Post 1: Heading to Poynter to practice new skills
I already do a lot of writing and editing of photos and some editing of video content for the web for the research project I run at Elon University – Imagining the Internet: imaginingtheinternet.org
But just like there’s always room for Jello, it seems as if there’s always something more to learn about emerging media. In fact the amount of stuff to learn is pretty much a bottomless void, but it has been interesting to leap in and sort of glide, plummet, drop precipitously, glide and see what happens.
Equipped with a laptop computer and minimalist, lightweight equipment – a consumer-model Canon digital still camera, a Flip Ultra video camera and a small Sony audio recorder (total cost for the three and accessories about $400) – I’m heading to a workshop titled “Multiplatform Journalism” at The Poynter Institute in Tampa-St. Pete, Fla.
With these new-media tools, I can shoot about 60 minutes of simple, web-worthy video, record up to 12 hours of audio and take hundreds of photographs before recharging batteries, all without using any tape or film as we used to do not so long ago as journalists. They record digital information that can be quickly transferred directly to my computer, where it is easy to upload and share online using free Web 2.0 programs like WordPress and Facebook.
Amazingly, I can easily fit all three tools together in the palm of one hand.
I could have packed professional-style or prosumer-level equipment for this workshop, but I want to see how well a person can tell a story with the inexpensive yet functional hardware that has been emerging over the past couple of years. Much of this revolution is due to the continuing shrinkage in size and cost of computing power and memory.
At the Poynter workshop, we will leverage many tools in communicating; we will be storyboarding, employing digital audio and using images to enhance the value of the written words that tell about our world.
