Beyond Alaska Photo
Multimedia journalism in the Last Frontier

I spent Tuesday night at Election Central in Anchorage and while the main party upstairs was pretty slow, the Obama rally downstairs was off the charts. The room was packed and it felt … historic.

(video and audio collected with the Canon G9)

All things Palin are of intense interest right now and on Saturday morning the editors assigned me to be the multimedia guy at her “Welcome Home/Goodbye Rally” in Anchorage (she arrived in Alaska on Wednesday, then hopped a plane of Nevada right after the event ended on Saturday). Bob Hallinen, the Daily News photographer assigned to cover her appearances in Fairbanks, reported restricted press access so I decided to skip the press line and go in as a member of the public and cover the rally with my G9.

Turns out access in Anchorage was not a problem (our adn.com gallery is here) but it was an interesting exercise to see what I could capture with my point-and-shoot. All the files (audio, video and still) that went into the video came from the G9 — and I even managed to shoot a protester getting (gently) hauled away, so I had the spot news covered as well.

Wish the stage lights didn’t blast the video but all-in-all I think it was a success.

And much easier on my back.

I watched the governor’s acceptance speech last night with several hundred rowdy locals at Tailgaters Sports Bar and Grill in Wasilla. I was surprised by the number of media, not the size of the crowd.

I counted more than 25 media types (a conservative estimate), including photojournalists (5, including me), videographers, reporters, producers, video sound techs. Publications from around the world were represented, including the New York Times and the London Times, and while I saw a couple of reporters snapping pictures, and more than a few hand-held recorders, I don’t think too many journalists were working the multimedia angle.

Not that I was either, really. I just plugged a mic into my M-Audio and let it run for an hour to capture the noise of the room. While there was cheering, some of the biggest lines played referenced Wasilla like this one about her early career:

“And when I ran for city council, I didn’t need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters and I knew their families, too.”

I think of that line and the reaction as the heart of the very quick audio slide show I produced later Wednesday night. The room’s reaction wasn’t partisan but personal and I felt like it gave my audio track sense of place.

There was so much build to the speech I thought there would be some return to normalcy when it was over. No chance. Gov. Palin’s speech was like a false summit on a long hike: you get to the top only to realize just how much more there is to go.

Early November at least, in this case.

I spent most of my time the last week and a half covering the Alaska State Fair for the Anchorage Daily News. I used the Canon HV20 to produce four videos but opted to use the G9 to capture the audio for two audio slide shows.

For this concert by Anchorage musician Jared Woods, I just left the camera on the stage in ’sound recorder’ mode and picked out a section I wanted to use when I got back. While the acoustics in the bar were terrible (which you can certainly hear), I was pleasantly surprised at how the mic auto-leveled (Note: I converted this slide show to a .mov using the SoundSlides plug-in).

On Saturday I covered the 4-H livestock auction, again using the ’sound recorder’ function on the G9. Though my initial plan was to use my M-Audio, I forgot my headphones in the car (BAD PHOTOGRAPHER! NO D90!) and the unit is just complex enough that I didn’t have total confidence in it without a way to check sound. So with G9 in hand again, I recorded the auctioneer (through the loudspeaker) and one of the exhibitors. The barn acoustics were much better, which is obvious in the final product.

The bad news continues to roll in for McClatchy and yet I see no signs of meaningful change from the Anchorage Daily News. Enough with the hand-wringing already!

Waiting out the economy is not a strategy.

Letting someone else figure out how to deliver the news and then copying them is not a solution (see: Craig’s List).

Editors, we know it’s bad. What are we going to do about it?

I’m on the new media ground floor, but here’s my list:

::Distribute the new media work load.

I’m not talking about multimedia but content management systems. Newsroom employees must be able to update and maintain the newspaper website 24/7. At the Daily News, we have four people (the online editor, the online producer, our programmer and me, a photographer) with enough training in the CMS to make substantive changes to the homepage. It’s not enough. We have no scheduled coverage on Sundays or after 8pm most days. Teaching key people the CMS is more important than learning to shoot well-produced video (everyone should be able to use a Flip).

::Reorganize the newsroom.

Create a proper online department in the newsroom, reporting to the online editor, complete with reporters and a copy editor. Get them out of the office and reporting live. Train them to update the website. Turn a picture editor into a multimedia editor and have them assign and edit (for quality, length and clarity) video and audio slide shows. Train them to update the website.

Examine the newsroom chain-of-command. Do the branches make sense?

::Provide us with the tools we need to do the job.

We have a good collection of relatively high-end equipment (wireless mics, Canon HV20s etc) but we need to be able to go mobile. In August we were forced to transfer our company cell phones to private accounts. The company pays us a $35/month stipend, which covers the voice plan, but we’re on our own if we want a smart phone, data plan or SMS plan. Needless to say, not many people are opting to spent an extra $30-35/month of their own money on a data plan (especially with our recently announced one year company-wide wage freeze). The Daily News should cover a data plan, at least for the online department.

And buy more Flip cameras so reporters can easily grab video while on assignment (if you think we need video on the site — and we do — the cops reporter at least should have one).

::Plan for the future, with a close eye on current content.

This is not a plea for micro management but for strategic planning.
In the fire service, the command officers manage the incident. They maintain a comprehensive view of the situation and tell their fire officers what they want done (but not how to do it!). The fire officers use their resources to execute the Incident Commander’s strategy.

The IC plans ahead while the officers and firefighters focus on the task at hand.

The same should be true of newspapers: Tell your section editors, reporters and photographers where you want us to go and we’ll figure out how to get there.

Trust us.