Another good example

Just this afternoon, I presented an analysis of a special report by The Denver Post for my "In-Depth Reporting and Media Convergence" class. The report, entitled "The Battle Within" revealed several troublesome aspects of the tolls taken on American soldiers and their families resulting from questionable deployment to the ongoing War in Iraq.

I bring this up on this blog because I think it serves a good example of online journalism. While the three-part series included articles that surely appeared in the print edition of The Post, it also included five video interviews of soldiers affected by deployment and their families. This multimedia element, which could obviously not be presented in the print format, adds a great deal to the project and shows how online journalism can improve the reporting of a given topic.

The video interviews, as well as the photographs included with the articles, allow the audience a more personal interaction with the subjects of the stories. Rather than simply reading words on paper, the readers can now watch the soldier (and feel his emotion) when he shares his story.

Check it out here and let me know your thoughts...

Herald's UM sports coverage

One of my journalism professors recently asked me this question: "What is the first website you look at when you go online each morning?"

Without hesitation, I answered, "The Miami Herald's UM sports page."

So, today, when brainstorming for an online journalism topic to blog about, I thought why not discuss that very site. It incorporates a countless number of elements of multimedia and is a perfect example of how sports coverage has changed (and forced newspapers to change) with the popularity of the internet.

The Herald's UM Sports page was the motivation and influence behind my coverage of American Legion baseball for The Observer-Dispatch this past summer. The site - spearheaded by UM beat writer Manny Navarro - incorporates text articles with photographs, audio and video interviews, video features, narrated photograph slide shows, and its own blog dedicated to UM's most popular sports.

Want to watch football coach Randy Shannon's post-game press conference? You can bet Manny will have it posted on the site. Want to see photographs from UM's most recent football or basketball game with narration describing the game? It'll be on the site. How about a simple game story or a feature piece on a UM athlete? It's there. The current sport season's scheudle and individual stats are even posted on the UM Sports page.

And that's not even getting into Manny's blog...

Anything and everything that won't fit into the newspaper or on the site's homepage shows up on the blog complete with detailed analysis. The blog also offers readers a more laid back and conversational approach that is often welcome when discussing such topics as football, basketball or baseball. Manny's UM blog, called "Eye on the U" provides the audience with yet another avenue (outside of the print edition of the paper and the website) to deliver information to readers.

Put simply, The Herald's UM Sports page is an exemplary model of fine online journalism.

What I learned at the Herald...

The elementary title of this post is sarcastic of course. But, like I said before, I felt sort of funny going on a class field trip in – this – my senior year of college.

But, despite my playful mocking, the trip to The Miami Herald was definitely worthwhile. While I had been there before (I shadowed a reporter during sophomore year), this trip offered a more focused look at the very subject we are studying in this class – online journalism.

We were met in the lobby of the building, which felt more like an airport security checkpoint (IDs, metal detectors, card swipes…phew…) by the Herald’s Director of Multimedia Rick Hirsch. Rick escorted us to a fifth floor conference room where we discussed the newspaper business, how it has changed, how it is still changing, and how it will continue to change throughout our lives (and likely that of our children’s).

Here are some of the noteworthy things that I took away from our discussion:

*The print edition of The Miami Herald still reaches about 30 percent of the people in South Florida (but that number is way down from when the paper was home-delivered to 70 percent).

*The Herald’s radio shows reach not only Dade County, but Broward and Palm Beach County too.

*The Herald’s “Continuous News Desk” (responsible for updating the website) runs on a 21-hour news cycle. The first person comes in at 3:30 a.m. and the last person leaves at 1:30 a.m. During that entire time period, someone (Homepage Producer) is editing and updating the site’s front page.

*8 to 9 a.m. on Monday’s is the website’s busiest time.

*The Herald’s website traffic declines 20 to 25 percent after 5 p.m.

*Based on studies of site readership, the Herald will post different kinds of news on different days of the week and at different times of the day.

While there, we also had the opportunity to see the Herald’s two radio studios and the soon-to-be television studio (under construction). It's pretty remarkable to see radio and television studios in the newsroom of a newspaper. Who would have thought that would be the case just 15 years ago?

In addition to learning a great deal about how the Herald is keeping up in an ever evolving and increasingly demanding news environment, I also happened to run into High School Sports Editor Andre Fernandez on my way out. Andre is responsible for assigning games to the Herald’s high school sports freelance writers (that’s me) and so we speak quite often on the phone.

ABC News: On Campus

Before I head off to The Miami Herald for a class field trip (I feel like I'm in third grade saying that), I wanted to share something that I think is very innovative and, quite frankly, awesome for student journalists.

ABC News has launched a website for news reported by college students. It's called "ABC News: On Campus." The site is contributed to by five schools: Syracuse University, Arizona State University, the University of Florida, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Texas at Austin. Stories are delivered in several forms - from articles to videos to photographs.

I think this is pretty cool. What better way can a student journalist get noticed than to contribute to one of the most powerful news organizations (ABC) in the world? It's also a good barometer for us to see the work of students from some schools that are considered to have the best journalism programs in the country.

My only question is this: Can we - the University of Miami - get in on this? I mean the Gators (ugh) are involved. How about the U?

That's all for now. Check back tomorrow as I'll share my thoughts on our trip the Herald.

The Batavian...a new alternative?

I found this pretty cool and I think you will too...

Gatehouse Media has launched a website in a market where it doesn't publish a print newspaper - Batavia, NY. It's called The Batavian.

While Gatehouse does not publish a print product in Batavia, a separate family-owned company does. Here's the catch - that paper, The Daily News, has no content on its website. So, Gatehouse is looking - as one article put it - "to launch an innovative news and community site that will eat the lunch of an incumbent newspaper that has ignored the web."

Here's an article about The Batavian from The Epoch Times.

So what do you think? Is there a market for this type of project? One would think so due to the growing popularity of online news. But, without a print counterpart? Will it produce enough traffic to encourage companies to purchase advertising and, in turn, survive financially? Have you heard of any other projects similar to this? Please share your thoughts on this novel (in my opinion) idea...

A professional perspective

Since this blog - and those of my classmates - offers an amatuer's take on the world online journalism, I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at what a professional has to say about journalism in the online age.

Howard Owens, director of digital publishing for Gatehouse Media, Inc., runs a blog for the company focusing on - you guessed it - online journalism. It's definitely worthwhile to take a look at what Owens - someone who has has been in the journalism business for all of his professional life - has to say about journalism and its evolving platforms.

I find this quite refreshing (from Owens' "About" section), "Of course, now I’m fully a digital guy. But all the things I’ve always loved about journalism - serving the community, keeping people informed, shining a light into corners of darkness - are still a part of my daily motivation, but now I’m helping lead the change to a new way of doing things, a new form of journalism, one that I think is better and more useful to society. That’s just plain exciting."

So, without further ado: Howard Owens...