Saturday, March 10, 2007

What does Flash, a sophisticated software program for creating interactive websites and digital animations, have to do with with Go, the ancient board game that originated in China?

Read this blog post by Mindy McAdams, who holds the Knight Chair for journalist technologies and the democratic process at the University of Florida and is author of "Flash Journalism: How to Create Multimedia News Packages." In it she compares her experience teaching Flash to her students to her attempts to master Go.



Two statements from her first Go teacher speak to those of us struggling to to master the tools of multimedia.

"Go is a hard game."

“Go is a long game."

While her focus is Flash, these Zen-like statements can be applied to any technology that put journalists  in the uncomfortable position of replacing their competence as reporters, editors, photographers, and designers with a dismaying sense of incompetence.

I think we can take  comfort in McAdams’ story;  I certainly do as I return to photography for the first time in decades, try to learn audio recording and the editing software these technologies demand.

It's a hard game.
It’s a long game,

It brings to mind the statement attributed to the 19th century French novelist, Gustave Flaubert, that has consoled me as I struggle to master the writing process.

“Talent is a long patience."

"Just because something is hard and can take a long time to learn” McAdams says, “doesn’t mean you can’t learn it. But it’s not a quick or simple process. Hard things take time. Hard things offer great rewards. Learning a hard thing is more mind-expanding than learning an easy thing.”

Wise advice.

Image source: Detail of The Four Accomplishments, by Kano Eitoku. One of six folding screens: ink on paper. Shows people playing Go. Japan, Momoyama period, 16th century. On exhibit at the Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution. Published under Wikipedia Commons.



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Meg Martin, who's on her way to a new job as an online producer for the Roanoke Times after nearly two years at Poynter Online, left us with a great gift.

Some Places to Go for Online Learning About Working Online
Tutorials, articles, tip sheets, blogs and other forms of e-learning PDF

It's an amazing collection, enormously beneficial to newsrooms trying to catch up.


Meg advises: "you might want to let folks know that it’s a PDF. (Some computers don’t handle PDFs well, and it’s nice to give folks a warning). We typically just put [PDF] after the link."

If you don't have the Adobe Reader, which opens PDF files, it's a free download at

 http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2_allversions.html

Thanks, Meg!!!!!!!!

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Earlier this week, I posted a URL to a screencast created by Meg Martin showing how to post blogs in our seminar blog.

Here's the URL: http://www.poynterextra.org/meg/how_to_blog.swf

One thing you need to know is that at the bottom of the screen, in dim gray, is a set of buttons; from left to right play, pause  followed by rewind and fast forward--disregard the last two.

Remember you need Adobe Flash Player free at http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/



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Sunday, March 4, 2007

Greetings and welcome to the blog created for the exclusive use of participants and faculty taking part in Poynter's "Reporting and Writing for Multi-Platform Newsrooom" seminar.

Usually, we communicate through the listserv and that forum can continue to be an outlet for logisitcal questions, etc.

This blog, like your homework assignments on NewsU, is yet another way to explore the world of online journalism. If you haven't blogged before, this will give you a chance to familiarize yourselves with the form, and experiment with tone, style and other aspects of writing online.

If you blog now, consider this another way to join our seminar experience.

WARNING: This blog is private, and intended for use by seminar participants and faculty. However, as many have learned to their dismay, even supposedly private online materials can make their way onto the Internet. While this is not intended to hinder your right to free speech or ability to criticize, be mindful that whatever you write here may sometime in the future come back to haunt you. So before you let loose a volley of negative comments about colleagues, news organizations, etc. take a moment to look your post or comments over before you hit submit.

Whatever your blogging experience, I think you'll find this screencast tutorial produced by Meg Martin, Poynter Online's associate editior, to be very helpful. It requires Flash Player, a free download available at

Blogging software varies from one another so Meg's tutorial will enable you to use Poynter's system with relative ease.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: Tell us about favorite blogs!

Let's kick off the conversation by sharing 2-3 of our favorite blogs, either by hyperlinking from the software or simply cutting and pasting the title and link into your message. Please include at least one journalism blog; otherwise the choices are upt to you.


Here are some of my favorites:

1. Interested video and interactive media from one of the best multimedia staff's around. Scope out "Behind the lens," the blog maintained by the multimedia.com at washingtonpost.com. Items tell the story behind the story and usually include the video under consideration. One disappointment: the latest blog is January, 2007. The team may be too busy too blog.

2. Creating Passionate Users Although, like ours, this is a group blog, Kathy Sierra, a software trainer, seems to be the driving force. As a trainer, I like her posts because they're witty, informed, and motivational. They also fly in the face of conventional wisdom that blog posts must be short. Hers can be quite long, but their length isn't off putting. That may be because she uses imagery to break up her text, and her style so conversational. I also get a kick out of the 50s-era photos that she spices up with balloon comments.

3. Gangrey.com The subtitle of this blog says it all: "Prolonging the slow death newspapers." Created by Ben Montgomery, a St. Petersburg Times reporter, the blog is "A writer's approach to helping bail water out of a sinking ship." It does so by spotllighting great writing and increasing, online content, that generates lively comments.

4. The Mechanic and the Muse: An Owner's Manual for Writers.

I created this blog last year, having hit bottom in a number of ways (see "Why I blog" on the top left rail). It violates a cardinal principle of effective blogging by failing to appear consistenly. It's written for me as much as for whatever readers it attracts--I use it to capture ideas, stories, etc. and to comment on topics that capture my attention, such as plagiarism. It also features photos, something that makes newsy blogs more alluring.

I got the idea of photo illustration idea from Janine Kahn, who blogs "School Me: Aventures in Education" for the the Los Angeles Times web site. Kahn's blog is intensely local and features short items. Its layout and steady drip of news items makes it a must-read. Notice how the blog maintains its own ethical standards; at the bottom of an item about the arrest of a former LA school official for fraudulently getting the large district to buy his textbook a note points out "Note: An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty in court." [How many times do we include such boilerplate in print versions?)

Ethical note: It's a snap to find photos on the web, but it's unclear about whether their use constitutes a form of visual plagriarism. I make a point of crediting the source, but am not sure if that's good enough. Grist for our ethical session with Bob Steele on Wednesday morning?
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