fauna corporation

Just a quick post to say that I wrote up a brief summary of Podcamp Montreal for Midnight Poutine, Montreal’s only gravy-on-french-fries-themed Arts & Culture blog.

I’ll be spending the rest of the week trying to sort out my notes and investigate a few of the ideas that were presented at Podcamp.

I’m a bit of an introverted extrovert, so my networking at the event was a little sub-par, but I did meet some interesting people, and benefited from being at Podcamp, so I wanted to thank the organizers for bringing in this year’s roster of experts.

Van Horne Overpass with Crickets : Play Overpass with Crickets

I’ve been adding some audio up to the Montreal Sound Map lately.

I live in an area that is flanked by several overpasses, and I’m very interested in how they cut through Montreal and change the surrounding neighbourhoods. I also think they are an interesting audio source because they offer surprises - they are not just endless streams of cars - life has a way of reclaiming the space.

For example, I recorded the crickets you can hear above between waves of cars at rush hour on St-Laurent.

The Montreal Sound Map is worth spending some time with, as it presents the city in a way we seldom stop to appreciate. To hear my additions, click on the “Van Horne Overpass at St-Laurent”, and “Rockland Overpass” contributions (more to come, obviously).

This is just a quick note to say that I’ve written a post on Urban Camouflage about Stones Throw Record’s latest marketing idea, which is to sell a bag of fair-trade coffee with Oh No’s newest album, and a few posts on Black, White and Gold about the Bruins’ recent trade moves and their first couple of Pre-Season games.

Check them out - you’ll love them…if your tastes are as bizarrely particular as mine are.

In the media switch-up, journalists train themselves

Probably a surprise to no one, but a study cited today in Journalism.co.uk states that European Journalists are producing more original content online, but have mostly self-taught themselves the relevant skills to do so.

Fully 67% of those journalists polled from the UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Spain and Sweden said they taught themselves digital skills, whereas only one-in-nine received training from their media organizations.

Despite the above statistics, and the fact that the journalists feel great pressure to produce more content while facing down concerns about job and industry security, 84% of the journos polled said they were “as happy or happier” in their current roles.

And this fact speaks to something I’ve been saying for awhile now - that innovative narrative and evolving multimedia pieces offer something to both the journalist and the audience, and that these mutual benefits create a feedback loop between the two.

New, layered pieces allow journalists to explore stories in new ways - through visuals, sound design, text, video, etc. - and audiences are, in turn, freshly engaged by these pieces in ways that they have not been (lately) with the usual text-on-page model. This engagement brings audiences back to multimedia pieces (and finds new, web-savvy audiences) and, again, engages these audiences for news outlets.

However, the fact that these journalists are forced to train themselves to create these new / stronger relationships, and the fact that so few traditional media outlets are participating in networked journalism, speaks volumes about traditional media’s role in the evolving media landscape.

Which is to say, traditional media is clearly benefiting from new ideas and storytelling forms in journalism, but it is not doing an especially good job of fostering, stewarding or seeking out these new journalistic techniques.

This report also shows a trend that my own research as shown - that journalists, by and large, have a good sense of where things are going and are trying to lead the way, and are not to blame for most of the turmoil in the industry.

The full survey can be viewed here.

We’re all tied to technology - even the dinosaurs we know

I’ll be attending my first Podcamp this coming weekend, and am excited about it, even if I am not really sure what I will be in for.

I’m not a regular podcaster, but as a multimedia journalist and (relatively) early adopter of web tools I feel like anything that bills itself as the New Media UnConference is worth looking into. I’ll head down with a bag full of gear and I guess we’ll see what comes of the whole experience.

I know that Montreal boasts of some very enterprising new media cats, and I guess I’m hoping to discuss some ideas with people and see if we have a similar sense of how technology will be evolving and what we’ll be doing with it in the coming weeks, months and years. One thing I’ve found in the new media landscape is that I often just have a gut-sense of things, and find colleagues often have a similar sense, even if there are few books, sites or experts espousing similar ideas.

Either way, I shall report back here on whatever I learn. If you are going to be at Podcamp Montreal too, leave a comment!

A little over a week ago, PBS’s MediaShift website carried an interview with Jim Gaines, who is part of the team behind Flyp Media - one of the few, truly online magazines that I’ve encountered (ie: a ‘magazine’ allowing consumers to interact with a story in a variety of ways - through interactive elements, graphics, maps, video, still images, audio pieces, etc.).

Gaines’ interview addresses a lot of the concerns that I’ve heard expressed by magazine professionals over the years, but more importantly, it speaks to an optimism and frontier mentality that is now influencing multimedia journalism - a belief that forms can be blended and hybridized to create truly cross-media narratives. Exciting! Also, a little intimidating for journos frantically adding new skillsets.

As an example of cross-media content, check out Flyp Media’s piece on Yoko Ono and John Baldessari being honoured at the Venice Biennale. This piece combines typical print magazine side-bar elements (such as timelines and backstory pieces) with text, photos, videos, audio and interactive, mouse-over triggers to enrich the content.

While I am wary of touting any media resource as the be-all-end-all, I have been very impressed with Flyp Media’s understanding of our changing media consumption habits, and was pleased to read PBS’s MediaShift interview with Gaines as it offered context to my experience with Flyp.

Check out the interview with Jim Gaines, and then enjoy the piece on Ono and Baldessari.

NOTE: Despite my best intentions, this post began as a long-form essay on the changing nature of print magazines and the history of digital web magazines, my involvement with them, hurdles for the industry, the development of cave painting, time, breathing, etc. I cut out 90% of that rant, but may save it for another time as it all feels relevant but perhaps not critical to this post.

connecting skills to create emotionally moving vehicles is critical for multimedia journalists

I first found Adam Westbrook’s advice for multimedia journalists through the (awesome) Innovative Interactivity site, where he was posting about free tools available for multimedia journos.

A couple of days ago, I found a link on duckrabbit about Adam’s newest creation, a six part series on the skills that emerging multimedia journalists must have. Topics covered include branding, use of video (especially for web-use), storytelling techniques, business models and finding new markets, the importance of audio in engaging pieces, and finally, making things happen, which is about the ups and downs of being a freelance content producer.

I was especially struck by the audio and ‘making things happen‘ parts of the series. I think most multimedia journalists have a primary skillset and a few secondary skills they are employing to make media-rich pieces (ie: they are primarily videographers, who are honing writing skills, photographers who are transitioning to video, etc).

My own bank of skills puts writing and sound design as primary, with photography, video and web work as ascendant, which is a little more unusual than most journos. Therefore, it was gratifying to read Adam’s emphasis on the importance of audio (and his suggestions for best-practices) as sound design is often under used in multimedia journalism.

Also, every freelance journalist / content creator can use an energy boost during even the brightest of days. Reading Adam’s piece on making things happen is essential for anyone who is crafting content in this shifting media landscape, and struggles with the endless riptide of what-ifs that accompany being an independent entrepreneur.

In short, this six-part series offers every multimedia journalist advice and tips for our emerging craft, without employing a heavy-hand or extensive external reading. I recommend this series to anyone who is simply trying to make their good work great, or at least, more satisfying.

See Adam Westbrook’s full series here.