“A Seed is Forever” wins award
My master’s project, “A Seed is Forever,” recently won an award at the 2010 Online Journalism Awards. It won the “Best Student Multimedia Feature Presentation” award, of which I’m very proud. This is what the judges said about my project:
“The judges decided that this was a winning entry because we were really impressed by the quality of the production of this piece. We were also really impressed that it was all put together by a single journalist. The reporter did the reporting, did the programming of the flash site, did the design work, the video editing, without really compromising the quality of any of those different elements. The story allows you to follow two different threads using guides. We thought that this is something we’d like to see more of generally in the news industry–helping lead the reader through the story, and this is what this piece managed to do very well.”
Now that the project has gotten some recognition, I need some help getting it published somewhere so that it can accomplish what I originally set out to do: bring awareness to the subject of my project, youth and agriculture in Sierra Leone. Got any ideas?
Recent work: Project J-Score
During my last year at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, I took a pretty cool class by Alan Mutter about disruptive change in the news media industry.
For our final class project, we came up with an experiment (we were thinking Pandora…BTW, there have been some interesting pieces done recently that look into how the model behind Pandora could be applied to the other industries. Check out this New York Times Magazine story and this post from eMedia Vitals.) looking at how journalists can better measure the engagement of their readers.
With the help of my classmates, I put together this Prezi presentation to show our results. Hopefully, the J-School paid attention (and I know they did…hopefully).
Journalism Experiment #4: The grid is your friend…use it
If you’re a journalist thinking about building your own site from the ground up, good for you. Here’s a word of advice, though. If you’re one of those coding amateurs out there like me, save yourself some trouble and use a grid. For starters, a grid will give you that “fit and finish” you see in all those good-looking sites not built by journalists. A grid also makes it easy to transfer your design from Photoshop to the Web, which is the basic process for all good Web design (thanks Richard Koci Hernandez for that secret).
For one of my classes at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, I had to use the grid to design a homepage for a site. I chose to revamp the site I helped design for our school’s Africa reporting class. A little ambitious for a beginner, but I thought I’d give it a try because, hey, I’m down for trying new things. Or, at least, that’s what I initially thought.
I wanted to take this (built using a WordPress template):
And turn it into something like this (designed from scratch):
This is what I ended up with:
As you can see, it’s not an exact replica. I had the most difficulty with getting everything to line up on the grid and work (it’s an easy concept but takes a lot of thought and care). On the other hand, I’ll admit, I had the most fun with creating the header, which is a compilation of several background images and CSS (thanks to my other instructor Josh Williams).
If I had more time, I would have liked to build out this map page prototype for the site as well:
Maybe another time, I guess.
Journalism Experiment #3
I’ve been hearing a lot about how data visualizations are supposed to be the next wave of displaying information on the Web. I tend to agree with that thinking, mainly because when a bunch of information is presented in a graphically pleasing way, it makes you more engaged in what could have rather been just another boring set of data. So for my next journalism experiment, I thought I’d try to do my own data visualization. With so many free data visualization tools out there nowadays, why not?
So here’s an infographic I put together using Many Eyes, a free and easy application that allows you to produce beautiful and interactive data visualizations. The graphic shows the states in the U.S. where African Americans make up the largest minority group. Interesting to see considering that there is such a big focus on how Latinos are now the largest minority group in the country overall.
Journalism Experiment #2
This is my second experiment testing out the skills I’ve been picking up along my multimedia journey. For this experiment, I’m turning my attention to graphic design. Something I’ve learned since entering the world of multimedia journalism is that so much we do for the Web depends on design: from type of font to colors to the way they are arranged.
So I decided it was about that time to work on my design chops. Below is the product of trying out a tutorial I found on 1stwebdesigner.com. The tutorial teaches you how to use Photoshop to create a typographic wallpaper-looking image. Just consider it a Wordle on Photoshop steroids. It incorporates so many steps, I’m not even going to try to repeat them here. All I’m going to say is that I had fun following the directions. And while I didn’t follow each step to the T, I think my design came out pretty cool.
Journalism Experiment #1
This will be the first of one of my many experiments I plan on trying to test out the new multimedia skills I’m learning. In Experiment #1, I deal with Web video. I used Final Cut Pro and several Web applications, including Prezi and Bee Docs Timeline, to create the piece. The video was for a class assignment on disruptive media. This is my take on Google Books.
Can you really use an iPhone to report a story?
You can call the iPhone many things these days: a computer that fits in the palm of your hand, an extremely versatile mobile device, G.P.O.A.T. (greatest phone of all time). But I’ve been hearing a few people suggest that the iPhone can also now be used as a new way to report and file a story. Because of iTunes’ expansive library of apps, developers are coming up with an abundance of creative tools. But could it be? Can you actually turn your iPhone into a reporter’s notebook?
It’s already being tried.
One of the first recognizable attempts was the Hudson plane crash photo taken by Janis Krums and first published on Twitter.
A few weeks ago, Al Tompkins mentioned a New Mexico reporter who used his iPhone and Qik to broadcast a live story.
ReadWriteWeb recently promoted a new iPhone app, Fwix, that is supposed to not only allow you to report a story exclusively using an iPhone but also publish it.
I also did a little experimenting with my iPhone this summer with the built-in camera and Voice Memos. I was in a rush, so I didn’t get to spend as much time capturing this great doo wop group that sings everyday at one of Washington, D.C.’s Metro stops. But that’s what happens when you’re a reporter: sometimes you just have to go with the flow.