This site is designed as a resource for students in my Multimedia Video Journalism course. I post regular updates with tips, tutorials and other resources for multimedia journalism.
Tips and Tools for Multimedia Journalists
http://www.rtdna.org/pages/posts/8-simple-ways-to-improve-your-web-writing-today1266.php
Feb 24 2011
By Lynn Walsh, Texas Watchdog
Writing for the web. It’s not TV, it’s not newspaper, it’s not magazine and it’s not radio - it’s all four! Online journalism combines video, audio and writing into one medium providing endless storytelling possibilities for journalists and a more enjoyable experience for the audience. However, with more media platforms comes more information and more sources, making it harder for your story to get clicked on. And just copying your newspaper story or the script from your television package and pasting it on a web page is not going to cut it. Audiences read news online differently. Scanning not reading. As interesting as you think your article is, if it online people are probably not reading it word for word. They are scanning and trying to absorb as much information as possible before moving on to the next thing. Searching for something. The internet is not the Sunday paper. Readers tend not to scroll through every word or story until something catches their eye. Most of the time they already know what they are looking for and if it’s not what they are looking for they will not stay long! More impatient. With so much information online people aren’t spending valuable time searching a page for what they are looking for. If they do not see it right away they will most likely go to the next search result. Most likely multi-tasking. When is the last time you only had one internet browser open? Well, you are not alone. People enjoy the internet because it is fast and provides opportunities for doing many things at once -- reading news is not an exception. From writing the story to sharing it on social media sites, here are some tips to make sure your story doesn’t get lost in the online universe or worse yet buried on page four of a Google search result page. 1. Keep it short and sweet. Keep sentences short. Omit unnecessary words. Only include one idea per paragraph. Keep paragraphs short: tell the reader to “read me.” 2. Subheads are key. Remember readers are scanning -- make it easy for them! Use subheads to show them where to go in the story. Use keywords that make sense in the subhead titles. 3. Lists and bullets are your friend. Use whenever possible! It makes keywords stick out. - It breaks up contentPhotos can be very powerful individually. However, when you put photos together in a sequence with some transitions, maybe a voiceover and/or some music, the photos can take on a whole new life for telling a story. Here are some resources for creating slideshows and a few examples.
How To Make Your Audio Slideshows Better.
http://masteringmultimedia.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/how-to-make-your-audio-slideshows-better/
MMVJ on PhotoPeach
One of the great adventures that smartphones, laptops, and WiFi connections allow for is mobile coverage of an event as it happens. Whether it is "Last Poet Standing", or an FHE competition, you can tell the world all about it as it happens. Check out this podcast for a few ideas of how you can blog almost-live . . . or totally live if needs be.
Here are two excellent sources on how to use Twitter:
Here are just a few tips on ideas to keep your blog fresh and current as well as a tip on a piece of free software to make screencaptures and podcasts. Check it out!
Expect the unexpected when you are shooting video in the field. This little "meeting" cost me five stitches in my chin!
I created this simple video podcast, or vodcast using a flip camera to shoot the video. I then imported the video onto a PC laptop and used Windows Moviemaker to create the vodcast. I simply chose the video I wanted to show and put it into the timeline in Moviemaker. I then came up with a short script to describe the video. After a couple of practice tries, I recorded the audio in Moviemaker in one take. As a sidenote, I only used Moviemaker because that is what I had at the time with a borrowed laptop. Final Cut Express is a much more robust program. However, for a simple voiceover of some video or pictures, just about any simple video editor will do.