Multiplatform Journalism

For Tuesday, bring headphones to class, along with an audio clip on a flash drive:

The clip should be the interview to incorporate into your audio story.  For your FINISHED audio story — which is due March 3 — you are to create a 90-second to 2-minute audio story using material from ONE interview that you do for your final piece. Make sure you schedule your interview with your subject well before Feb 17, so that you can bring the audio material to class and begin working on it during the workshop day. (Obviously, this should be a central interview for your story: don’t schedule a man-on-the-street reaction interview, for example). This audio story should be built around a script that you will post on your blog along with your audio piece. It should include, along with the interview, ambient sound, natural sound, and a voiceover. As long as you write your own script, you are free to borrow someone else to do the voiceover.  Remember – this is not only a slice of your interview! You should think of this piece as a “sidebar” to your main story, and allow yourself to explore one aspect of your story in fuller detail.  NOTE: IF YOUR INTERVIEW FALLS THROUGH, YOU WILL STILL BE REQUIRED TO WORK ON SOME PART OF THIS AUDIO STORY IN CLASS ON TUESDAY.  SO COME PREPARED WITH SOMETHING TO WORK ON — A SCRIPT TO REVISE, SOURCED/COLLECTED AMBIENT OR NATURAL SOUND, A V/O CLIP, etc.  ALSO READ MY POST ON RECORDING PHONE INTERVIEWS.  Basically, Tuesday is your time to work on the audio piece in class, so make the most of it so that you won’t have to do all of it over reading week.

You may want to look here for some overall technical tips on working with audio and getting your clip in the right format, if you’re still feeling unsure.

And don’t forget to post on your blog:

1.) Brief commentary on NewsU, Telling Stories with Sound

2.) Documents-only story: As I said in class, think of it as sidebar to your main piece (though in fact I imagine you’ll incorporate information from this story into the larger article in the end).  The purpose of this 750-word piece is to get you to focus on structuring information and figuring out how facts should flow from one point to the next logical point. It is probable that you will wind up consulting more documents than those you’ve put on your source list: make sure that you provide a citation for everything you consult (either mention the source in the story itself –  ie, ‘according to a 1961 survey by the British Herpetological Society’ – or include a source list at the end for my benefit if it doesn’t seem appropriate to cite within the piece).   Remember, this is a story, not a blog entry. It thus should follow the conventions of print journalism — an interesting lead, and an inverted pyramid structure. Pay close attention to transitions. You don’t have a lot of space, so focus on concision. The goal here is to write the most interesting story you can, given the space and information constraints. Simply turning in a summary of the facts in your documents will earn a failing grade.

So — a couple of you have contacted me regarding recording phone interviews for your audio piece.  If that’s the only way for you to do an interview for next week, go ahead.  But you’ll need to figure out a method — just using the Edirol isn’t going to do it.  This post has some great suggestions: read both the post itself and the comments about Skype.  In general, doing a Skype (your end) to phone (their end) call will be the simplest; you’ll need software like Audio Hijack Pro or some other recording software to record the call from your computer.  Note that some paid programs have free trials, so you can try them out on this call without investing in them.  You will have to buy Skype out minutes, but that’s a negligible cost.  Here’s more cheap or free technology for recording Skype calls; you can search around for more options as well.  Feel free to ask me general questions about this: I won’t be able to troubleshoot your specific setup, though, so experiment several times until you find something that works.

I’m also going to repost this link, which has great advice for audio newbies (and not so newbies).

UPDATE: Dominique also suggested the possibility of recording calls from a sound booth in the radio studio.  This might be a *great* option for those of you who want to do more interviews later in  the semester, but probably not something you’ll get to do by next Tuesday. I’ll check with Elias about availability.