NickGeidner.com

Today, I am going to be talking about multimedia journalism at The Ohio State University. I will be making a very pragmatic argument to these students. Mainly, it is in their best interest to enhance their stories through the use of multiple media types. In my short talk, I will present audio slideshows as something all of them can easily do. I will then go over other multimedia forms (e.g., backpack journalism, database visualization). Here are the links to the examples I will be using (I am sure I won’t have time to get to them all):

Audio Slideshows

Granville Clock – This is a simple little slideshow from the Post Star in Saratoga, New York. It covers the restoration of an antique clock in Granville, New York.

The Miami Herald in Haiti – This slideshow covers the destruction and rebuilding after the Haiti earthquake.

His Body is a Prison – This slideshow was produced by the L.A. Times and covers the life of man who was rendered a quadriplegic.

Tampa Trash Clean-up – This slideshow was produced by my wife while she was a summer student fellow at the Poynter Institute. I use it as a teaching tool, because my wife is a newspage designer by trade and was able to put this together in just a few days.

Backpack Journalism

On More Game – Video story produced at a backpack journalism workshop at American University. It is a slice of life story about a street chess player in Washington D.C.

Database

Unemployment by demographics – New York Times interactive about unemployment.

Tampa Bay Mugshots – The infamous St. Pete Times mugshot website.

Gamifying the News

NYTimes Budget Game – Lets you try to balance the budget.

What symbol speaks to your generation? – An interactive quiz that tells you about your generation by USA Today.

Full Packages

Girl in the Window – Pulitzer Prize winning feature package by the St. Pete Times.

Homicide 37 – Pulitzer Prize nominated public affairs story by the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Darfur - MediaStorm’s coverage of the crisis in Darfur for the Council on Foreign Relations.

New Technologies/Ideas

Storify – Tool for curating social media sources to tell real-time stories.

WikiNews – Like Wikipedia but for news stories.

Spot.us – A website that helps provide prospective funding for works of journalism.

Uncategorized multimedia, Teaching

On Monday I am heading out to an interview for an assistant professorship in journalism. As part of this interview, I will be doing both a research talk and a teaching talk. For the teaching talk, I will be guest lecturing in an introduction to journalism class. I decided with my allotted 45 minutes I would discuss the changing economic models, which are being used to subsidize news production. I think this is an important for multiple reasons, but primarily students currently enrolled in journalism programs are going to have to work within these different models. This makes it imperative that these students understand the strengths and weaknesses of these different models.

In my lecture, I will be covering 5 different economic models of journalism. These are: (1) Niche Journalism, (2) Prospective Funding Journalism, (3) Non-profit Journalism, (4) Collaborative Journalism, and (5) Paywalls. None of these represent completely unique or new forms of journalism, but the influence of these different models has been growing over the last 10 to 15 years. Also important to note, these are not the only new models of journalism. There are literally hundreds of ideas out there. I choose these 5 examples, because pragmatically I have limited time and these seem to be the ones garnering the most attention, discussion, and experimentation.

1) Niche Journalism – Refers to media outlets that are made not for a mass audience, but made for specific subsets of the population. There are primarily two versions of niche journalism, hyperlocal journalism and topic-specific journalism.

These types of sites are using the same model as current mainstream media, the dual product model, but they are amazing for a different type of audience. Mainstream media seeks to gain a large, diverse audience. This general audience can then be sold to nearly anyone looking to advertise. Niche journalism, on the other hand, seeks to gain a very specific demographic group. The media organization can sell this specific audience to advertises whose products are specifically targeted for that demographic.

Examples:

• Patch.com
• MyBallard.com
• LostRemote.com

2) Prospective Funding Journalism – This refers to journalistic stories that are reported on as a result of funding from an outside source. MediaStorm.com and Spot.us represent two forms of prospective funding journalism. MediaStorm, created by award-winning journalism Brian Storm, has created a wide variety of editorial work for clients. For example, MediaStorm created “Crisis Guide: Pakistan” for the Council on Foreign Relations. Spot.us respresent a very different form of prospective funding journalism. Through the Spot.us community journalist can pitch stories. For example, Eric Ruthford, a journalist, pitched a story about the involvement of gangs in child sex trade. He pitched this story on the Spot.us website on September 20, 2010. Between then and now, he has received $1,100 from 72 sources to cover this story. Spot.us has thousands of story pitches on their site at anytime. In most cases, Spot.us works with local media to distribute the story to a wider audience. Spot.us is a non-profit organization, and the infrastructure is primarily funded through grants.

3) Non-profit Journalism – This refers to journalism created by not-for-profit organizations. Spot.us also partially falls in to this category. I included it above, because the actual journalism (the stories) are funded on a strictly prospective basis. There are many better examples of non-profit journalism. Generally, non-profit journalism is funded just like any other not-for-profit organization (e.g., grants and donations).

Examples:

• Propublica.com
• The Bay Citizen
• The Texas Tribune
• The Center for Public Integrity

4) Collaborative Journalism – This refers to journalism systems that brings numerous people or sources together to create stories or broader coverage of an issue. One of the newest examples of this is Storify. Storify allows users to easily pull information together from a number of social media sources to show readers how a story develops over time. Here is the demo video from Storify:

Storify demo from Burt Herman on Vimeo.

WikiNews is another example of collaborative journalism. Like its more famous cousin Wikipedia, WikiNews is based off the popular WikiMedia collaborative editing software. Using this system, anyone can edit or create a news story on the wikinews site. Stories constantly change as new information comes to light.

5) Paywalls – This refers to media organizations charging for access to online content. There are primarily three types of paywalls – full, partial, and metered.

Full paywalls are when no content is accessible by the user unless he or she pays an access fee. Although used on some business journalism websites, full paywalls are not being seriously considered by many mainstream media organizations. Partial paywalls are when some content is accessible for free and other content is only accessible for a fee. New York Times Select followed this model.

Finally, in the metered model individuals can view a certain amount of count over a period of time, then they are charged for access. For example, a reader might be able to see 40 articles a month. Beyond that, the individual would have to pay for access.

Uncategorized economics, journalism, Teaching

So the class is about 50 people, which is an awkward size. Too big for good rich discussion, too small for pure lecture. I am trying to come up with some activities, so the students can get involved. I am thinking one activity for each section of the class. Between these activities I hope to have everyone in the class do something.

Here are the couple things I have so far:

• Privacy on the Internet – Debate – Have two teams of three students debate something like the St. Pete Times/TampaBay.com’s mugshot database (see here: http://mugshots.tampabay.com/)
• Changes in Journalism – Have teams of students pitch new ideas on how to monetize news on the Internet

I am also working on coming up with guest lectures. If anyone has any ideas let me know.

Uncategorized 654, Teaching

In the winter, I am going to be teaching a seminar course on the social implications of new media in society at The Ohio State University. To begin preparing for this I am trying to create a list of topics, which I want to cover. I am approaching this from various angles. I am taking an inventory of the things I think are important, talking to professor I trust and respect, talking to various people in new media related industries, and asking for help through social media. I will be updating this list as I get new ideas and will be slowly developing a syllabus for the class. Please leave any comments, suggestions, readings or examples I could use. Thanks.

1. Introduction and Studying the Internet – (a) Hyperlinking as reputation, (b) Structure of network via hyperlinking (Barabasi, 2003), and (c) ‘Mix of attributes” approach to studying the Internet (Eveland, 2003)
2. Digital Divide/Inequality
3. Selective Exposure and Fragmentation
4. New Media and Institutions (e.g., politics, business, and journalism structures)
5. Privacy/Anonymity and the Internet
6. Online Communities and Perceived Network Connection

Uncategorized 654, Teaching

If you are looking at this you are probably one of my news writing students. Below you should find just about everything you need to write a two-page profile on Travonna Coffee House and its owner Travis Hardy. Below you should find 2 interviews (one with the owner of Travonna, Travis Hardy, and one with a regular at Travonna). Also there are a quick set of pictures. They aren’t great, but they should give you an idea of what the coffeeshop is like. I made sure to take pictures of things Travis referenced. The only thing I forgot is I didn’t take a picture of Travis or the other interview subject. I will try to stop by Travonna sometime this weekend and get a portrait of Travis.

Update: I forgot Travonna is located in the north end of the Short North arts district. Its address is 1195 N. High Street. Google Map.

Interviews:

• Hardy Interview
• Wheeler Interview

Photos:

Uncategorized journalism, Teaching

So this summer I am teaching Creative Message Design, Comm 634, at The Ohio State University. 634 is a senior-level PR writing class. Most of the class is fairly straight-forward with topics such as press release writing, PR ad writing, direct mail, etc. In short, the class gives the students a last chance to be exposed to every type of PR writing before they go out into the field. The final project for the class is a large campaign involving various pieces of media writing.

Anyway, on Monday I covered the topic of social media and I really like how my lecture came out. I focused on how social media can be used to build connection between the consumer and the organization/product. This clearly falls into my overarching view that group connection is an incredibly important and understudy aspect of communication. I have uploaded the slides below in a quicktime format. You should be able to click through them, just like they were a regular slideshow. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to e-mail me.

Uncategorized "social media", 634, PR, Teaching