Seminar attended:"Multimedia Journalism for College Educators" (July 20 - July 23, 2009) at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, St. Petersburg, Florida.

"There's no need to fear technology," promised the Poynter Institute ad. "In this hands-on seminar, you'll learn to shoot and edit video, build multimedia slideshows, and use online resources in the classroom."

I learned all that and more in a four-day, whirlwind journalistic journey supreme, compliments of the exceptional Poynter Institute pros who delivered the seminar.

The inimitable Al Tompkins, seminar director and a specialist in broadcast/online journalism, taught us the ten laws of interactive storytelling and the ten commandments of video, including the edifying rule of thirds and how to focus a story in three words. He demonstrated how to make a video piece using Video Q Pro and how to use Utterli to instantly post audio online. A self-professed geek, Tompkins also noted the need for caution when scouting out new technologies because of the galloping rate of change. “Flip cams were obsolete one year after they came out,” he said. Tompkins showed us the grammar of the visual image and sent us out on a video shoot assignment (shoot three sequences of five shots and get at least two soundbites to go with one of the sequences). Despite the occasional adding of water (caution) to the wine (enthusiasm), Tompkins exuded loving confidence throughout, and it was catching.

Regina McCombs, a Poynter faculty member who specializes in Virtual Teaching, led hands-on sessions that were so productive she has got me re-thinking my own delivery methods in some of my core courses. We learned Audacity (a free audio editing program) and Soundslides (for producing slideshows that can be published to the Web). My absolute favourite was the Final Cut video editing (where we edited the visual and audio we had recorded in our video shoot the day before). Wonderfully knowledgeable about current practices and the technology being used in newsrooms, Regina occasionally delivered impromptu asides that were nearly as interesting as the subject directly at hand. She told us, for instance, that studies show people are more and more connecting to the Web not through their computers but from their iPhones and other mobile devices; in fact, the leading Pew Center for Media Studies predicts that mobile will become the dominant way we connect to the Web.

Sarah Quinn, Visual Journalism Faculty at Poynter, delivered a compelling lecture on the major elements of design and showed us how to teach Web design (even if you are not a designer). We learned about the page grid, about the use of colour and typography, and about the theory of the golden rectangle. More practically, we were encouraged to think across platforms and when designing graphics, to make usability a priority. Quinn showed us how a simple typographic palette that creates contrast and clear hierarchy can win viewers over by giving the audience what it needs to read and navigate the site with ease. A lover of newspapers (the traditional kind), Quinn also shared the results of a study she’d done comparing news reading habits in print versus online. I found the results at once surprising and encouraging: people actually read more online than they do in hard copy.

Theresa Collington, Executive Producer Online for WTSP-TV in St. Petersburg, Florida, regaled us with Geek Speak and showed us precisely “what your students will need to know to work in my world.” Collington’s world entails understanding search engine optimization (SEO), cross posting, metrics, and more. She reviewed a variety of social media tools (think blogs and podcasts, wikis and chat) already being used in world of TV news, and explored other online tools for the classroom. I learned about a profusion of sites and applications and how they work in news media production. Collington’s ace proficiency and easy-going professionalism made the avalanche of new terms and applications seem as approachable as tea. She’s provoked me into thinking about the new technologies in ways I never had before—and has even got me comparison shopping for a Mac Book Pro. Best of all, Collington helped me create my own blog!

Kathleen Culver (who really ought to be cloned for the benefit of journalism students everywhere), cut to the heart of the matter when she told us that teaching technology requires you to think differently about journalism and to become a platform agnostic: instead of allying yourself with one or another platform, ask yourself what platform is best for the story at hand. Why bother to change? Because employers are demanding it, students are interested in it, budget opportunities may allow for it, and social benefit would result. What stops us? A conservative mindset and a consensus or silo mentality, along with an industry in turmoil. What moves us forward? Digital momentum, learning by example, and our own students, who comprise a generation of multi-taskers, info junkies, and natural collaborators: they are nothing if not digitally connected. How do you move forward? With a focus on values, innovation, and collaboration; by keeping the technology transparent and marrying the values to the vision.

The seminar included a surprise visit from the Institute’s writing specialist Roy Peter Clark, whose work I had long admired from afar. Both wonderfully humane and erudite, Clark spoke about a pyramid of journalistic competencies, with four levels. At the base forming a rock-solid structure are these four categories: news judgment, narrative, analysis, and reporting; on the next row: visual, technology, and numbers. On the third row up are “civic” and “cultural,” and at the top of the pyramid is ethics, jewel in the crown. “Where do the blocks of this pyramid show up in our curriculum?” The ability to report, Clark said, is the ability to gather and evaluate information. We need to define core competencies according to the demands not of the technology but of the story.

And lest I forget, Jeannie Nissenbaum, program co-ordinator, in one of her morning offerings of Yiddish words, hipped us to the difference between a schlemiel and a schlimazel: The schlemiel is a clumsy person, who, for example, spills his soup. The schlimazel is the hapless person sitting close by, the one on whom the soup gets spilled.

There’s more. I learned about infographics (that’s information + imagery + design) and some general principles of Web site design, including that for a successful site, I need to think not about the technology, but about the intended audience (of which, it turns out, there are four kinds: snackers, samplers, searchers, and studiers). I learned all about all kinds of social media apps (Skype, Livestream, Qik, Coveritlive, and RSS feeds, for a few).

I began to see how social media (blogs, wikis, podcasts, chat, screen capture, and the like) can turn monologues into dialogues; how even mainstream “one-way” media have begun to use social media output in their newscasts; and that user generated content also generates business and ethical issues of ownership, copyright, and liability.

Learning the technology was fun, but what I liked best about the overall approach of the seminar was its grounding in journalistic principle, its insistence that the journalism, not the technology, is the point. The important journalistic questions remain constant, despite the rate of technological change: What is the story? Is it true? How do I know?

I applied for this fellowship and attended this seminar in the hope that by doing so I could strengthen my ability to help my students “reinvent and redeem the practice of journalism” for the 21st century. The seminar exceeded my already high expectations; it cemented my resolve to pursue new directions in journalism with my students and gave me the start I need to take advantage of the new technologies in the service of a larger goal: to help recall journalism to its own founding values, those of a free press in a democratic society.