07. How to create a Yahoo Alert
RSS
08. RSS In Plain English
09. How to use Google Reader
10.How to subscribe to feeds in Google Reader
11. How to add feeds to Bloglines
12. iGoogle Set up by Ryan Wade
13. Using RSS 101 by Alex Barnett
14. Netvibes Tutorial
15. Yahoo Mail RSS Reader
SOCIAL BOOKMARKS
16.Social bookmarks in Plain English
17.Digg basics
18.Del.icio.us Tutorial
BLOGGING
19. Blogs in Plain English
20. How to set up a blog on WordPress or Blogger
21. How to set up and install WordPress
22. How to install WordPress
23. Chris Abraham WordPress Tutorial
24. 3-minute intro to WordPress features
25. How to add a photo to your WordPress post
26. Create a blog with Blogger
27. How to customize your blogger header
28. Adding photos in Blogger.
29. The five types of blog posts
30. 25 types of blogs
DIGITAL PHOTO
31.Picasa tutorials by Chris
32.How to download and install Picasa
33.How to import photos from camera to Picasa
34.How to Use Adobe Photoshop
35.How to use Picasa
36.Editing photos with Picasa
37.How to use Flickr
DIGITAL AUDIO
38.Audacity Tutorial for Podcasters by Jason Van Orden
39.How to download and install Audacity
40.Audacity: Recording set up
41.Audacity: Editing tools
42.Audacity: Basic editing and trimming
43.Audacity: Adjusting levels
44.Importing audio and exporting the MP3
45.Audacity: Saving your project
46.Basic Audacity 1.2 Tutorial
47.Mixing with Audacity
48.How to embed an MP3 audio player
PODCASTING AND VIDEO BLOGGING
49.How to podcast by Jason Van Orden
50.Podcast hosting
51.Where to upload videos for podcast.
52.How to set up videoblog from Freevlog
53.Free video hosting companies
54.How to use Feedburner for video blogs
55.How to submit videos to iTunes and Fireant
56.How to set an account on YouTube
57.How to upload video to YouTube
58.How to easily create video on Windows Movie Maker
59.How to make a good quality video for YouTube
60.Windows movie maker tips for YouTube
AUDIO SLIDESHOWS
61.Getting started with Soundslides
62.Preparing photos in Photoshop for Soundslides
63.Create first photostory using Microsoft Photostory 3.0
64. Jake’s Photostory Tutorials
SOCIAL NETWORKS
65.Social networks in Plain English
66.Customizing your privacy in Facebook
67.How to post photos and notes on Facebook
68.Adding photos to Facebook
69.How to upload videos on Facebook
70.MySpace set up tutorial
71.How to upload photos to your MySpace profile
MICROBLOGGING
72.Twitter in Plain English
73.Ten Ways to Use Twitter
74.How reporters use Twitter
75.Twitter: A Beginner’s Guide
76. Download and Install Adobe AIR and Twhirl, a Twitter client
WIKIS
77.Wikis in Plain English
78.How to edit a wiki page
79.PB Wiki – Getting Started
80.Add and edit page in MediaWiki
Three multimedia stories well told
[via Bloggers]
Three treatments via audio slideshow (Free and Uneasy), video+photos+great text (The boy in the moon), and a great story accompanied by some video (Pearls before breakfast).
Free and Uneasy by the New York Times describes the uneasy year in the life of Jeffrey Deskovic after he was exonerated for a crime that put him behind bars for 16 years.
The Globe and Mail’s Ian Brown shares the pain and joy of bringing up a severely handicapped child:
“I hurry after him. For all this nightly nightmare — eight years of desperate worry and illness and chronic sleep deprivation, the havoc he has caused in our lives, threatening our marriage and our finances and our sanity — I long for the moment when he lets his crazy formless body fall asleep against me. For a short while, I feel like a regular little boy’s father. Sometimes I think this is his gift to me — but parcelled out, to show me how rare and valuable the gift is. Walker, my teacher, my sweet, sweet, lost and broken boy.”
In the Washington Post Magazine’s Pearls before breakfast, a world-renowned violinist busks as a social experiment playing complex classical pieces on his Stradivarius. Will anyone notice?
Minnesota bridge collapse and freed prisoners
MultimediaShooter points out two multimedia packages that combines data with visuals, audio and text.
1. “Exonerated, Freed, and What Happened Then”
The New York Times interviews 137 prisoners of 200 exonerated by DNA evidence since 1989 and compiles a mix of very compelling audio interviews, stats and traditional narrative.
2. The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s 13 seconds in August package on the 35W bridge collapse is a “living document” with details on 76 of the 84 vehicles involved, their occupants and interviews with victims.
Regina McCombs Top 10 Advice for Future Journos
[via Innovation in College Media by way of Mindy]
Regina McCombs of startribune.com:
1. Deadlines: Make sure you’re not publishing once a week (or once a day), but updating as news happens.
2. Blog. Link to student blogs. Allow comments on articles and respond to the comments.
3. Publish Flickr (or other photo) feeds of campus events.
4. Do any multimedia you possibly can: podcasts, audio stories, video, whatever you can.
5. Study local news sites, watch what they’re doing, decide what you like or don’t like.
6. Produce some multimedia to have on your resume, even if it’s a personal project.
7. Find a local mentor at a newspaper or TV station, or network with others learning it.
8. Get more community oriented, include user ratings, tagging and reviews like you see on our vita.mn site.
9. Learn video
10. Learn to adapt. Commit to life-long learning. Live with certainty of uncertainty.
Work she’s most proud of: A People Torn: Liberians in Minnesota.
Her must-read blogs:
1. Teaching Online Journalism
2. Multimedia Shooter
3. Lost Remote
4. Cyberjournalist.net
5. Journerdism
Others to watch out for: AndyDickinson.net, Broadcast & Podcast Gadgets, Common Sense Journalism, Getty Images News blog, Inside Online Video, Journalistopia, Multimedia Evangelist, Multimedia Reporter, News Videographer, NewspaperVideo — Chuck Fadely’s blog related to the list, Online Journalism Review, Terry Heaton’s PoMo Blog, What the Duck, the X degree, yelvington.com
Why video online sucks
Pete Clifton, the head of BBC Interactive, says stop doing standups that suck:
“What irritates the hell out of people is if they click a story which says ‘Britain buys 100 new tanks for the war in Afghanistan’ they then click on the video and it’s just a bloke standing in Whitehall saying ‘they’re going to buy 100 new tanks for the war in Afghanistan’. The viewer could say ‘you’ve wasted my time’.
“We have done a lot of that. We have put up hundreds of pieces of video on the news site and too often they have replicated what the story has already said.
“We should think more about what that page does in the round and come up with a piece of video that absolutely complements the text… we should do less video but be much more focused on how it works and give it a higher profile where it can work alongside the story.”
Dow Jones, MTV ponder changes
[From AP: Dow Jones, Journal Register Mull Sales]
Dow Jones is considering selling Ottaway community newspaper unit, which currently owns 15 daily and 19 weekly newspapers and more than 18 other publications in nine states.
The unit’s papers have a total daily circulation of 431,057 and Sunday circulation of 473,167, according to the company’s Web site.
While the division has been consistently profitable in the past, its July advertising figures slipped in several categories including display and classified. Its one bright spot was online, which soared 62.4 percent
July ad sales also saw an increase Dow Jones’ flagships, the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s.
Dow Jones has not outright said it is shifting its focus to online, but in a July 20 earnings conference call CEO Rich Zannino clearly emphasized that the company was in the hunt for new media profits.
The company has plans to expand its online video with content and advertising as well as licensing and delivering content to cell phones and PDAs.
Enhancements to its web sites, including live quotes and live news, are also in the pipeline, according to Zannino.
[From Reuters: MTV–will digital kill the video star?]
Twenty-five-old MTV, which now appears in some 442 million households in 167 territories worldwide, including 88 million households in the US, is quietly reinventing itself to retain its crown as as the top purveyor of cool, youth-driven pop culture.
“All the media companies now are having discussions about things that never would have been fathomed two, three years ago. I think we’re finally moving beyond the phase where everyone was afraid to move because they were afraid of making the wrong move, and instead they’re just trying things to see what happens,” said MTV president Christina Norman.
The company has several ventures aimed squarely against upstarts MySpace.com, YouTube and even Yahoo to establish a presence on new digital platforms.
MTV Overdrive, a broadband Internet video-on-demand service, launched in April 2005, has more than 1.5 million video streams per day.
During the recent Video Music Awards, Overdrive viewers were able to watch behind-the-scenes footage during commercial breaks and otherwise interact more broadly with the event.
Norman said the trial was a huge success, so much so that MTV is applying the same experience to such shows as “TRL.”
This strategy of using the Internet to give viewers more access to content extends to MTV’s university feed, MTVU, with its Internet counterpart, MTVU Uber. Norman said she may consider airing other MTV niche programming, such as MTV World, over the Internet.
In the wireless area, MTV got in on the game through a partnership with the teen-focused Virgin Mobile, offering exclusive ring tones unavailable to other carriers. It even commissioned hip-hop producer Timbaland to produce a suite of original ring tones.
The company continues its mobile presence beyond music, striking deals to bring original short-form programming–such as animation and live-action video–to mobile phones.
The mobile strategy has expanded with Flux, a mobile content service that takes different forms in different countries. In the United States, Flux is MTV’s direct-to-consumer mobile content storefront, selling ring tones, graphics and so on.
MTV is exploring digital downloads with the test launch of Urge, a subscription music service that is integrated into the next version of Microsoft’s Windows Media Player.
Just as Urge faces dominant competition from Apple Computer’s iTunes, MTV was outflanked in the social networking boom when its parent company, Viacom, in 2005 lost out to News Corp. on the bidding for MySpace.
Since the acquisition, MySpace’s usage has quadrupled, and only the video-sharing site YouTube has come anywhere close to matching its success.
“We know we want to be in social networking, and we know that’s where our audience is,” said Norman. “But it’s important for us to approach this in the right way and not have another ‘me too’ application.”
One strategy is to extend many of MTV’s social outreach efforts like Rock the Vote, sexual health campaigns and townhall-style meetings with politicians into an online community.
On the entertainment front, MTV is readying a number of services that let people post their own content and interact with MTV’s content on multiple platforms. Norman said to expect specifics “in the next couple of months.”
Content is still king for a company whose programming includes not only vast volumes of music videos but also original series like “The Real World,” “Beavis and Butt-Head” and “Punk’d.” Yet the challenge and the opportunity in an age with multiple delivery platforms is to determine which content works best via what channel.
“A lot of us are learning how to create to the platform rather than just spreading content across platforms,” Norman said. “It gets harder and harder the bigger you get. You’d love for everything to be interconnected in some way or another, but that may not always be the right thing for that channel or that audience. For us, it’s always about making it addictive for the audience and not just shoving another (program) down (their) throat.”
Transcript excerpts with Espen Hansen, VG, Norway
Here is the transcript of the talk by Espen Hansen, Managing Editor, VG, the biggest newspaper and website in Norway, on rise of integrating online journalism, user-generated content, online ad campaigns and mobile video.
EXCERPTS FROM AUDIO RECORDING OF ESPEN HANSEN, MANAGING EDITOR, VG MULTIMEDIA, NORWAY
4.00: Today information travels very fast, it’s global. Eg: The controversial Prophet Muhammad cartoons. There was an outcry for boycott of Danish products not by newspapers or TV stations but by SMS and within days, it was very effective.
We don’t even know who the editors are anymore. In a sense we are all editors. Within minutes a (rioter with a handphone) will have his own audience.
5.33: Today information is much more complicated. It is not one-way. And this is important – the readers communicate with each other.
6.20: Cites Rupert Murdoch’s buy of MySpace for US$600m: Power is moving away from editors, the chief executives and the proprietors. Power is moving away from us. A new generation of demanding consumers who want content delivered when they want it. They want to decide.
7.30: Growth on Internet is from sites that have user-participation: Blogger growth : 520 percent and MySpace 318 percent. Something is happening.
In VG we don’t think about it as “Internet vs paper.” This is not the big difference. We think it is going from “telling the readers” to “creating arenas where people can come with their content, communities”.
We think from “deciding what they should read” to “making content available when it is convenient for them.” From “delivering our content”, to “creating content with the readers.” Everyone seems to understand this except us (newspapers). Search engines, aggregators and communities are the biggest websites. Where are the newspapers? No English newspapers are on the Top 10 worldwide. In Norway, No 1 and No 2 are newspapers.
VG is the largest Norwegian newspaper, the largest website and largest mobile site.
10.40: Going from analog thinking – printing once a day, to digital thinking – printing all the time for many platforms.
11.05: More than 1 million readers everyday on the Internet, together with newspaper we reach half the population of Norway. Rev: 121m Norwegian Kroners (Only Internet, profit about 25m ringgit). The newspaper makes a lot more money. It’s real money now.
12.24: We deliver news when it happens – not once a day. We get our Internet users to go to read our newspapers and vice versa.
13.50: In newspapers we talk about deadline.I have banned the use of the word “deadlines”. We talk about BIRTH of the story Deadlines are when you work until a certain time, and you can’t get the story better. When we have story confirmed we print a few lines and then we ask “What can we do more”. The most important words we use:” We will be back shortly.” It builds expectations.
16:00: We are reporting near real-time of a major court-case currently in Norway. When the verdict is about to be announced, we had ( series of mugshots with flippable graphics on the final sentences for each accused).
18:26. All this happens before the TV News. Our goal is not to let our readers wait for TV news anymore.
19:10: Big ship capsized on Norwegian west coast. We figured there are houses nearby. And we called these houses. Within minutes, people were helping us about the incident, reporting what was happening and sending us digital pictures that they had taken.
We decided to systemize this and have a four-digit number 2200. Now we can receive SMS, digital photos, video.
21:40: Stabbing on the tram via SMS. The news battle is about being the first to know. We could be the first to break the story online. We publish as fast as we have the story confirmed. Because we could be early, we could have exclusive pics. People were on the way home during rush hour, people wanted updates on their phones, because there was a manhunt and he was on the run. People were frightened. Our reader with a mobile camera transmitted the capture, and it was the first pics of his arrest on our website
24:38: Tsunami. 10,000 Norwegians involved. We discovered from this that our greatest assets was not the money to fly to Bangkok, our hire a helicopter or satellite links, but ou greatest assets is we know our readers and they have mobile phones in their pockets. Our readers, SMS us first. Our reader sent us the first pics. He was sitting on a rooftop documenting and transmitting to 2200.
27:55: Because we were early, they in Thailand was asking us where is the nearest hospital, the embassy. So we made a page to update our readers in Thailand. As our own reporters are still sitting on the plane 15-20 hours away, we got our readers to send us articles, photos, videos, being there and telling us what was happening. We also set up a service of a survivor list. The only thing we checked was whether this was confirmed by close relatives. After four days, the police took over from Foreign Dept. They had 10,000 names and we had 8,500. There were mistakes, but within minutes we had confirmation.
The Foreign Dept had 6 percent right. The police had 30 percent right. We had 79 percent right. And 90 percent right by the time police figures were out. This gives you idea of the force of this approach.
33:25: We got thousands of questions for the government. These were very relevant questions and it made our journalism better. When we posted these questions, we had Ministers really trying to answer questions at length. We asked our Foreign Minister to have a live chat with our readers. For one hour he answered questions. It was a great success.
36:00: Debbie, a victim of tsunami was there trying to reunite lost children. Via satellite phone, we had our readers talk to a young, intelligent, Muslim Norwegian in the middle of the crisis. For our readers much stronger story, much easier to relate than if I told the story. We had a heart-breaking tsunami picture of man being reunited with his child, and Debbie was in the background, someone they could relate to.
38:05: We have developed a lot of tools for user-generated content. We have a whole section called Readers VG. Integrated communication. (Newsblogs stats: In six months, 9,000 readers, 40,000 articles, 350,000 comments, 35,000 photos). I have an editor for this, but all the content is from our own readers. It’s a great success. 10,000-13,000 postings in our discussion forums everyday. This is in a country with 4 million people. We print it in our newspaper everyday, making newspapers more lively. The readers’ letters page was last week news, handwritten by old ladies. But today, we have SMS, and postings right up to the deadline. We let not only our own team of critics, but our own readers to critique movies, food, wine, etc.
40:58: We do live chats everyday – politicians, pop stars, experts in different fields. Very popular. The blogs are the most important thing right now. We have developed a new system for blogs. We tried blog (ware) on the market but we needed to develop a blog (ware) that was suited more for a newspaper. Almost 10,000 blogs, with an incredible amount of content.
Example: A first-time father’s blog of birth of child in the car, before they reached hospital. The happy father documented it via his phone on straight onto his blog telling the world. No deadline. You don’t want to wait with news like that, you just want to get it out. We have a blogger near the North Pole blogging about polar bears. Even the prime minister is blogging with us.
43.18:How did we get the prime minister to blog with us? I wanted the top politicians to blog with us. I went to the leader of the main right wing opposition party, the one who always complains “I never get on TV”. I gave him his own blog, and he accepted. And from then getting one by one of the leaders of the nine parties and eventually I got the Prime Minister. Young readers can write straight to him.
44:40: We pick out one blog every week and print it in the newspaper. On Page 3 our editors have their own blog and it is also published online. We bring readers to the blogs and the other way around.
46:00: We bring news to the blogs. We integrate news on the blogs. That’s why we had to do it ourselves. We needed some kind of control, we needed to be able to kick people out. If they don’t behave, they don’t follow our rules, if there is racism we can kick them out.
46:53: Eg: Story on SIS pilots were on strike. We integrated our users’ comments, blog posts and discussion forum posts on our front page of our website.
49:44: Katie Melua, No 1 on popchart. We did live concerts with artists. We ask readers for questions and we ask the artists. (Katie answers questions) Good questions, good answers. The readers feel we are connected to them.
51:28: ADVERTISING: Started with standard banners. Sold by impressions. Problem was we already big traffic. But advertisers asked “where’s my ad?” because his paid impressions was done by lunch. No one really liked this. Then we did bigger boards and we sold it for 24-hours or for one-week. That was a success. Advertisers liked this, because they are used to it. Much easier to re-use material than a newspaper.
53:00: In 2001, we had to educate our advertisers because there was general feeling that “online doesn’t work”. We gave them dominance on one page, where they are the only ones there. They liked this.
54:30: Developed ad campaigns. (Shows very successful campaign for a movie 37 and half, with individuals that when clicked they would talk one-by-one) We told advertisers to tell their story on the front pae, so users will not go to their sites, but read their story there.
56:27: If you click on the mag ad, you can subscribe there, you don’t have to go to another page.
58:00: 17,000 Euros for a top banner ad on front page for 24-hours. Sold out everyday. Sold out for six months. It’s easy to sell the front page, but we have to sell the other sections. Make those sections more visible, more attractive.
1:01:00: Exposure of ads is the most effective for the first four times. It is no point paying for the 5th and 6th and 7th. More effective to show just a few times.
Going back to impressions. Can guarantee impressions, and sell the same space after 5pm-6pm.
1:02:50: Integrate all the newsclips into our site for VG TV. NRK, the national station, did a study we have only three dedicated people for our TV and they have 400-500 people, they see us as a threat.
1:04:40: A schedule. You have to view it then or record it. TV is passive. They decide what when and what I should watch. On VG TV we do active. It’s outside timeline. We just make things available. We decided when to watch. VG TV is not going to be within timeline. Our vision is deliver when news happens. And we make it available for our readers right away. We are trying to set a new standard to present and produce this news.
The Potential: Time spent on Internet versus TV. Internet is 35 percent, but advertisers only use 11 percent of their money on Internet. We analyse how many watch video on web, still only 14 percent. They sell 60,000 downloaded episodes of Lost a week. Why shouldn’t The Star do that? You have readers right?
1:08:30: DumDum Boys, rock and roll band in Norway was away for 8 years and did not ask big stations but came to us. Because they want to reach the young readers. We transmitted a live concert.
1:10:05: This is our new tool. Mobilephones as a video camera. Olympics, weather reports. As a journalistic tool, it’s good enough.
1:11:00: Sometimes no strategy to what we do. Eg: The Edward Munk painting of Scream was stolen. Use your mobilephone and take your own scream, and we had a programme to transmit back a painting of your own scream.
Live blog: Talk by Espen Hansen, VG Group
UPDATE 3.14pm: Have uploaded the entire talk (72 minutes of 192Kbps MP3) onto Archive.org. You can download it here. Note it’s
a 103.8MB file.
Liveblog: 10.50am, The Star, Sec 16, PJ, Malaysia: Attending a talk by Espen Egil Hansen, MD of VG Multimedia. Will blog this is live in next few minutes.
10.52am: Datuk Wong Sulong describes VG has a very proactive publishing company that represents the future of newspaper journalism and VG is the biggest interactive media site in Norway.
10. 54am: Espen: Went scuba diving in Malaysia. Intro: We were speaking to them. One-way communication (before). Today a lot more complicated. Information travels very fast, it’s global. In certain terms we are all editors. Within minutes (anyone with a handphone) has an audience.
Mentions Murdoch: Power is moving away from us (publishers). Users want the information now, the way they want it.
“In VG, it’s not Internet vs paper. Move from ‘telling the readers’ to ‘creating arenas, communities.’ From ‘deciding what they should read’, to making content available for them to consume when they want to.”
11.05am: We started 10 years ago, and we really wanted to do it. Largest mobile Internet site (VG). From analog — once a day, to digital — printing all the time. 121 million NOK (Internet revs), 43 percent profit margin. Newspaper makes a lot more money.
Deliver it, when it happens, not once a day. They can read when it is convenient for them.
11.07am: No more “deadlines”. Print immediately when confirmed – we call it the BIRTH of the article.
Most important sentence: “Come back for more.”
Digital storytelling is about building expectations.
Our goal: people shouldn’t wait for TV news anymore.
11.14am:
19th Jan, 2004: Newsflash: Big ship had capsized. Called the neighbourng houses. Reported on their website within hours. Used their digital pics and videos. We were early, We got exclusive pics. People were reading on their phones for updates, the man was on the run.
Within a short time, we had proper coverage of this major accident.
Text messaging to a four-digit number 2200: MMS pics, sms, video, everything goes thru 2200.
EG: Stabbing of man in tram. The news battle is about being the first to know. Updates to mobile users during rush hour because man was on the run.
Mentioned Tsunami and Norwegian victims were asking them in Norway where was the nearest hospital in Thailand. We updated with info on local maps, hospitals, etc.
Built a service to help victims, photos of survivors, victims. They (polic) had 10,000 and we had 8,500 (victims) and we thot we were wrong.
There were mistakes.
In that we had it 79% correct while Foreign Dept 6% and Police: 30% after four days.
11.29am: (Battery died, uploaded at 12.55pm) Politicans couldn’t brush off tricky questions from victims’ families. Some questions were very, very good.
We had a live chat with Foreign Minister. It was a great success.
Debbie Syahputri (Norwegian who was affected by tsunami) tried to help victims, children. Satellite live chat with her. Much stronger story for our readers. Pic of a heart-breaking story of a man reunited with his child with Debbie in background.
[More excerpts later…]
