Reflecting on COM 450: Multimedia Journalism
By Lindsay Fendt
The field of journalism is evolving. No longer is it simply enough to be a good writer, photographer or videographer. Today’s journalist needs to be a jack-of-all-trades and, most importantly, needs to have the capability to apply their skills in various mediums into telling a story.
Fall 2009's Multimedia Journalism class.
Through the various projects and readings in the Multimedia Journalism class, I have a better understanding of which skills I need to develop in order to succeed in the world of professional journalism.
Even though I know that this class is intended as a senior seminar wrap-up course, I am glad that I took it as a junior. We covered so many things that made me realize how much more I need to learn in order to produce quality multimedia content. Instead of being intimidated by this, I now feel like I know what I need to concentrate on before I leave Elon.
Semester Multimedia Projects
This semester we have focused on producing stories using text, photos, audio and video. We also looked at multimedia projects produced by professional organizations and other schools. Through both creating and looking at multimedia and online content, I learned some important things to keep in mind.
One thing I realized through this class is that I really enjoy working on short photo, video and audio projects and believe that they have great potential for telling stories. In our semester-long project Crossing the Street, we created a series of profiles of people involved in the story. I believe that this turned out to be the most powerful aspect of our entire website because it gave real opinions from people directly affected by the issue without bias.
The local culture stories and the profiles were my favorite projects for the semester. The multimedia story “Farmer Spreads Local Culture with Berry Farm” would not have had the same affect had it not been told in the farmer’s own voice with photos of his actual farm.
Journalism is headed in so many different directions and there is no way to be completely prepared for every situation, but I think that I personally enjoy making profiles similar to these that allow a person to tell their own story with their own words.
The Future of Careers in Journalism
Another large portion of this class focused on the future of journalism as a career and the sort of people that have become successful. We looked at one post on the 10,000 Words multimedia blog about three young multimedia journalists. After reading this, and several other articles from class, I have really begun to think about what sort of skills I should be developing in my remaining time at Elon.
1) Video: One of my great hopes in taking this class is that my abilities with Final Cut Pro would improve. While we did not directly have any classes about the program, through some of the projects I did have to use Final Cut. What I discovered was that I am not as bad at editing video as I thought I was, but I still need to work on this skill if I want to be able to use it in a professional setting.
My interest in photography is another reason I really need to increase my video knowledge in general. There are many cases when a still image can be extremely powerful, but there are also situations where video can do a better job of telling a story. Some great examples of what I would like to be able to accomplish with video are at the multimedia page on the Western Kentucky University Herald’s website.
2) Computers and the Web: In class we have discussed the importance of having web skills for the future of journalism, and how the School of Communications does not yet emphasize these skills enough. Prior to this class I never really considered the role that advanced computing can have in journalism, but we have looked at a number of sites that use the actual website as part of the story telling process.
I have a great deal of freedom in my schedule for next year and I am planning on taking at least two classes outside of the School of Communications that will help me learn web development skills.
3) Interviewing: While I do not believe that I am a bad interviewer, I think that I need to do more to try and develop into a great interviewer. After looking at some of the work other people in the class have done and some professional work, I think that this is a skill that can take good journalism to the next level. I think in today’s society, people do not want a journalist telling them what to think; they want people to tell their own stories. In order to accomplish this, a journalist has to know the right questions to ask and how to get people to open up to them.
Unfortunately this is not something that is taught in a class. In order to improve in this area, I will need to write more and interview more. This is a topic that a lot of journalism blogs also discuss. I recently found this post on The Adventurous Writer helpful.
Journalism’s Future
It is no secret that the traditional newspaper and television news model is floundering. Even though some of this can be attributed to the recession, the main issue is that the news consuming audience is changing.
Concept of the future of journalism. Photo Illustration by Paulino Figueirido
Last year I wrote about the future of journalism for my Reporting for the Public Good class. Over the past year, and after taking this class, I have a developed a different view on what that future will be. While I am still optimistic, a lot of the content and new models of journalism we have seen make me fear that the quality of journalism is declining.
Right now there are not many professionals that can use multimedia to adequately tell a linear story. Too many online stories attempt to include video or other multimedia content just for the sake of having it, even if it does not add anything to the story. I think that future journalists need to focus on producing quality journalism over having as many multimedia elements as possible.
One thing that really scares me is the stories that have been popular over the past few years. I feel like every time I turn on the news I see something about Falcon Heene or Tiger Woods. What shocks me is that the reason these stories get so much coverage is because people actually want to watch them. CNN’s ratings skyrocketed during the balloon boy story, and all they had to put on the screen was continuous footage of the balloon’s flight.
I truly believe that there are plenty of young journalists with the capabilities and the desire to produce work of an extremely high caliber. What concerns me is that the public does not care about quality journalism, they care about being entertained.
Many new online news models have based themselves around this idea. The Daily Beast has been specifically designed to look more like a magazine than a newspaper. Another website, Newser, has the slogan “Read Less, Know More,” highlighting the fact that people will not take the time to read long, in-depth stories.
I think that right now is a dark time for journalism, and while the modern audience scares me, I still think that there is an opportunity to revamp journalism to suit the needs of its consumers and inform the public about important things.
Companies like MediaStorm tell incredible stories and use multimedia in a way that can hold an audience’s attention. The stories on their website are important, real, and not superficial like what is on many other news outlets.
I believe that with the development of a stable business model, whatever that may be, journalism can both entertain and inform. One day soon people will be talking about the latest hard hitting story, instead of the latest celebrity scandal.
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Farmer Spreads Local Culture with Berry Farm
By Lindsay Fendt and Sami Miller
Red soil and grass crunch under Steve Smith’s feet as he walks the plot his family bought half a century ago. While much of North Carolina’s farmland is being sold to housing developers, Smith has found a way to keep his family’s traditions alive.
This land had been used to grow tobacco since before the Civil War, but now it’s being used for something else that both locals and visitors alike can enjoy.
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Running a Mile in His Shoes: David Wells on Running Cross Country
By Lindsay Fendt
Running to Escape
Some people pick up a pen and write, some grab a brush and paint, some even pocket their wallets and shop, David Wells just puts on his shoes and lets them carry him away.
“My shoes mean a lot to me because they give me an outlet to put my energy into,” Wells said. “They allow me to get away from things.”
David Wells shows off his running shoes.
Wells got his first pair of running shoes when he was in the sixth grade after he started running competitively.
“My passion for running started when I was pretty young,” he said. “I was always the fastest on my soccer team growing up and so I started running cross country when I was a freshman in high school and I’ve grown to love it more ever since.”
Wells and the Cross Country Team
As part of the Elon cross country team, Wells spends at least six hours a day in his running shoes with practices two or three times a day. On top of daily practices, the cross country team travels almost every weekend for meets.
“It adds up to about 30 hours a week so it is kind of like having a job that I don’t get paid for,” he said, “but pushing myself through running is really great.”
Despite the lack of free time, Wells said that he is constantly driven to compete through running.
“I run for the competition and to reach goals that I set for myself,” he said. “I run for my teammates because they mean a lot to me.”
Exhausted Shoes, Exhausted Runner
The number of miles Wells puts on his feet is no small feat for his shoes. Most running shoes are built to last a maximum of 400 miles, a distance Wells and his teammates cover in a matter of weeks.
Wells's racing spikes
“I go through at least one pair of running shoes a month,” said Wells. “I also have another pair of shoes I race in, called spikes that I replace every season.”
Wells’s shoes are not the only things that are exhausted. The amount of running and the long hours required for cross country take their toll on the runners as well. Practices start at seven every day and for races the runners have to get up as early as five in the morning.
“What I don’t like about cross country is never getting to sleep,” said Wells. “Just being tired all of the time is really a struggle.”
The exhaustion, commitment and the idea of running almost 16 miles a day might seem like too much for some people, but Wells has no intention of putting up his running shoes anytime soon.
“Why do I run? There are so many reasons,” he said, “but I do it because I love it.”
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Places With a Story: Lauren Fendt and the Roswell Mill Waterfall
By Lindsay Fendt
Deep in the woods in a secluded part of Roswell, Georgia’s downtown area sits the abandoned rainwashed buildings and rusted machinery that were once part of the prosperous Roswell Mill. For years, the mill and its man-made waterfall have been a welcome treat for hikers and people trying to get away from the Georgia summer heat.
Eighteen-year-old Lauren Fendt and her friends were some of the few who knew about the waterfall. Through most of high school, Fendt and her friends enjoyed many summer days completely alone at the waterfall.
“It was like our secret place,” said Fendt. “No one bothered us. We would bring a picnic basket and spend the whole day there.”
Realizing the area’s potential as a public park, officials with the City of Roswell began last year to develop paths to make the area easier to access. Upon returning from college, Fendt and her friends found their secret hangout turned into a crowded public park.
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Crossing the Street: Profiles
The following videos are part of our project Crossing the Street, in which we investigated the relationship between Elon University and the surrounding community. The university is located in a small Southern town, a sharp contrast from the larger northern cities many students come from. Two of these videos are part of the profile section on the website, where we conducted interviews with both students and members of the community. The last video is part of one of the smaller stories about community service.
Amy Haynes and Josh Mask
By Lindsay Fendt
Amy Haynes, an Elon junior from Pennsylvania, and Josh Mask, a local Burlington resident, met at a mutual friend’s party during Haynes’s freshman year. They have now been dating for two years despite their different backgrounds.
Nicole Kiefer
By Lindsay Fendt
Nicole Kiefer is a junior cinema and theater studies double major at Elon. She got involved with the Burlington Gallery Players, a community theater group, during her sophomore year. Few Elon students are involved with the Gallery Players and Kiefer regularly interacts with members of the community.
Community Service Story
By Lindsay Fendt and Julia Jacobs
Mary Morrison, director of Elon University’s Kernodle Center for Service Learning, describes a new initiative getting students out in the community to volunteer on Friday afternoons.
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Toxic Legacy: Multimedia that Works
By Lindsay Fendt
This website is based around an award-winning story about a small town in New Jersey that fell victim to environmental degradation at the hands of the Ford Motor Company. The local newspaper, The Record, produced this site to accompany their story when it ran in 2005.
Screen shot from the Toxic Legacy website.
The actual print story won numerous awards including one from the Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the online multimedia site is still referenced as a great example of well-done multimedia journalism.
A Commitment to Journalism Over Glitz
There are many reasons this site is so effective, but I believe that the main reason is its dedication to great journalism. Many websites today cover up the lack of actual reporting with glitzy flash animations that serve no real purpose. Conversely, everything in this site furthers some point of the story.
The site is divided into basic parts of the story, and then in addition to these sections, are links to content sorted by media and actual copies of the documents, maps and charts the reporters consulted. Each part is based around text but also includes icons that link to photos and video.
Telling a Story, NOT Reorganizing Information
The website also functions in a linear fashion. Rather than simply clumping all of the information and leaving it to the discretion of the user to decide what they look at, it has a video introduction and then provides an obvious order in which the story is supposed to go. I think that this is something that many multimedia sites are lacking. Rather than actually putting together a story, they just compile information.
I think that this should be our goal with our multimedia website. Anyone who can use flash can make an eye-catching animation, but there are far fewer people that can use these multimedia tools to tell a compelling story. This is a multimedia JOURNALISM class and I think that our work should reflect that.
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10,00 Words: The Importance of Real-Life Relationships
By Lindsay Fendt
While this post may seem to have a great deal more to do with technology’s affect on the population as a whole, I also believe that it makes a very important point to journalists. 
Through my work at the Pendulum and my internships, I understand the convenience of simply contacting a source through email or the telephone. While technology has made journalism more immediate and in some cases more thorough, it also makes it easier to be sloppy. No phone conversation or email interview can take the place of a face-to-face conversation.
Dangers of Impersonal Communications
This post mentions that a journalist cannot truly understand the community they serve unless they get out and interact with the people in that community. While this is true, I do not believe that this is the biggest problem with using technology to contact sources. Journalists usually live in the communities they report on and interacting with the community outside the workplace is an even more important way to understand it then interacting with sources while on assignment.
The problems the post does not mention are the missed opportunities resulting from an electronic interview. In an in-person interview, it is easier to clarify a question, ask a follow up question and pick up on what the interviewee is trying to convey. The post even mentions the fact that there are “little things that can’t be picked up through online interactions.” Even though you may be able to get a great quote on the phone or even a more well-thought out quote via email, you miss out on the source’s initial reaction to your question.
Cultivating Contacts
In the long term, technology’s impersonal nature can also make it difficult to cultivate sources based on personal relationships. Since the beginnings of modern journalism, beat reporters have relied on their personal friendships and professional interactions with sources. It is unlikely that a trusting relationship would develop between a source and a journalist that have only chatted online.
Technology does provide a great fast way to locate and get a hold of sources and journalists should not shy away from using it in situations on deadline. The problem arises when journalists use impersonal communication in all situations and fail to put real work into it.
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Critiquing the Texas Tribune
By Lindsay Fendt
A recent article for the New York Times written by David Carr discusses the launch of a new online-only news organization, The Texas Tribune. The new site incorporates two concepts not used by traditional newspapers. The first is a non-profit model run by a small group of dedicated reporters. The second is reporting solely on Texas state politics, appealing to a very narrow area of interest.
A screen shot from the Texas Tribune's website.
The Problems with Niche Journalism
While I admire the Texas Tribune’s attempt at a new model of journalism, I do not think that this niche type reporting is necessarily the answer. The internet is a medium geared toward individual preferences, but I do not think that in the future, people are going to be willing to go to a different website for each different type of news that interests them.
While state politics is an important topic, I think that most has already been overtaken by the blogosphere. People interested in state politics go to blogs that offer their opinions about state politics. While there are many inherent problems with non-professionals producing journalism, I do not believe that it makes sense to dedicate so many resources to such a specific area that does not generate very much interest.
It is true that state politics needs to be covered, but an organization like this will not last in today’s market. I believe that a more practical approach would be to create a site dedicated to all states’ politics. Obviously this operation would have to be much bigger than that of the Texas Tribune, but perhaps this model is a predecessor to that type of journalism. Niche journalism could work, but it has to be done on a large scale basis to attract traffic.
Non-Profit Journalism
Even though I do not see the Texas Tribune surviving in the long term, I do believe that experimentation such as this is what the journalism industry needs right now. No one knows for sure what type of model is going to work for the future of journalism.
Despite the heated debate over whether a non-profit model will help or hurt the industry, the fact remains that no one will know what works until someone tries. With that said, I do not believe that non-profit journalism is a lasting model.
While I do not think that all journalists perform their profession for the money, I doubt that the interest in the profession would stay the same if income levels dropped to that of non-profit organizations. I think that to produce real quality journalism, you have to be willing to spend money on it, and hopefully one day soon consumers will adopt this attitude.
