The "citizen journalist" and "bittergate"

Hi fellow Poynterites --

I'm curious as to everyone's thoughts on Mayhill Flower's surrepitious recording of Obama's speech at a closed fundraiser and all the defenses/criticisms that have sprung up afterwards.

It's providing a fine teaching moment (I'm having my students do an in-class debate discussing this episode, as well as the behavior of the ABC journalists during the debate.)

Here's my take. I'm not surprised by the "there are no rules; everyone has a role" defense being tossed around by Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis and others. They have their talking points down pretty well by now. I worked with Rosen on getting NewAssignment.Net off the ground and have had some involvement with "citizen journalists." Overall, I think the jury is still out on whether the concept can work. There are moments when it does, such as the efforts by the Fort Myers News-Press. And, I agree with Mindy and I don't think that this is a time to be discussing "who is a journalist" -- lots of air has been spent on that in past years.

Here's the rub for me. Credibility is the one and only chip that journalists, citizens or otherwise, can bargain with. The behavior of journalists in recent years, thanks in large part to the demands of the 24 hour news cycle, has done little to build on that credibility. Not too much trusting going on out there.

What has always helped journalists in this regard is identification. Rule #1 in Journalism 100 is to identify yourself. That way people know that what they say and do is subject to reporting, recording and could end up on a blog, Web site, cable, etc. Fundamentally, identification comes down to fairness.

I'm not sure that happened here. Having read what Fowler had to say about the whole identification process, it's not even clear Fowler knew what the ground rules were going in, and certainly Obama's people thought Fowler was not acting in a journalist's role.

And, what about the role of Fowler's editor? Did the editor know about the murky waters surrounding identification? I recall working with one "citizen journalist" at New Assignment and explaining that submitting his story to the source for pre-publication approval was not a journalistic norm. But then we get back to the "no rules" thing.

So, when Rosen, Jarvis et al say the rules no longer apply, does that mean that identification is no longer needed? We can now all go skulking around trying to obtain meaty sound bites that we can immediately throw up on a Web site to gain a little notoriety? I'm not too sure that's a good thing. Saying there are "no rules" just seems a little simplistic and naive. Don't we need rules in order to be fair and balanced -- no matter how you define yourself on the journalistic spectrum?

Hope all is well,
Fox

Rights-free music

Anyone have good sources for getting free music for slideshows? I want my students to post their pieces publicly but can't do that if they're stealing copyrighted tunes.

5th anniversary coverage?

I'm pulling samples for class on coverage of the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. I'm a big fan of these two:
- Reuters' "Bearing Witness" -- to me, a great example of what we can accomplish in multimedia
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's "5 Years in Iraq" -- to me, a great example of what local news ought to be and how you can effectively localize a major international story. It has its limitations (long cutlines on slideshows, not enough self-directed audio), but I do like the inclusion of polling and Meg Jones' blog. She always has seemed to know exactly why she was over there.
What are you seeing, liking and disliking?
Also, does anyone have links or screen captures from the 5th anniversary of 9/11? I'd like to compare the two.

Check out Blogging Basics

If any of you are encouraging your students to blog, you might find my latest blog - Blogging Basics - helpful. I created it for a workshop I did a week or so ago on the basics of blogging. I've tried to link to several sites that offer good information for beginning bloggers.

Regina talks multimedia

Here's my video of Regina McCombs talking about what makes a good multimedia story. Feel free to link to it or use it in your classes (OK - maybe as an example of poor video quality but she has good advice!) I've finally posted it on my class blog as well if you want to see that.

Digital manipulation

Here's a fantastic site documenting famous manipulations of photographs, dating all the way to the civil war. It's an excellent resource for classes.

Portraits

I sent my students out to do election interviews while we were at Poynter, and asked them to come back with some portraits of their sources. Their shots were not bad, but Denise McGill helped me advise them on how to make the pictures. Thought I would share with you guys what she said:

First off, there are a million ways to make a portrait, and millions of photo books and samples, and lots of philosophies and approaches. I show them lots of good samples, and we have a long conversation about treating photo subjects with respect, issues with shooting nudes, etc. I explain that in the non-journalism world, you always need a model release to publish a photo, so I make them get their photo subjects to sign a release.

OK, so what actually makes a good portrait?

 Get to the essence of the person. Use good composition. Study the light.
 Off-camera light is always better (ie, window light is better than the little flash on your camera, but your little flash is better than no light at all.)
 Look at the shadows. Make sure the eyes aren’t sunken in deep shadow pockets.
 Always focus your camera on the eyes.
 Backgrounds should be black or as uncluttered as possible.
 The photo should tell us something about the person.
 One good technique is to get the photo subject to lean in toward the camera. It gives a feeling of intimacy and intensity. Also, use your lens to zoom in, as this is a more flattering lens angle.
 So even on a pocket camera, you can use the zoom to zoom in and step back, which is better than using wide angle and staying really close.
 Wide-open aperture is often preferable, because it blurs the background and focuses all the attention on the face.


Before going out shooting, you ask:

__ Do I have film/digital card in the camera?

__ Is it properly loaded?

__ Do I have fresh batteries?

__ Is ASA set right?

__ Are the quality and other settings the way I want them?

I find something to take pictures of.

__ Am I in the best location? Should I get closer? Move around?

__ Do I have the right lens?

__ Is subject in focus?

__ Am I metering correctly?

I get a meter reading.
Have I adjusted it for:

__ backlight or special conditions

__ depth of field (aperture)

__ camera movement (shutter speed 1/60 sec. or faster)

__ subject movement

As I take the picture:

__ Am I standing solid?

__ Am I squeezing without shaking the camera?

__ Did I write down my settings and get caption information?

Also, check out these two links:
http://digitalphotography.tipcentral.net/

http://www.picturecorrect.com/photographytips/portraits.htm

-- Sue Robinson