Multimedia, the net and journalism

I have learned a lot during the multimedia course and everything was new for me apart from the video.

I think multimedia journalism is definitely the future of journalism. In our age of technology, stories are just not enough to satisfy the public. They want videos, photos, sound and to be more engaged with the story. I think multimedia journalism is a platform that allows the audience to do that and have more access to information than traditional print or broadcast. It allows the best of both worlds, is economically more efficient and accessible worldwide.

It’s easier to generate readership, than if you were to launch a magazine. Websites like Twitter and Facebook are able to promote your website or blog, generating bigger audiences than those achievable when launching a new magazine.

Websites and blogs are free and easy to create and they are also free to read, making them an increasingly popular medium of choice.

I think multimedia journalism does exist but I think it’s still in the developing stages. Print and broadcast forms of journalism are primary money earners for the industry so more focus, time and attention is put on the distribution of news in this way.Multimedia, the net and journalism.

Going Online

I think the online part of the module was very useful. I enjoyed online journalism and blogging so much that I also did a blog for my SSIT module assignment. I’m someone who isn’t very good with computers so I felt like the online part of the module drastically improved my IT skills. I really wasn’t aware of websites like Twitter or Delicious, I had heard of Flickr but had never used it. After the course I have used Flickr a lot and it has proved to be a very useful website.

Blogging is something I enjoy and can now do really easily. Me and the rest of the faqfashion girls have decided to keep the blog going as a permanent thing and some of us have even chosen to do web journalism next year.

The Audio

I really enjoyed doing the audio project, as it didn’t entail as much stress as the video, this was after the deadline was extended of course. I’m glad we got more time because the audio project at first was very demanding time wise, which was extremely stressful and it was impossible for me to meet the initial deadline as I didn’t have access to a zoom box/mansa for a while.

I wanted to do another investigative piece, which was along a new journalism kind of style. For some apparent reason during fresher’s week, I was persuaded to join the socialist group. One idea was to do the podcast about the group, what they stood for, go to a protest with them and make this the basis for my podcast.

Then because of the short time we had at the beginning, I decided against the idea. They were not going to attend a protest till the 1st of April.

One of my friends is very enthusiastic about squatting to the point where she says it’s her dream to squat. I didn’t and never will understand why but I got the opportunity to go to a squat in elephant and castle and decided to interview a young girl who lived there. The idea was to present the podcast as a day in a life of a squatter. I wanted to educate myself and others and maybe get rid of stereotypes, which I hope I did.

I went in there thinking she was going to be a drug addict who had to squat because she spent all her money on drugs. That’s the stereotype my dad presented me with and I’m glad I learnt otherwise. I have to say getting the story was really tricky, the other squatters were really unhappy that we were there. The girls doing the video project were also there as they did their project on squatting and were visiting several squats. They didn’t wasn’t us to take any pictures or film and were having ago at our interviewee but we managed to do it secretly. The only downside is that it involved walking around a messy, slightly run-down house in the dark. It was however very fun and exciting even though I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could.

Audacity was never explained and I think we should have had a lesson where we were taught how to use the programme. Luckily the people who had already done the audio were nice and showed me how to use it.

I’m happy with my podcast but looking back I think I used to many pictures. I had a lot of pictures I had taken at the squat which were really good and so I was a bit too keen on using them.

The Video

Working in a group is difficult and proved to be most challenging when doing the video task. I worked in a three with Larisa and Diana and although we are good friends we found it very hard to agree on anything with each other. We did all agree on presenting the video as a news report that would typically appear on say the six o’clock news.

The topic of the news story was going to look at how the recession had increased the number of European tourists visiting London. It was in fact an investigative piece as we weren’t actually sure if this was the case. There were no news stories about it at the time but we had all noticed the sudden large number of Europeans wondering around London and thought it was probably because the pound was weak.

So we ventured into central with our camera and firstly had a trial run to see if we actually had a story. We asked some tourists their reasons for choosing to come to London and it did seem like the recession had a big part to play.

We were a very organised group and planned ourselves well. We got many interviews with tourists, a stall keeper who catered to tourists and we also managed to get an interview with a representative of the London tourism centre who presented us with facts and figures.

We also divided the work between us quite well although I felt some were not pulling their weight unless pushed.

I was the director and filmed everything without a tripod. All the steady shots were achieved just hand-held which was really hard work. Larisa was the news reporter and Diana did the voiceover.

Editing I found to be really hard, Imovie which we were not taught how to use, was really difficult to use. It took us a while to get the hang of it and was quite frustrating. We had far too much footage, we had around 40mins worth so a lot of time was spent editing to try and put our piece together.

I was happy with the finished product, we all put a lot of time and effort into it and I think I learned a lot from doing the task. Planning is essential, you have to have a lot of patience, always be positive and technology will almost always let you down at some point.

Evaluation- FaqFashion

I worked on the group blog with Radmila, Larisa, Ave, Nassia, Aneta and Alicia. The six of us decided that we wanted to blog about fashion. We knew this was a popular topic among existing bloggers and so we had to come up with ideas on how to make it different and more appealing to a web audience.

We came to the conclusion that it would be better to look at fashion as an art form and focus on the issues surrounding fashion rather than taking the typical stance of ‘what looks good‘, the aesthetic side of fashion.

We seemed to all agree on our vision for the blog at the start but most disagreement came about whilst choosing a name. Finally we agreed on FaqFashion, a clever play on words, well we thought so anyway. The idea behind the name was to generate humour and interest from our audience whilst still stating the obvious, that we were going to provide factual information about fashion.

We didn’t have an editor  and decided that everyone would have control and responsibility over their own posts. We all covered different topics within fashion, Alicia did ethics, Nassia took pictures of people on campus and blogged about ‘the Westminster style,’ Aneta did music and fashion, Larisa focused on accessories, Radmila wrote about general high street and designer fashion, Ave took the role of fashion police and I looked at unique designs, underground fashion designers and high fashion.

We had difficulty on deciding who our target audience were going to be in terms of age. We wanted to target the blog at both men and women but this wasn’t easy so we targeted women from ages 17- 25.

We stuck to a strict router when it came to posting on the blog, we each had three days in the week which we assigned to each other of when we had to post.

We wanted to make the blog as interactive as possible so we set up a twitter account, which we updated every time we posted. We also set up a facebook group to generate a following for the blog and sent messages to members informing them of any updates taking place on the blog.  This worked well at first but certain members of the group got  a bit carried away on the amount of messages that they sent to members and as a result, Radmila received complaints that messages from Faqfasion were flooding inboxs and people were getting annoyed. We dealt with the problem accordingly and agreed to only send two messages a week instead of after every post which was effectively three messages a day.

Nassia made cards with our blog url on, which we all handed out to people both on campus and on the streets of London.

In terms of multimedia content we had videos that we posted on the blog, which varied from videos we shot and posted ourselves in the form of voxpops and interviews and videos that we found on youtube. We all posted pictures and decided we would have a limit of three for each post to maintain a co-ordinated style, we also had a limit of 500 words for each post.

faqFashion Rationale

faqFashion is a group blog that deals with fashion in more than just an aesthetic way but deals with the deeper issues surrounding fashion. We look at ethics, music and fashion, fashion events, new designers, accessories and much more.

We didn’t want to have an editor on the blog and decided that it would work better if we were all in charge of our individual posts. We also worked together on the overall look of the blog.

faqtherest/ faqnewfaces: Theses are the two categories my posts tend to fall under. My job on the blog is to find new and unique high fashion by both unknown and established designers. I also write about new trends and where people can go shopping to achieve a unique style.

I set up a facebook group to help promote and gain support for the blog which has been highly successful in generating popularity.

A Story To Tell

The New York Times website has a vast video library in which it posts feature reports done by it’s journalists.

The reports are designed to be accessible to internet users. They act like mini-documentaries covering a wide range of stories and topics and tend not to be longer than 3-4 minutes. They are very informative, contain several short interviews and are edited to perfection.

Videos, blogs and vlogs are increasingly covering newspaper websites who are trying to compete with big broadcasters like CNN and BBC. Articles on the New York Times website are often followed by a short video covering the same story, giving their readers the option of either watching or reading the story or maybe even doing both, giving them more of a choice in how they want to consume information.

The New York Times website even has podcasts, allowing people to listen to the days news on the go, which shows that the website tries to cater for different audiences. New technologies such as ipods were once a threat to the industry for a fear that they would act as mediums to deter people from the traditional trend of reading newspapers. Now the NYtimes and many more have embraced new technologies by finding ways to work with technology and draw in new and old audiences.

The internet has allowed us to see a mergance of mediums which would once have not been possible in the print industry.  This helps papers to maintain readership loyalty and attract new audiences as websites are accessible all over the world.

Who wants to giggle?

We all love a spoof! the geniuses’ who came up with MadTV take a laughable aproach to some of our much loved shows.

What an eyesore

What is going on here? this website is awful!

I’m not only going on looks alone. If they had computers back in the 60s, this is what a website would look like and even then it would be bad! its 2009! this website needs to get with the times and what kind of a name is slide rule universe? what is a slide rule?  evidently it’s a website for people who are into their spheres.

The site seems to belong to the sphere research company. By company they mean one guy who definitely needs to get out more.

the colours don’t blend well with each other. White, red yellow, orange, more yellow all over a greystone wall paper, thrown together like a tacky Christmas tree.

It’s not clear what the website is about, ok sliderules but i’m still left puzzled! it’s obviously aimed at a niche market and it will certainly remain that way if something isn’t done about this website.

This is a sure DIY job but aren’t there self help books that one can buy. ‘How to create a website for dummies’

Well at least slide rule universe won the last century design award on the 10 worst web pages of 2006, thats something to be proud of, three years on and still nothing has improved.