How do you treat your newspaper copy online?

In putting this hypervideo story together, I came across some some choice cuts from a fly-on-wall approach when the Telegraph invited a group of us on a tour of their newsroom.

It's senior exec was very gracious in answering a range of questions.

This one concerns how journalists treat their copy before it goes online.

Now, I didn't ask my colleague what he meant behind the question, but my guess is it has to do with SEO, Key word density and the likes.

You're writing for two audiences, and if you're clued up on writing Jakob Nielsen style, with Search Engine Optomisation for a good measure, you'll score big time.

Some CMS programmes we've discovered are better at wooing bots ( spiders crawling your text) than others.

Managing Change - the media way

On one of the busiest train concourses in London, commuters can be observed randomly criss-crossing one another heading for their destinations.

Whilst as good as clockwork, the 8.10 a.m commute from your house to work will be a harrowing journey of people packed into carriages resisting the temptation and scourn of other passengers to move up so others can join.

In each case a simple remedy beyond further stock and concourse investments may be at hand.

In the case of Victoria simply placing pedestrian lanes by colouring the ground with arrows pointing the way might ease the daily collisions.

On the trains indented sole marks indicating where passengers could stand would force even the most reluctant that there is room to move.

Both these instances involve change.

That is management change.


All Change
The solution may be techincal or otherwise creative, but often it involves changing the mindset of management reluctant to spend any more money without immediate returns.

Videojournalism and the new paradigm of multimedia is like that.

It could transform your fortunes, but how and presumably not overnight is the thought.

If you've been privy to the Telegraph's story of how they changed ( i really should post this video some time) it is instructive for the will and determination to lead the way.

For many months a core group of managers travelled the world visiting newsroom upon newsroom gathering and deciphering "intelligence", then processed that to set up the distinctive hub which gelled web and print.

Most change sparks thoughts of a revolution and the Telegraph has not been inure from criticism of change.

Internally, it starts, and then it spreads out with an envangelical zeal bringing others on the way.

Change happens all the time around us and we all cope in some way.


We're all changlings
You'll get up tomorrow having to negotiate something you didn't do the same way the previous day.

But the idea of change can often scare us.

It smacks of "in the with the new and out with the old".

It is a vision and hostage of our fortunes.

And at some point when the zeitgeist crystallises we have very little option; we simply can't wait any longer, for the paradigm has engulfed us. It's no longer a fashion - here today gone tomorrow- it's a way of life.

A new style is born.

The web was not going to last and it did.

Video was a pipe dream but we're awakening every day to new possibilities.

Whether you're Vjing or not, whether you're a fortune 100 company or not, whether you're a super tanker media company or not, change changes all the while, over lengths of time.

And it's not whether we can buy new shinny toys to do our latest bidding for us, but whether we're ideologically prepped ourselves for the ineavitable.

Change happens and in our organisation we make allowances for it; we'ne built in the change factor.

The BBC as you'll find out in our video blog interview has innovators within its rank.

You might even call them creative change merchants spotting the new new thing.

They're not alone.

But, but we could learn from this thesis.

The signs are we warm to change in principle as Clinton and Obama tell their stories, but the realities ahead can be awkard if we haven't properly managed those doling out and those on the end of change.

The days of a job for life was kicked into the long grass long ago; the days of continuing on a linear curve are now equally messy.

2008 - this could be the year video breaks free.

Or is that too radical a change.

BBC versus Telegraph

Is Guy from the Telegraph by any chance speaking about the BBC?

Yesterday Journalism.co.uk reported the launch of their new multimedia newsroom.

Guy says some interesting things in the interview which is part of a bigger story

Tell me a story - IM6VJ

Guy Ruddle Daily Telegraph Podcast Editor talking to Viewmagazine.tv David about how multimedia and the Telegraph is the future

My head hurts.

I have five books in front of me - one an original from MIT - which started off multimedia as we know it. (re- Negraponte)

I have been furiously writing in a note pad, surprised, challenged, disagreeing, but understanding that the discourse is what I am looking for deconstructing videojournalism - already deeply influenced by photography, film and sound.

This morning I filmed/interviewed Guy Ruddle at the Telegraph who spoke about their multimedia offerings and how one national broadcasters has been pressed to look at what the Telegraph is doing cuz they're 'wopping' us.

I'd already thought the package with Guy, the Croydon Advertiser doing Sound Slide, and Al jazeera's Riz Khan was way incomplete, so I crossed over to our graphics department where two heads of Graphics further aroused my interests.

Their bent, multimedia has altered in meaning in delivering everything the computer can offer into a commodified entity. The end user is still king, but there are significant spaces to explore.

So I'm reading through Stewart Brand's The Media Lab Inventing the Future at MIT and Multimedia from Wagner to Virtual Reality.

And this is why in part my head's pounding. There are so many ideas about ideas, thoughts within thoughts, links from present stations to new ones that I have taken a break to "brain dump" - some kind of cartharsis.

It still strikes me that the geometrical spatial plane online and interactive narrative can further 'disrupt' present flows.

Actually, I should say links away from the status quo.

We're back at video hyperlinking which I demonstrated in the Trust in the Media video and now with some new action scripting (some kind of "tell target") could be deployed towards a new experience.

And what if this piece of work - seven years old- was modifed so each narrative linked off each other in a factual based story.

And what if we could xml narrative data on-the-fly, so further explanation could be given of background info provided.

Yes it's all about the end user

What is multimedia journalism - who **** cares?

It's a dogged question that I'm looking at with a videojournalism package next week.

I love the web for this type of pre-shoot thinking.

Here's what I have planned and please do chip in - as they say in Blighty.

I have a shoot from Al Jazeera with Riz Khan, which I hope to follow up with the Telegraph and then the Croydon Advertiser.

Riz is a multimedia operator and you'll see an array of DV cam he uses for his shoots. The trick is in the lighting

The Telegraph frankly need no introduction in this area.

Whilst the Croydon Advertiser has gained notoriety for its soundslide shows.

All of these bring different elements as the sum of all parts to the multimedia landscape and it will be interesting to hear what the parties have to say in a considered package rather than one which has the obligatory 2 minute TV time span.

There's some archive from 95 with interviews from the Guardian, Sunday Times and Telegraph about their thoughts on the matter which I'll drop in.

So what's the point in this?
I suggested the package to the Press Gazette in the face of a market that has come a long way in the last year and thus deserves a look in.

I also stumbled upon this site in my referral matrix logs - a Channel 4 Commissioner Matte Locke giving a robust speech to independent TV producers to pitch to him pieces that are not "Buckaroo" packages.

Buckaroo is that game played where the users try and place a saddle etc on a horse which buckaroos when the weight's too much.

If anything TV has shown itself up by it's lack of multimedia expressionism

What's multimedia got to do with it
So what does multimedia bring to the journalism table?

Six years ago in this article for one of the UK's leading architecture and design magazine's Blue Print, a colleague and I produced an interactive documentary.

It garnered ok attention, making its way to the finals of Channel 4's Unleash the Talent comp.

It's strength was that it was circular, no navigation arm, so required users play with it.

I hadn't quite dabbled in as much game theory then as I have now, so it was a wonderful eureka moment.

And there have been more. The Successor Generation - a documentary, radio piece, online site of a story I have kept in touch with over 13 years examines South Africa's young black professionals.

Who Cares
Multimedia yes, but frankly who cares. Who cares?

It's a language, a discourse and if you can speak it but no one can engage what's the point?

Multimedia in terms of a visual vernacular is a universal language, just like film.

There are various descriptions in the industry at what constitutes multimedia, from blogs to ful blown film sites like this Darfur Now, which shame, could and should have been made by any number of broadcasters

For instance there are sites that are multimedia driven but not multimedia in the singularities they offer.

On the other hand there are multimedia practitioners offering multi user experience, which claim the senses.

You only need to look at Apple 's Trailer site for new film sites in this catergory. Xmen is now a classic in the ranks of multimedia.

Does it matter really? Well, yes and no.

The bottom line is about delivering richer experiences for the end users isn't it, and one that gives them greater control?

It's about finding a more expansive, sometimes simpler way of telling a story, that may have a beginning but no end.

And what's apparent about that strand of multimedia stories is their timelessness.

Newsday's Cost of War is a brilliant example of a multimedia package that I came across from the Batten Awards 2 years ago and it has't left me.

It's also about the innovation and economics of journalism using available technology, offering something uniquely wonderful, pushing new paradigms and widening consumer choice.

Newspaper doing TV is one

Adrian Holavaty's Chicago Crime.org is another.

And the economics must be such that new producers feel confident they're prolonging the shelf life of their assets and learning, as well as engaging more with a wider audience.

News never goes away.

The Tsunami, Hurrican Katrina, the Second World War - all have their legacies and ongoing actulaities.

Multimedia helps us construct and preserve manifold examples of news to watch now and then, many years ahead - and even scale them upwards.

What about the professionals
And what of the professionals?

if you were a photographer whose only pics used to grace the front page of the newspaper, but now you can create sound slide shows from your portfolio of unused but key pics, how satisfying that must be for the photojo and the consumers.

I suppose making more money would be as well.

This report I'm making isn't an empirical report, though it would merit one at some point.

Given my interests as part of my Phd and in lecturing, as well as in journalism, it would incorporate scenario building and trend extrapolation to think through where we could go with this.

Ultimately the platform that may emerge the victor will have a lot in common with cable broadband as opposed to Satellite - which doesn't offer a true multimedia interactive experience.

The experience is a slight of hand - a loop. There is no return pathway. You crash in at any point. The BBC's interactive news (press the red button) is something like that.

So Multimedia - we've only just started, and it's highly likely that it will undergo more metamorphosis as we just about grapple with waht we can do now.

Videojournalism Interview : Next Generation multimedia journalists

Guest hosting today Charlotte Bailey who is one of the chosen 10 recruited by the Daily Telegraph's multimedia training scheme.

The program aims to equip this cohort with all the modern skills of multiamedia including videojournalism.

So Charlotte how do you feel doing this?

Charoltte: I feel pretty challenged by the whole experience to be honest. A year ago I would not only have questioned the need for this training but I would have wondered what it was all about in the first place. This is an area which is completely new to all of us.

David: So what have your colleagues been saying?

Charlotte:They've been surprised at how quickly they've taken to it - both practically and also in the sense that I think we've all be surprised at how much we've enjoyed this. We are all, at the end of the day, writers, but this is refreshing for us.

David:When you went for the interview at The Telegraph that must have been tough. What was going through your mind? When did you find out you'd be choseen from how many?

Charlotte:I had spent two years or more gathering work experience. I hadn't done a journalism course and so I suppose I got here via a route which is not that common these days.

I had worked with a lot of old-style journalists during periods of work experience and they had all taught me some great basic skills leading me to follow more practical routes of learning my trade.

Then when this job came up, I saw it as a chance to get some theoretical training and to finally make a move forwards into something more concrete than just regional work placements.

I filled in the application form, and as they all say, did not think any more of it.

I got a call from my dad saying I had got an interview and I have to say it took about a month for the whole thing to sink in.

We had been chosen from 700 and 32 were interviewed.

David: Cool, the chosen few - that must feel good.

Now you don't have to make me blush or anything or if you want, I have thick skin, but how did you find some of the things we shared...?

She's having to think about this.. that's a good tghing shes says. :-(

Charlotte:This has taken a bit of thought and I surpised myself with my hesitiation to be honest because I have had a lot of thoughts going around my head today about what videojournalism is and how i'll fit into it and I suppose this was the problem at first - I didnt know where I fitted in.

But at the end of the day it became clear that this wasn't the question at all, that there was no need to make efforts to fit in around a pre-formed structure but that we create that structure for ourselves.

This form of journalism not only allows us to inject our own ideas onto a piece but allows us to form a piece as near to how we envisage it on our minds as possible and being able to convey our mind's eye to other people is an incredible force.

David:So to any student or professional reading this, any advice on the multimedia and vj front? You know any pearls or slivers of wisdom?

Charlotte: Well, being the conscientious student that I am I would sum it all up in one simple ratio - 3:6:9.

we're both laughing

No, but seriously, without brazenly flaunting my new-found techy speak, I would advise that we don't shut out this form of media before we've given it a go.

Talk about it, have a look on some of the news websites and just become aware that this is already a big part of journalism.

David concludes: Everybody had a voice.. thanks Charlotte.. now time to go back and tidy this up and post. Getting late here. BFN

Charlotte: Thanks and I'm going to have to get away now too and rest up - if I'm going to be a VJ pro by the end of tomorrow..

Tony's come into the room. He's the head of training at Press Asociation. Anything to say Tony?

Tony: It's great to see lots of smiliing faces walking out of a training room at the end of an 8 hour day and to see people reluctant to go home.


Ok that's it . . .

Original post before David rudely interupted:
Having spent most of our first day's training kneeling in fields, sprawling across pavements, and generally behaving more like the SAS than Lois Lane and Clark Kent, I find that my original thoughts as to what journalism was all about are beginning to show some cracks...