Multimedia Journalism

A Practical Guide

Andy Bull

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138792838
• eBook ISBN: 9781317646099
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide, Second edition builds on the first edition's expert guidance on working across multiple media platforms, and continues to explore getting started, building proficiency and developing professional standards in multimedia journalism.

The second edition features new chapters including:

• getting started with social media
• live reporting
• building proficiency with Wordpress
• building apps for smartphones and tablets
• building a personal brand and developing a specialism
• long-form video journalism, audio and video news bulletins and magazine programmes.

The new edition also includes an extensive range of new and updated materials essential for all aspects multimedia journalism today. New areas explored include editing video and slideshows for mobile and tablet devices, the advanced use of mobile devices for reporting, location-specific content creation and delivery, the use of video and audio slideshows, and live blogging. Other updates include more material on photojournalism as a storytelling technique, using and transferring digital images and sound, the use of Google Analytics, and practical guides to storytelling through infographics, timelines, interactive graphics and maps.

The book fully engages with multimedia journalism in relation to range of social media and web publishing platforms, including Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, SoundCloud, AudioBoom and iTunes.

The book is also be supported by fully updated online masterclasses at www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk.

chapters

1 Essentials of writing a news story

2 Creating a publishing platform

3 Getting started with social media

4 Audio and podcasting

5 Still pictures and video

part A
Getting started

Introduction: What multimedia journalism is

This part of Multimedia Journalism is called Getting Started, and that’s what we are going to do – straight away. We won’t spend a lot of time theorising about things. Instead, you’ll jump straight in.

This is what we’ll be covering in part A of Multimedia Journalism:

Aims of this section

To give you core journalism skills and show you how to:

• ■ Write a good basic news report
• ■ Build a simple WordPress multimedia website and beat blog
• ■ Use social media as an integral part of your news gathering and reporting
• ■ Take good news pictures and create a stills picture story
• ■ Film, edit and publish a video story
• ■ Record, edit and publish audio reports and podcasts.

chapter one
Essentials of writing a news story

In the book version of this chapter we will cover:

• ■ What news is
• ■ What reporting is
• ■ How to identify and serve a particular audience
• ■ Where to find news
• ■ How to write and structure a text-based news report
• ■ Multimedia reporting – the effective use of text, still pictures, video and audio
• ■ Why you need a journalistic specialism
• ■ How to write a specialist or beat blog
• ■ How to tackle a range of basic reporting assignments.

At the end of the chapter are a range of assignments and projects to enable you to practise what you have learned.

In the online version of this chapter you will find:

• ■ Interactive quizzes to test your understanding of the principles of news gathering and writing
• ■ A wide range of videos illustrating the material covered here
• ■ A wealth of links to further information
• ■ Any essential updates to the tuition contained in the print and ebook editions
• ■ Footnotes to the book version chapter.

Always have the companion website to this book open at www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk. That way you can easily click on the links to the stories discussed here.

1A1

What news is

Teenager dies after confronting attacker

A BOY of 16 died in his brother’s arms yesterday after confronting a youth who was threatening staff in a baker’s shop in south London.¹

That’s news. It is clearly a tragic story, and very worrying. Here are some of the reasons we see it as news:

1. It’s new – it has just happened, and we are learning about it for the first time.
2. It’s factual – in that 25-word sentence, there are numerous facts.
   questions

   

   Can you work out what they are?

   List them before reading on.

   Here are the facts covered:

   • ■ A boy
   • ■ aged 16
   • ■ died
   • ■ in his brother’s arms
   • ■ yesterday
   • ■ after a confrontation
   • ■ with a youth
   • ■ threatening staff
   • ■ in a baker’s shop
   • ■ in south London.
3. It’s about people – that short first paragraph – known as an intro – drops us into a compelling human drama. We can picture the scene, and empathise with the characters in it.
4. It’s relevant to readers; it affects them – in the immediate area this story will have had a great effect on people, but this was also a big national story. It affected most readers not because they were directly caught up in it but because it was shocking, and they felt great sympathy for the victim and his family. It also affected them because it probably made them feel a bit less safe – either for themselves or for their family.
5. It’s dramatic and out of the ordinary – the amount written about an event can depend on how dramatic and out of the ordinary it is. In some inner city areas, a murder warrants only a couple of pars (paragraphs) on a local news website, or in a local paper. In a quiet rural area, it would probably be the lead – the main story on the website’s home page, and the paper’s front page. The difference in coverage reflects the extent to which such an event is relatively common or uncommon.
   This story was given great prominence because it involved a law-abiding young man who was completely blameless, and who was attacked for no reason.
6. It involves conflict – a fatal attack involves a very high level of conflict.

So that gives us six things that tell us what news is.

Take a look at the next story. Is it news?

IRA and UDA ‘held secret talks’

Secret talks between the UDA and the Provisional and Official IRA 30 years ago have been revealed in confidential Cabinet papers. They have been made available under the 30 year rule.²

This story can hardly be called new – it happened over 30 years ago. So how can it be defined as news under our item 1 above?

It’s news because we have only just learned about it. So let’s refine that first item and say:

News is new to our readers

So it doesn’t matter if an event happened a long time ago, or if some people know about it. As long as our readers don’t, then it is news to them.

Here’s another story

Ireland’s police watchdog has launched a criminal investigation into allegations that the Garda Siochána is secretly reading journalists’ phone records.³

questions

How many elements in our definition of news does it cover? Can you think of something else about it that means we should add another element to our definition of news?

Make your list, and decide what further element we may need to add to our definition, before reading on.

Here are the elements in our news definition that this story covers:

This story is new to the reader, it’s factual, it’s about people. Its relevance to the reader is that this overt reading of phone records may have compromised the work of journalists. It might not be dramatic but it does disclose events that are – or should be – out of the ordinary. It doesn’t involve dramatic conflict, but what it reveals is likely to concern many who read it – particularly journalists. We often need to protect the identity of our contacts. Our phone records may help reveal who has given us sensitive information.

But is there something else about this story that means we should add a new element to our definition of news?

Think about the senior officials who ordered this snooping to take place. Would they rather this story had not been written, and that this practice had remained secret? I think we can assume that they would. And that gives us another element often found in news stories:

News is something someone, somewhere, doesn’t want you to report

As is becoming apparent, not all stories fit every element in our definition of news. We will have to be a little flexible over this.

Here’s a fourth story

Is it news? Does it fit none, some or all of the elements in our definition of news?

Our recent home page featured a request to help find George the cat.

George had gone missing from his home in Upper Bush. He was spotted in the area of Charles Drive and James Road Thursday evening and Friday morning.

Follow...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• Companion Website
• Guided tour
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Equipping you for the fourth revolution in journalism
• How to use this book in conjunction with the online version
• part A Getting started
• part B Building proficiency
• part C Achieving professional standards
• Index