Wednesday, March 22, 2006
The Ping of the Bat Comes Alive in Spartanburg, S.C.
For newspaper Web sites, good multimedia work doesn't have to be limited by your circulation category or perceived skillset. You just need the right attitude.
The Spartanburg, S.C., Herald-Journal's Web site, GoUpstate.com, had been a one-man (Andy Rhinehart) operation until Tom Priddy (formerly of PressLink and KRT Direct) decided to move back home and reenter community journalism. Priddy got his start with Roger Fidler back in the late '80s, so he has impressive online credentials. And it shows.
Using the Mac-only software Soundslides, Priddy is creating audio slideshows like this one on a local baseball prospect. Priddy wrote the story for the newspaper, shot the photos, recorded the interviews on a small Olympus digital voice recorder, edited the sound with Audacity, and put the show together with Soundslides.
"Newsgathering took about four hours and the editing took about another full day and a half or so, maybe a little longer," Priddy told me in an e-mail. "It's longer than I expect the next one to be because I'm very much still experimenting and learning. Comparatively speaking, I'd say I'm still in preschool in terms of how much I need to know about making these audio slideshows."
As important as the skillset, however, is Priddy's -- or any journalist's -- attitude. "It just takes a slightly different mindset when starting on the project," he explains. "As soon as I heard the pings of the bat, for example, I knew that I needed to use that for the cadence of the story. When I heard the announcer on the PA at the game, I knew I needed a shot of him at the mike for that sequence. That sort of thing. You just have to try to fill in the places that normally would be overlooked in a print or photo story. You're trying to tell a more complete story in a different sort of way. And I have to get a lot better with the sound, because I recorded far more ambient sound at the game than I needed and spent much of my time editing it down for a succinct clip."
Priddy's attitude seems to be: If I can do it, so can you. But will traditional print journalists go to the effort of learning the online skills to supplement their reporting and writing? If the end result is any indication, it's well worth it.
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