Visual Journalism

Meghan Lyden is just one of the best picture editors around … she puts together the Denver Post’s Plog (photo blog) and has collected a great set of images looking back at the summer that was.

I want to live in about two thirds of those images …

Up at My Old School, incoming grad students go through a six week boot camp that now includes a multimedia component. The students are required to produce a 60 second video or audio slide show about someone (or thing) within the neighborhood of Syracuse, New York.

I think this is brilliant. And, given the quality on some of these first-attempt pieces, they’re teaching this right.

Go Orange.

It's for a food writer ... get it?

Second post linking to the other side of the pond today … I may need fish and chips for lunch …

Design Shack has a collection of 50 clever logo designs. I am in awe of people who come up with such things as I have tried and not had a tremendous amount of success with them over the years. Every time I end up behind a FedEx logo I feel a little twinge of jealousy – that arrow between the E and the X? Genius, pure genius. It says everything about the company in just five letters.

Adam Westbrook, who is pretty smart even by British standards, did a five-part series on blogging for journalists. Won’t take too much of your time and, if you’re not blogging, you need to do this to survive in journalism now …

1. Why Journalists Must Blog Now
2. How to Create Your Blog
3. How to Build an Audience
4. Giving Your Blog a Visual Edge
5. Five Big Mistakes I Wish I Hadn’t Made

Great info in each of those posts, even if you’ve been doing this for a while.

That time again … application deadline for the next round of internships at The White House is October 3.

Well, Robert Niles over at the Online Journalism Review has presented almost all of my ideas in one handy post. All five of his ideas are solid and, if you’re not already doing them, it’s time to get going.

Several of these have been incorporated into my advanced class and, next semester, may trickle down to the introductory courses, as well.

Mindy McAdams, the Flash Goddess (her words), posted a question about what skills a reporter needs now. She started with a basic list, but go through the comments (and add your own), some interesting ideas in there.

I’ve added a few in there, as well.

Steve Fox up at the University of Massachusetts has a post up about why students need to be blogging. You need to read it, even if you’re not a student.

Why? Let me quote …

… students should blog because it allows you to practice your writing and your multimedia skills. And, like anything, the more you practice, the better you get. In the process, you are creating a body of work that you can show those looking to hire you for an internship or a job. Remember, your blog is part of your digital footprint. Take it seriously.

I try to blog something every day, here it is what’s called link aggregation, but elsewhere I try to create content. My goal for this academic year is to create more. Harass me if i don’t.

My colleague, Prof. Barry Hollander, was walking around with a sheet of these journalism warning labels from Tom Scott this week. Very entertaining stuff, but it got me thinking, do we need a set for photos?

Time to put your thinking caps on and create a few. My contributions:

• Warning: This brilliant photo is a total fluke. It’s the only sharp image I shot this week.
• Warning: We found this image on the web, we have no way of knowing if it is real. Also, we don’t have permission to use it, so don’t tell anyone.
• Warning: An editor with no knowledge of this story selected this photo. It may or may not make sense in the context used.
• Warning: This image was provided to us by Aunt Sally’s cat, who fell off a bookshelf and landed, paws down, on her 1973 SX70 Polaroid. Had we not eliminated our photo staff, maybe we would have had a photo of the cat falling.

Over on the NPPA listserv, Mark Hertzberg posted links to a pair of stories that come out of England about a soccer team that is not credentialing photographers this season, instead telling them to buy them from the official photographers.

Which lead one paper to, brilliantly, have an illustrator draw the key action moments from the game. A new market for courtroom sketch artists, perhaps?