Sholin's tweet today

Ryan Sholin posted more useful talk about Twitter for gathering and reporting news today over at the MediaShift Idea Lab, an online project of the U.S. Public Broadcasting System (PBS). It’s a great companion to the KCNN Twitter module.

An interesting side note: I learned about this post from Sholin himself. I follow him on Twitter.

Magda Abu-Fadil, director of the Journalism Training Program at the American University of Beirut, also happens to write for the The Huffington Post. Recently, she posted about our most recent workshop, which took place the week of July 21–25. Not long after she posted, Abu-Fadil got a notice from Digg that her story was rising quickly, and that she should work on getting more people to promote it. (Digg, simply put, is a Web 2.0 site that allows people to vote on stories they like. Stories with more votes than others can be “promoted” to the front page.) I finally signed up for the ranking service, after a long wait, and then asked my networks, through other 2.0 sites—namely, Facebook and Twitter—to Digg the story too. Now, we have 117 Diggs. Not bad. Read the story. If you like it, you can register for Digg and vote for us too.

A blogging friend forwarded this email today from GroundReport.com:

Global citizen journalism website GroundReport.com is looking to for Middle East correspondents and we were wondering if you could spread the word to the bloggers you feature on your site. We think it would be a great way for both us and them to reach out to a wider audience, and all our contributors receive a share of our ad revenue.

GroundReport.com is a global news outlet with on-the-ground coverage.  We welcome original text news articles and photographs and are especially interested in firsthand accounts from international bloggers.  Our mission is to democratize the media. If you have any questions, please contact us at info@groundreport.com.

Well, what are you waiting for?

There are two main distinctions between editing digital audio and video and analog audio and video (you know, magnetic reel-to-reel tape and celluloid film).

The digital editing process is:

1. Nondestructive
2. Nonlinear

Editing both audio and video comprises a sequence of decisions that will produce an infinite number of unique variations that vary according to the author’s voice.

There are three discrete parts in the post-production process:

1. IMPORTING

Source files/clips are imported to a storyboard or tracklist.

2. EDITING

Then, a rough cut is assembled via cutting out unnecessary data and arranging the clips according to a storyboard or script. Next, we apply transitions and effects to the rough cut, reflecting our tone and/or style.

3. PUBLISHING/ARCHIVING

Once we have finalized the piece, we prepare it for sharing, i.e., distribution and/or archiving at places like archive.org and ourmedia.org.

First, we’ll loosely follow along with this audio tutorial shared by Mindy McAdams on her amazing blog Teaching Online Journalism, which has been posted to the blogroll.

Then, we’ll work with your video clips in Windows MediaMaker, according to instructions shared in Journalism 2.0, a resource made possible by the Knight Citizen News Network that no online journalist should be without—and that some enterprising Arabic speaker should translate to share the wealth.

Below I’ve transcribed the audio of the photoessay we saw on Monday, Continuous War: Cluster Bombs in South Lebanon, to give you an idea of how many words (267) fill 1 minute and 44 seconds of airtime.

Rasha Zayoun is a 17-year-old teenager from Maraka, south Lebanon, who lost her leg to a cluster bomb. One that was tangled in a bush of wild vine and unwittingly brought home by her father. As Rasha started sorting through the herbs, she was attracted by a bell-shaped object. She thought it was a toy. She picked it up. It vibrated. She dropped it. It exploded. Rasha still has nightmares about the incident but she puts on a brave face. Inside she’s very upset. She wants to be with her friends, to walk, to go to school, to see the world. But she’s ashamed of her leg, so she stays home. The young boy she’s in love with stayed by her side and that made her love him more. More than the whole world, she says. Rasha feels that everybody is more concerned with how she lost her leg than they are about her. From when she was young, Rasha always wanted to be a dressmaker. Without the limb, for her, that would be difficult. The limb is her ticket to independence. To not feeling ashamed. To not feeling different. She’s scared of the future. Of being able to get a limb. So many thoughts run through her mind. What if the limb costs money? They have no money. That would be totally crushing. I might as well die, she says. In the future, when Rasha has children, and she hopes she will, she won’t let them out of her sight. She’ll keep them close to her, to try and protect them from a fate like hers.

Finally, anyone who wants to know more about producing and writing for audio, should visit Transom.

Adham Najdi

Adham Najdi is a young Lebanese man who was severely injured by a cluster bomb that exploded near his grandfather’s house in Srifa, Lebanon, after the July War of 2006. I interviewed Adham on several occasions. The sample audio file we’ll use comes from one of these interview. I edited Adham’s interview down to about 1:44 and saved it at three different bit speeds so that we can evaluate the trade-off between sound quality and download speed. Here are the steps I took to edit this piece with Audacity 1.3 on a Mac. I’ve also listed steps of how to do it on 1.2.6 for Windows. The photo is of Adham and was taken by Gabriela Bulisova.

1. Project–>Import Audio, located the adham-short.wav file
2. File–> Save Project As…
3. Click on: Copy All Audio Into Project (safer)
4. Click on magnifying glass, then next to track beginning to enlarge waveform.
5. Select all, and duplicate track in case anything goes wrong. Mute and minimize original track. Adjust gain to +15dB.
6. Insert cursor at about 2:51, “What were you studying in school?” Edit–>Select…”start to cursor.” When the selection is highlighted, Ctrl+X.
7. Save
8. Edit–>Move cursor to track start.
9. Zoom in with the magnifying glass to see the shape of the waveform. If you zoom in too far, hold the CTRL key down to zoom out.
10. Tap the space bar to play and pause and play again.
11. Where you hear an “uhhhhhhhh,” select that area and zoom in. (Use edit–>Select…move cursor to end of selection to try something new.)
12. Play again, noting precise times and where to cut.
13. Use hand selector tool to refine your selection.
14. Cut the section between about 6 seconds and 22 seconds.
15. Start again around, “Why were you studying that?”
16. Cut from about 10.8 to 14.8.
17. Edit–>Split New 44.837 to 53.46. Save.
18. Select Tariq’s “umm” response with shift+arrow key. Cut.
19. Zoom all the way into 1:53:827 “ghalaT” to get the last bit of the T. Insert cursor.
20. Edit–>Select to end. And cut.
21. Select the last region and Edit–>Split New.
22. Delete unnecessary tracks.
23. Select a bit of the end of the first track. Go to the Effects menu and choose Fade Out.
24. Fit in window to get a sense of where we are.
25. Zoom in again.
26. Select timeshift tool. <–>
27. Move second half of track to where the first half will overlap it a bit. Select a bit of the initial audio. Go to the effects menu and choose Fade In.
28. Go to the Effects menu and select Fade In. Repeat if it’s not sounding quite right.
29. We need to even the volume out a bit. But first let’s condense the two tracks into one. Select them both by shift+click. Then go to Tracks–>Mix and Render.
30. Select the volume envelope tool. Create and drag points to adjust the volume where necessary.
31. Listen to the whole track and make sure you like it.
32. Save. Go to File–>Export to MP3. Set your streaming speed by clicking on Options. Save several times to compare the quality of different bit rates. That’s it!

Here’s the slideshow I gave on the first day of the workshop. The notes I wrote to go with it are “below the fold,” but surely they differ somewhat from what I actually said. Feel free to use the slideshow/notes for education purposes. I’m kicking myself for not recording the presentation so that we could have uploaded the interpreters’ Arabic. But having a presentation with Arabic is a great start. Not sure if there’s another one out there. If there is, and you know about it, please let us know. I will add the links at the end of the workshop (July 25, 2008)—no time now.

I was especially pleased with the discussion that we had about Arab journalism today. For instance, I didn’t know that Arab journalists often don’t work with a style guide, like the ones beaten into many U.S. journalists by their copy chiefs.

I learn so much from the participants in these workshops. I hope they feel the same way.

Journalism is changing. Has been changing for about the past quarter-century.
Personal computers brought desktop publishing into the newsroom. Type was no longer set by hand.

The Internet made it possible for people to access news about anywhere from anywhere; newspapers and other media outlets responded by launching websites, most of which were just online versions of what you could find in print.

Mobile phones meant we could talk to anyone from just about anywhere, and SMS meant it was inexpensive to send a short message around the world.

Then, as the prices of laptops, digital cameras, audio recorders, and video cameras dropped, more and more people began using them to document their lives.

And now a wide range of Web 2.0 tools and open-source software, from telephony products to mapmaking applications, are changing the way we interact with each other and technology once again.

Now anyone with access to a device or two and an internet connection can use them to share not only bits of themselves but also what’s happening around them.

These developments are profoundly changing not only the way we practice journalism but also who is practicing journalism.

More and more frequently, the stories we read and videos we watch—even when they are distributed by mainstream news organizations—aren’t produced by so-called professionals.

Rather, they are captured by what NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen calls “the people formerly known as they audience.”

This means your readers, viewers, listeners are also telling stories.

The journalists, editors, and producers being paid by networks and newspapers don’t have the monopoly on what’s considered news anymore.

The drop in TV news ratings and the proliferation of alternative media and citizen journalism sites attests to this.

In addition, in the United States, newspaper journalism in particular is suffering from a sharp decline in classified advertising revenue caused by a lack of foresight on the part of newspapers and an excess of foresight on the part of a man named Craig Newmark, who founded Craigslist.org, an online community where people can post ads for free.

The result of these changes is that traditional journalism all over the world is in the midst of a radical evolution that can be seen from the boardrooms to the newsrooms.

Business models are changing and so are reporting and editing models. The way we gather and organize our information, how we find and interview sources, how we draft our stories and the phases in which they are published are all being transformed by not just by the digital technologies themselves but because they are getting into the hands of more and more people.

One quick example, 3.5 billion people have mobile phones. More people now have a mobile phone than don’t. This is an amazing statistic, given that mobile phones have only been around for about 30 years.
In the 100+ years that landline telephones have been around, the average penetration rate was never that high.

When we consider that many mobile phones do more than allow people to talk to each other—they can send messages, broadcast information, access the Web, send email, take photos and upload them automatically, these statistics become remarkable not only for the new potential for one-to-one communication that they represent but also for the possibilities implied for one-to-many and many-to-many distribution networks that they can form at an incredibly low cost.

In short, with phones, digital cameras, etc., and the software that runs on them and on the web, what we are seeing is a convergence of technologies and applications that are allowing for not only a lot more content, but also increasingly diverse and decentralized representations of our world.

More content means that our audiences—our readers, listeners, and viewers—have a near infinite choice of content. Less revenue means that journalists are increasingly being asked to contribute more.

So the essential question becomes how do we as journalists, editors, and producers adapt our methods and our training to this environment so that we can keep earning our living? And so that we can continue being of service to the societies we live in?

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What Arab journalists say it's their job to do

A recent survey of 601 Arab journalists revealed that about three-quarters of them believe it is their job to encourage political reform. Sixty-six percent think it is their duty to educate the public, and 60 percent consider it right to use the news for social good.

The survey was conducted by Lawrence Pintak, director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at the American University in Cairo. Pintak, along with psychology professor Jeremy Ginges and graphic designer Nicholas Felton, recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about the results. The paper included a one-page PDF with the questions and response percentages along with the article on its website. While the study was intended to reveal a mindset that could be used to change Western perceptions about Arab journalists, I wonder if it might not also give Arab journalists themselves some good news?

This week, Magda Abu-Fadil of the Journalism Training Program at the American University of Beirut is hosting its second five-day workshop in online and citizen journalism. Workshop participants are expected to come from a variety of media outlets from across the Arab world, including Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco.

In the intensive course, we will cover concepts of online and citizen journalism and look at the Web 2.0 tools that are transforming news production and distribution. Then, we’ll take a look at several journalists’ blogs and the range of blogs in the Middle East and North Africa region to get an idea of how people are using these new technologies.

Next we’ll dive in to the how-to of being an online or citizen journalists, setting up blogs, learning about the range of digital file formats, and capturing and editing audio and video as part of producing our own independent multimedia packages. We’ll wrap up the week with a session on ethics and presentations of what we’ve achieved during the course, as well as get a grasp on what’s next.

It’s our belief that these days there’s no journalism that not online journalism, so it’s crucial to extend online training to as many journalists as possible, from cub reporter to veteran correspondent, so that they have an opportunity to fulfill the expectations they have for themselves and their societies. In addition, with so many nonprofessionals contributing to the conversation, we think its important to share the standards and ethics of journalism, so that professionals and nonprofessionals alike can develop the credibility for their reporting they deserve.

(Above: Detail of Ras Beirut, where much of the recent fighting is/was, captured from a Platial map created to document the events of the past few days.)

I just sent this email out to everyone I know in Lebanon. Please move it around:

Dear friends close to Lebanon,

I hope each and every one of you is safe and sound in the midst of the recent fighting in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon.

I am conducting an experiment with mapping this recent conflict with a social web application called Platial maps. On this map, to which I’ve added only a few markers to get started, you can set a marker, create icons (because there’s a pretty limited selection and they weren’t designed to document conflict) upload pictures, and write descriptions of what you saw or experienced or read about while you were inside waiting for it to end.

The map is here:

http://platial.com/map/Beirut-Crisis/112814/

Whether the powers that be come to an agreement today or not, I would like to try to engage in some safe, yet collective action to document the events of the past few days. Anything that you saw is worth remembering, worth documenting. If a friend told you a story that you think should be on this map, please ask him or her to add it. If they don’t have internet access, ask for the information, what happened and where, and add it for them.

Also, I know many of us work with slow internet connections, and I imagine this map is somewhat bandwidth intensive, but if you can get access to a faster connection through an internet cafe, at the office, or at a friends, I think it will be well worth all of our time to contribute. On our 256k Mobi modem, it took about 3-4 minutes to load. You may have to register with Platial to add data. Again, I hope you’ll think it’s worth it. It will not end anytime soon and you can visit as often as you like.

A note: You can also edit icons. Feel free to do so, keeping in mind that what you are editing is another person’s experience. In most cases, I imagine it is better to add a new marker or to add to (but not edit) an existing marker. This project is much more about preserving and honoring our memories than about reporting facts, though the facts that will naturally appear also help construct the fabric. If you are writing and you’re not sure of a fact, you may want to include a (?). Then, someone else may come along and help.

If you have specific questions about this project, please email me directly. I’ll do my best to answer them. But for the moment, I’ll just say that this was inspired by other maps I’ve seen of conflict, by Zeina Maasri’s maps of the 2006 war, and by the possibilities of working together, though dispersed with online media.

Thank you for your participation and for forwarding this email to others who might like to contribute.

Hopefully,

Jessica

In what seems like sort of a risky move, Jason Haber, who blogs for open-source journalism pioneer Newassignment.net has promised a site called iConflict by March 2008 (or in some places February 2008 and others just 2008). But just because deadlines to launch new initiatives can be oh-so-hard to meet doesn’t detract from the substance of what he’s trying to achieve. Which serendipitously seems to try to answer the question that ended my last post, is it possible that our watchdogs and truthtellers culd be everywhere at once?

iConflict, says the About page on the companion blog Blogflict, “is dedicated to empowering people to share information, and discuss conflicts and crises, wherever they arise.” Simple enough, but what’s more inspired, and what, inexplicably doesn’t yet exist (though we’re also working on something here) is the site’s mission to aggregate the experiences of not only people who cover conflict but also those who are affected by it, including activists, first responders, relief workers, volunteers, and even citizens living with it, by providing them space to keep blogs and document the so-called situation on the ground with images and video.

Witness.org’s The Hub started something similar last year, providing a space on its website for user-provided video documenting human rights abuses. Global Voices is another go-to platform for international (though not necessarily in conflict) voices via blogs. iConflict appears to want to expand on these models by including originally produced—and then YouTube and iTunes syndicated—newscasts from offices in New York and Washington, DC, as well as interactive, mashed-up content that until now is more often found among the multimedia content of sites like the New York Times and partnering with other networked platforms.

I’ve emailed Haber, one of the site’s creators, to ask about how the site will be funded and moderated as well as what technology will be incorporated in the initial stages. If the creators are able to convert their vision into a workable model, it could help change the way we see the world. In the meantime, they’ve invited anyone interested to join their Facebook group. Pay a visit and maybe you can help them get their lofty goals off the ground.