Editor, revised

I’m back from a short trip to Portland and Seattle, and I’ve got a few more days off to play around with this site.

Two immediate changes:

1. I’ve created a portfolio page, which you can access via that nav links above or by clicking here.
2. I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.6 after ignoring the prompts for several weeks. I’m happy to report it was quick and painless.

I’ll be back with a real post soon.

Recently, I took part in a frivolous experiment with seven other people that involved eating only seven ingredients for seven days. It was a nice escape from my usual routine and the reason I haven’t updated this blog much lately (I did my own blogging on the 7vs7 challenge).

The process also introduced me to the online video service Vimeo. For producers, I think it rocks. Here’s why:

• Much cleaner interface than YouTube.
• Eyeball-friendly stats on your videos.
• Exceedingly simple upload and tagging system.
• Embeds that are just as easy as YouTube.

Anyway, the 7vs7 gang made ample use of this tool. I had the most fun with the one just below, which I shot with my Sony point and shoot and edited in iMovie. The soundtrack is from Mr. Dick Dale. Feel free to check out the rest of my stuff.

Last month I posted about story lengths for online news.

The general idea was that shorter is better.

In the meantime I haven’t necessarily practiced at work what I examined there. Then again, I’m an editor not a writer.

Yesterday I came across this article on Slate (thanks Journerdism). It’s been circulating; I even heard a city editor at work discussing it. That, for those in journalism, is amazing.

Basic premise: It’s just length that matters.
It’s style. Short paragraphs. Short sentences. Bullet points. Frequent subheds. Periodic bold-facing of words. Lots of links.

You should really check the link at the end.

So I thought I’d play a little game. Take a graf from a wire story and rewrite it like the Slate article.

Which really stems from this guy.

Here’s the original, as run in today’s Spokesman-Review (credit to Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post):

INDEX, Wash. – With little fanfare, Congress has embarked on a push to protect as many as a dozen pristine areas this year in places ranging from the glacier-fed streams of Wild Sky Wilderness here to West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest. By the end of the year, conservation experts predict, this drive could place as much as 2 million acres of unspoiled land under federal control, a total that rivals the wilderness acreage set aside by Congress over the previous five years.

Now I shall butcher it.

INDEX, Wash. - Congress is trying to create about 12 wilderness areas.

They include:

• West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest.
• Also, Wild Sky Wilderness near Index.

How much we talking?

Some experts predict more than 2 million unspoiled acres will be protected by December.

That means the feds will have say-so.

And that’s about what Congress has set aside in the past five years.

Not exactly poetry. But easy to digest. Maybe.

So, would you accept news written like this from the standard bearers?

We’ve been seriously mixing our mediums at the Spokesman-Review lately. We’re on the air. As in on the radio. And the broadcasts are coming from our newsroom. Check it out here. Read Editor Steve Smith’s announcement here.

We’ve been at it for about seven weeks, by my count, and I think editors, reporters and multimedia people have made strides in incorporating audio collection into our routines.

Regardless of what you think about newspapers doing radio, the push for multimedia in newsrooms makes audio collection and editing valuable skills. At a meeting yesterday, radio reporter/announcer Dan Mitchinson and multimedia guru Colin Mulvany led a discussion on good audio habits. Although we talked mostly about sound destined for the radio, these tips are important for video productions as well.

• Get your recorder/mic as close as possible to the source.
• Learn to listen: If you’re indoors, watch out for electrical hums or fans. If you’re outside, be aware of traffic noise, planes passing overhead, etc. Try to find a place where such background annoyances are minimal.
• At the same time, remember to get natural sound from your environment. This too can help tell the story. (Our editorial page editor raised a valid ethical concern: Don’t use these natural sounds in ways that mislead. For instance, don’t overlay sounds from a park with an interview conducted indoors.)
• Check those recording levels before you start interviewing. If you need to adjust, don’t do it while your source is in the middle of a sentence.
• It’s better to hold your mic a bit to the side of the mouth that’s talking. This helps avoid popping P sounds.
• Use headphones to monitor the audio you’re receiving. It may seem weird to talk to a source while wearing headphones, so just explain why you’re doing it.
• Just as some people are afraid of TV cameras, others are afraid of mics and the way their voices sound. Use humor and self-deprecation to warm them up. You probably don’t like the way your recorded voice sounds either.

We covered other ground germane to our particular operations, but I won’t go into that here. If you’re looking for more tips, check out Colin Mulvany’s blog. He’s been doing this a lot longer than I have.

Journerdism once again steered me to an interesting item, this time about Google getting the itch to map the terrain under Earth’s oceans.

I’ve always been fascinated with all things oceanic. The geek in me hopes Google Ocean happens just so I can mess around with it. But this item also got me thinking about the potential for integrating this technology with other media. Granted, as a journalist in the Inland Northwest, Google Ocean wouldn’t lend itself to our coverage as well as Google Streetview has with, for example, business reporter Parker Howell’s blog covering growth and development, Here’s the Dirt.

But I hope bigger media outlets, especially magazines and documentary filmmakers, let their imaginations run with the possibilities. Imagine visiting nationalgeographic.com, reading a story about weird deep-sea creatures like this guy, then being able to zoom around the canyons where it lives via Google Maps. An incredibly rich layer of information.

Or imagine an interactive Web component accompanying the BBC’s breathtaking series “The Blue Planet.” You could navigate the programs as a series of clips such as the one below geocoded to corresponding undersea locations. Or track the migration of featured species.

I’m sure I’m only scratching the surface of potential applications. Any more great ones out there?