Briggs and strategy: an introduction to multimedia
I just finished my first read-through of Mark Briggs’ outstanding introduction to multimedia reporting, “Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive”
Katie Lohrenz, my often-quoted online producer, told me to read it (from a link via Mindy McAdams). Pretty much, whatever Mindy recommends and Katie tells me to do, I do.
Briggs, assistant managing editor at The News Tribune in Tacoma, WA, has written a good primer to journalism in the 21st Century. It’s a beginners guide in a world where, except for a rare handful of us, we’re all beginners. Briggs’ engaging style makes the leap to multimedia journalism a little less intimidating.
Can
you cut a word in your copy and paste it into a different location to
help the sentence flow? Then you have what it takes to edit audio and
video.
Can you send an attachment with an e-mail? Then you have what it takes to publish a blog with pictures.
Briggs goes on to write:
Go
find someone who works on the Web site for a news company. Ask them how
they learned to do what they do. In almost all cases I would wager that
they are self-taught. It’s simply the result of wanting to learn
something new.
That’s
the secret: If you truly want to learn how to do digital journalism,
you will. Remember, this is about people, not technology.
Briggs covers the basics, from how the web works to how to make your
computer-assisted reporting sing on the web and adopting that
wire-service mentality to effectively be a breaking on-line newsperson.
Mindy recommended this for students, and it would be a great classroom resource. I’m
going to recommend it next month, when I start doing some newsroom
training for those who aren’t jumping into the multimedia waters –
which is just about everyone.
The guys out there pushing 50, like me, really can benefit from this.
1 comments:
Mark
said...
Thanks,
Ron. I'm glad you found it useful. I wrote it for the veterans in my
own newsroom and tried to make it as accessible and practical as
possible.
- Mark Briggs