Psycogeography and Problems with Technology

I attempted some psycogeographythis week to increase the platforms used in this blog. Using the suggestion in Daniel Meadows’ lecture last week and armed with my dictaphone set off around Cathays Park.

I’m afraid the results have not been uploaded yet*, and this raises a few interesting points. First of all the technology. Issues with formatting have meant that I have not yet managed to edit the piece and issues with Blogger have meant that I am unable to upload it. (In fact I’m so frustrated with Blogger right now, I’m just about to move to WordPress, watch this space!).

A number of people have brought up the issue of time concerning multimedia journalism, its hard enough to write copy to deadline without having to podcast it, Flickrit and create a Flash package. I ran out of time before the deadline this week. Luckily for me, a blog is an ongoing piece of reporting and I can upload that piece when the time and expertise becomes available.

*5th November 2008

So far I have tried numerous pieces of software in an attempt to upload this and my advice to anyone else attempting to add an audio file to their blog is don’t. Do a video instead.

The silver lining to this quest has been the amout of free software I have discovered available to the public for producing, editing and uploading. I am planning on using Houndbite as an external host for my audio clip, MP3 cutter to edit it into the 15 minute ‘clips’ that Houndbite requires and Jodix to convert my WMA file to an MP3 (though you can use iTunes, or any old Mac to do this).

Also worthy of a mention in the free audio software hall of fame is Audacity. Its presented as an audio editing package but its really more appropriate for producing podcasts. You can just pop in your microphone and then record and edit all on the same programme. Plus you can use it on the JOMEC computers as its already installed.

What is particuarly useful for a begginner is that most of these come with pretty good user guides, some of them created by users themselves due to the web based nature of the software.

* Here it is (finally!)

Psycogeography

Multimedia and Breaking News

With multimedia journalism broadening the opportunities for user generated content (e.g. uploading video), it could be argued that multimedia opportunites are be best utilised when accompanying topics that the user can actively engage with. While this does limit the areas that will benefit from multimedia reporting, these are increasing as Web 2.0 takes over.

People at the forefront of online journalism are acknowledging this. Mindy McAdams, who has written a book on the subject, refers to Jim Ray, a multimedia producer at MSNBC.com in her blog.

He says, “We are not out breaking Watergate, its not the right medium for that.

“What we can do is take a complex issue and make it personal to a user who comes to our site and help them understand it better. We can provide a context and a different way to experience that story.”

Looking at the Guardian website today, its top UK multimedia story is about wardens being employed to sort out fights between cyclists and pedestrians. Hardly breaking news, but it is something that many users will be able to engage with.

The red tops are in on it too. The Mirror’s top video news story today investigates the possibility of a fuel price difference ban. This is also focused on the public’s opinion where possible.

You may also be interested in having a look at what onlinejournalismblog’s students did when faced with a Flash journalism assignment, which involved engaging with a number of multimedia forms of reporting. Fascinatingly they almost all chose to represent ethical and environmental issues, rather than engage with traditionally newsworthy topics.

And all you micro blogging aficionados out there should know they were twittering as they did it…