Beyond Alaska Photo
Multimedia journalism in the Last Frontier

Twitter is one of those web 2.0 services that gets mentioned when technologically minded newspaper types talk about the future of the industry. I signed up a month ago and it’s both better and worse than I expected (let’s not get into Twitter’s chronic downtime issues). It’s essentially blogging in 140 characters or less but the real draw, at least for information publishers, is that an organization can push headlines to mobile devices thereby driving traffic to their main site.

The problem with this concept? Organizations are trying to push headlines to mobile devices thereby driving traffic to their main sites … burying the stuff I actually care about under a wave of inane links. I’ve stopped following the Seattle PI and the New York Times, which is painful because I need some journalism content to justify connecting at work, but the updates got to be too much (careful APRN, you might be next).

At any rate, even in a tech hub like Seattle, the PI can only manage 142 followers. A search on ‘Anchorage’ shows 155 total users listing the city as their location so Twitter is not likely to do much for us back at adn.com. It’s certainly not worth the effort, at least not yet.

But Twitter does work as a social network — I’ve ‘met’ local media professionals via the service and have been able to keep in touch with colleagues in other states — and it can work as a news service if there’s a strong voice delivering the tweets (unfortunate term, but what can you do?). I am completely hooked on NASA’s Mars Phoenix feed. Their Phoenix Twitter updates managed to capture the entry, descent and landing of the lander in something like real time (side note: my new dream job is making videos for NASA.

So my best friend turns out to be a robot. On another planet.

We’ve been having more than the usual number of meetings at the paper this week in an attempt to deal with the process of creating multimedia, and how it relates to our print product. My hope is that this period of reflection will help the Daily News transition away from a “ready, fire, aim” mentality (my #1 least favorite phrase ever), where reporters and photographers will post anything — phone interviews, shaky video — and call it multimedia to more thoughtful, professional story telling.

It’s not going to be easy.

Lack of training is a huge part of the problem, but I’m coming to believe we (read: hourly worker bees) are as much to blame as management. All the multimedia training in the world won’t make a journalist proficient if he or she doesn’t want to learn the stuff.

So here’s my short list of where to start:

The editors sent me to the Federal Courthouse in Anchorage to shoot video of former Wasilla representative Vic Kohring’s post-sentencing press conference. Media scrums are pretty rare in Alaska, there just aren’t that many outlets, but Thursday’s scene was as wild as any I’ve participated in (I take that back — the Linehan sentencing was crazier, but since it was in a courtroom it more contained).

“…The reporters initially flocked around Kohring…” said the Progressive Alaska blog. The media was three and four deep around Kohring but the MSM was nearly outnumbered by bloggers. In addition to Progressive Alaska, the Alaska Report commented on the proceedings, as did whatdoino-steve, and there should be a pro-Vic view posted to USAvsVicKohring at some point (plus I might be missing a few).

Everyone was shoving a mic in Kohring’s face, radio and TV for broadcast, multimedia types (including me) for the web, and print reporters for their notes. Two newspapers were shooting video, the Daily News and the Frontiersman. We were a mob, but I thought a well-mannered one for the most part.

Let’s not wring our hands over the decline of traditional journalism: something better is taking its place. I’m not interested in arguments about blog quality, or whether bloggers are journalists, because they clearly provide more context and more analysis at these events. Want to see more than what TV could broadcast? Don’t like that I chose to edit my video to Kohring’s first three minutes? Find a different clip on YouTube.

The MSM benefits from this new pressure as well. The Daily News sent two photographers, a videographer, a reporter and a blogger, which is good for job security and good for our readers.