A documentary video I produced in 2007

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Mu Lin

I produced a documentary video for the Jacksonville Chinese Association in celebration of that non-profit organization’s 10th anniversary in 2007. This 13-minute video has been well-received at various occasions such as fund-raising and community outreach; I even received an “Outstanding Member” award from JCA for the production of this video.

It took me tremendous amount of time going through the many hours of archive videos, meeting with the client to discuss structure/narration, shooting interviews/b-rolls, researching for music, and finally the many hours’ of editing.

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Is newspaper dying?

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Mu Lin

I’m teaching “Intro to Mass Communication” this semester and we just finished the chapter on newspaper. Most students indicated in class that they don’t read newspapers, and they don’t have a good idea whether or not newspaper is a dying media and a career they should consider. I said this to the class: newspaper, as a physical medium, may be dying; however, the contents of the paper are still in demand, but will be delivered via alternative means other than newsprint.

Statistics by Facebook regarding the most shared articles on Facebook in 2011 seem to substantiate my comments – among the top 40 most shared articles, 11 are from major newspapers such as New York Times and Washington Post.

It is also interesting to note that other than New York Times and Washington Post, a few major big news media dominate as the sources of these 40 articles – big names such as Yahoo and CNN. This only speaks to one thing – the demand for quality news contents remains strong, and may get even bigger as there will be more delivery channels – web portal, smartphone, social media, etc.

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Is iPhone app feasible way to help college newspaper stay in touch w/ students?

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Mu Lin

I serve as faculty adviser for the student newspaper on campus. It’s a small one – monthly with about eight pages. I have been approached by the school administrator asking if we could move the newspaper online thus saving some costs for the school – I said no, that it would kill this paper, as I doubt how many students would proactively follow the online edition.

My concern grows out of the pros and cons of push vs. pull media. Dictionary.com has an entry on push/pull media. Broadcast is a typical push media – audiences wait for the contents to be pushed to them; online media is pull media – audiences need to take the action to request something to be sent over. If a person has a choice between picking up a newspaper at the doorstep vs. logging on to their computer, typing in web address and clicking links around, many people would choose the easy or, lazy way, out. Continue reading →

Posted in College media going digital | 2 Comments

A cameraperson needs to be active and creative

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Mu Lin

I always tell students in video production class to pay attention to details while they shoot, especially when the video is meant for web delivery, because the smaller-size video windows on a web page call for fewer wide shots and more medium and closeup shots. Some students would set up the tripod and camera, shoot a few wide shots, move closer for a few medium shots, then look for a few closeup shots.

Without seeing some good samples, students have difficulty figuring out all by themselves what else they could shoot.

Here’s a good sample I recently found which shows how a lone camera person/reporter can move around a scene and take various shots. In addition to the closeups, I told students to pay attention to how the reporter arranged for shots with foregrounds and low-angle framing.

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Tips on writing online photo captions

Posted on April 2, 2011 by Mu Lin

Guidelines on writing captions for photos that go with an online article:

  • Describe the action taking place in the photo.
  • Identify every person (or major persons) in the photo.
  • Put the picture into context by providing background or additional information.
  • Use present tense for the first sentence; use past or future tense for additional information.
  • Include some time and place references.

In a nutshell, writing captions for online photo is different from writing captions for newspaper photos. In addition to supplementing the article, an online photo also needs to be informational on its own, as many web readers do not have the patience to read through the actual article.

A recent article by the Courier Press may serve as an example of good photo captions for:

  • (a) the caption writing follows the above-mentioned guidelines
  • (b) without reading the actual article, the photos and the captions alone are informational to readers, as there are necessary background information in the captions

Note that there are some repetitions of the background information in the several captions, which is acceptable considering that a visitor to that article may not read each and every photo/caption.

Related posts:

Posted in Audio slideshow, Writing for the web | 3 Comments

An example of good online news writing

Posted on March 15, 2009 by Mu Lin

A recent article carried by  Evansville Courier & Press on a new assisted-living home caught my eyes as a good example of online writing:

1. Be succinct. Remove non-essential adjectives and adverbs; keep the subject-verb-object sentence structure. Use short paragraphs, one idea per paragraph. NOTE that I do not necessarily recommend one-sentence-per-paragraph style in this article though.

2. Separate background information from the story copy. In this article, the “facts about the old” assisted-living home is contained in a sidebar and, as a common online writing practice, presented in a bulleted list.

3. The inverted-pyramid style in print writing still holds true in the online copies, if not all the more important. The reason is simple: online readers are even more impatient than print readers.

4. A less obvious point about this article is being specific in the headline. The headline is where search engines such as Google look at when an online user is searching for relevant information. This article has a headline of “New assisted-living home will be built on Knights of Columbus property.” A specific headline, like this one, is more likely to be presented to people googling for information about “assisted-living home” or “Knights of Columbus.” In contrary, a more print-like headline, such as ” A New Destiny for an Old Landmark,” is less likely to reach people interested in the information we just mentioned.

5. The writing of this article still have room for improvement though. The text copy is a bit long: it’s four pages down, on my 1280*800 display, to the end of the article. To better keep the attention of readers, the writer better use two or three subheadings in the copy. Be aware that subheading is also a typical online writing tip.

Related posts:

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What to expect of j-students: specialist or generalist?

Posted on March 13, 2009 by Mu Lin

Multimedia journalism education is being implemented at different colleges and universities in different ways; this is no surprise given the fact this is a new area for both the industry and the academia. We cannot have a clear idea how to incorporate multimedia journalism into existing journalism education until this practice further establishes itself in the industry.

That said, a basic question needs to be pondered: do we want our students to be a story specialist and multimedia generalist, or a story generalist and multimedia specialist? Ideally, we want the students to be a specialist in both areas; but that’s not always possible in the curriculum planning.

I tend to believe that a journalism student needs to be a story specialist and a multimedia generalist. The students need, first and foremost, to be well-trained in both print and broadcast journalism; then they take a cluster of multimedia journalism courses.

Whatever the way multimedia journalism is incorporated into the curriculum, this training needs to achieve three basic goals: (a) cultivate a multimedia journalism mindset for the students, (b) expose them to the current practices and examples, and (c) teach them how to use some basic tools.

Posted in Digital journalism education | 1 Comment

What is multimedia journalism: Multimedia presentation of journalism, or multimedia presentation of data?

Posted on February 14, 2009 by Mu Lin

While going through sample multimedia journalism works recommended at various sites, from time to time I looked at a particular project and wondered “is this multimedia journalism?” A case in point is the “History of Las Vegas” presented by the Las Vegas Sun and recommended by Poynter Online as “Multimedia Projects You May Have Missed in 2008,” amid some other “multimedia journalism” works.

Granted, “History of Las Vegas” is an excellent multimedia project on the history of Las Vegas incorporating interative map, timeline, videos, etc. However, this is a very good multimedia DATA project, not a JOURNALISTIC project; as a matter of fact, the News tab at the top of this site brings visitors to a seperate page containing a collection of articles published by the newspaper, without much of savvy multimedia elements. This is a very interesting presentation of the historic data of Las Vegas, it’s just not a multimedia journalism project.

Then, what, in my view, can be considered as “multimedia journalism?” As an instance, Washington Post had an article on the maintence and repair problems in the public schools in Washington, D.C. due to budge cut. Other than the articles and the interactive maps showing schools in D.C., what I like about this multimedia project is the audio interview clips of eight teachers, each clip also comes with a photo slideshow of that teacher.

This type of confusion pops up from time to time as I see people use “multimedia journalism” or “online journalism” to interchangeably refer to two different types of project: multimedia presentation of data and multimedia presentation of journalism. In a multimedia journalism project, the data should play a supplemental role to support or enhance the journalistic story; when the data itself takes on a central role, then it may not be called “journalism,” at least not so in the truest sense of “journalism.”

And this brings us, college educators, back to a basic question: do we want our students to be more of a journalist, or more of a multimedia specialist? To create projects like “History of Las Vegas,” our students need to be more of a multimedia specialist; to create projects like the D.C. school stories, our students need to be more of a journalist.

“What is multimedia journalism” is not merely an academic question, the answer to this question will to a great extent shape the multimedia journalism programs that are being started at many universities.

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Essential skill set for a multimedia journalist

Posted on February 12, 2009 by Mu Lin

1. Journalistic judgment: what makes a good news story?
2. Writing: On top of a solid training in journalism writing, a multimedia jouranlist needs to know some unique conventions for web-based writing.
3. Photography: In addition to all the basic photography knowledge, a multimedia journalist needs to incorporate video style shooting when taking photos, for purpose of producing sound photo slideshow.
4. Videography: How to use camera, compose a shot, what to film in the field, how to edit, etc.
5. Audio production: This is more like radio journalism in a digital age. The multimedia journalist needs to know how to use digital audio recorder, how to conduct a field interview, and how to edit the audio files.
6. Graphic design: How to process images/photos for online delivery.
7. Web design: How to create a basic web page; how to edit a web page created by others.
8. Online delivery: Flash, interactive map/timeline, photo sound slideshow, blog, citizen media, social network, etc.

The idea is to train our students to be a specialist in storytelling, and a generalist in media technology.

Posted in Digital journalism education | 1 Comment

WUSA: the first major market TV station to adopt multimedia journalist

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Mu Lin

Journalism educators and fellow competitors have been keeping a close eye on WUSA, Channel 9, in Washington; the station will roll out its plan early this year to do away with traditional two-person TV news crew in favor of the one-person multimedia journalist. This is the first major market TV station to adopt this new concept and practice of multimedia journalism, and is viewed by some people as an interesting experimentation and people want to see how things eventually play out.

The Washington Post had an article on this interesting transition at WUSA. One doubt raised by people interviewed in the article is the quality of works by multimedia journalists, and they cited similar experimentations, at smaller-market stations, to back up their concerns. Another concern that comes with this transition is the salary cut; the multimedia journalist will be paid significantly lower than traditional journalists.

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