By MADELINE NGUYEN
The UNITY News

Copy editors now upload stories to the web. Photographers edit video and create slideshows. And reporters record audio and write blogs.

To keep up with the digital world and survive amid declining circulation, today’s newsrooms need versatile journalists who can quickly learn skills outside of their own expertise. With that comes a generation of journalists who grew up text messaging, uploading YouTube videos and connecting with friends via MySpace and Facebook.

Multimedia skills make aspiring journalists more marketable in these uncertain times, when newsrooms across the nation are struggling to do more with smaller staffs. Young photographers and reporters who know how to record and edit videos add another layer of storytelling and often land plum assignments that in the past may have gone to more veteran journalists.

“The ability to hear someone’s tone of voice and see their facial expression can really bring life to the people you’re covering,” said Yoon Byun, a 28-year-old photographer at The Boston Globe.

Byun was hired at the Globe last fall in part because of the multimedia skills he began learning in graduate school. Within his first week at the paper, he began a year-long project documenting with photos and videos one of Massachusetts? worst-performing high schools as it tried to fix itself. In the spring, he traveled to Papua New Guinea and Australia to produce videos and slideshows about a military operation to recover the remains of soldiers who went missing in action from World War II. 

After reporter Russell Contreras started at the Globe in 2005, a round of buyouts made him realize he needed to augment his skills if he wanted to survive in the industry. He spent several weekends learning multimedia techniques. 

Now 34, Contreras integrates audio, video, and photo slideshows with most of his stories and helps co-workers with their multimedia projects. For a story on police brutality, Contreras created an audio file of the 911 call the victim had made on his cell phone after he was allegedly beaten by cops in a holding cell. 

“When you read the story, you can hear the guy crying on the phone, ‘They’re beating me!’” Contreras said.

Access to cell phones with Internet and messaging features also creates opportunities for on-the-go reporting, he said. A reporter can type and post an article to the Web within minutes, updating news sites at any time.

Distributing news and information via the Web is the key to attracting a younger audience accustomed to finding what they want with the click of a mouse, said Dan Nguyen, a 27-year-old online reporter at The Sacramento Bee.

Nguyen has created databases for readers on the Internet, including a restaurant inspection map that people can search by address, restaurant name, recent inspections and non-violators.

Newsrooms also are arming more experienced journalists with multimedia training to add to their storytelling arsenal.

Manny Crisostomo, a 49-year-old multimedia editor and producer at The Sacramento Bee, spent a year chronicling the experiences of overweight adolescents at “fat school,” the Wellspring Academy of California in Reedley, in an award-winning story.

The project was the former photographer’s first foray into multimedia journalism, and brings the students’ experiences home to readers through still photography, video and a four-part text story.

Students’ portraits appear as the Web site loads. These “before” photos morph into “after” shots when a mouse hovers over them, showing dramatic weight loss. A student in a music video sang about her personal experience with being overweight: “Last picked for dodgeball … last picked for boyfriends, last picked for everything … that’s fat school.”

But even as multimedia skills become more vital and aspiring journalists have to prime themselves for a converged newsroom, basic journalism principles remain essential, recruiters say.

“Being accurate, fair, making decisions ethically, understanding conflicts, explaining to readers what you’re doing,” said Joe Grimm, recruiter for Gannett Newspapers. “Those haven’t changed.”

Equip Yourself

What should be in today’s journalist’s toobox?

• Have solid journalism skills: know how to develop context and sources, tell narrative stories and make deadlines.
• Be a great listener, write clearly and accurately, and have a sense of what?s culturally relevant.
• Be familiar with how information is distributed on the Internet: news Web sites, blogs, and networking sites.
• Know how to create Flash-based graphics, Web sites or blogs, and how to record audio and visual content.
• Learn to tell stories in many media:  videos, audio, text and photos.
• Bring a fearless attitude and energy, be passionate, adaptable and smart. 

Useful Links
Audio editing
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Purchasing an audio recorder
http://www.soundprofessionals.com

Slideshow creation
http://soundslides.com/

Manny Crisostomo’s award-winning multimedia presentation “The Weight:”
http://www.sacbee.com/static/live/news/projects/theweight/

Yoon Byun’s “Six decades and half a world away” (photos, video)
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/05/25/six_decades_and_half_a_world_away/

Yoon Byun’s “Last Chance For English High” (videos)
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/12/27/harsh_realities/

Databases at The Sacramento Bee
http://www.sacbee.com/databases/index.html

topic: Industry Issues
tags: convergence, new media

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 12:40 am and is filed under Industry Issues, Print. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.