Robert Hood: Photo Editing and Multimedia for the Web

Photos

Robert Hood, MSNBC multimedia czar

see larger image

uploaded by Jordan Yerman

I'm reporting from the Drilling Down conference in Seattle, a symposium on web publishing.

Currently I'm listening to Robert Hood (RH), MSNBC's multimedia director. These notes are not a transcription of what he's saying (though he's a good speaker), but my own notes on what, from his talk, applies to us as citizen journalists.

Pictures are augmented by audio: there's a technique to interviews, but there's an art to it as well.
The camera can also be an obstacle between you and the subject-- how would you interact with the subject if the camera weren't there?
My term: immediacy.

Camera movement, cropping are integral to storytelling. Snapshot photography is totally valid for photojournalism, in my opinion, but composition becomes much more important. That, and coverage. Take not just one pic, but ten.

Images and audio work together to create a story out of raw data. You already have the tools available to you on NP right now: you can upload your own video, photo and audio files to create a three-dimensional news story. With today's mobile media tools, you can choose on the fly whether your story will be best served with video or still photography, or with interviews or ambient audio.
Interview with a dominatrix on MSNBC: they decided that a still image of the interview subject best served the story: as we listened to her story, we could study the image of her: we could see her physical history: former bodybuilder who has changed her physique to suit her new job. Eroticism was not really a factor in the image.

Dominant and secondary pics, deep-caption info.
(dynamically-resized images: we should have this capability)
thematic diptychs joined by caption and secondary info.

Multimedia means depth of coverage: a newspaper cannot do this.

Users, do NOT be afraid of lo-fi. Lo-fi is your friend. Immediacy and narrative will trump polish and packaging.

(MSNBC can do photo slideshows with a single audio soundtrack; can we get this?)

Most people have never been interviewed, and would consider it an honor to have a chance to express their opinion. Mass society renders us mute, blogs notwithstanding. People are volcanoes of color commentary just waiting to burst. If you witness a newsworthy event, feel free to interview bystanders. It can be very effective.

RH: The beauty of an interactive news outlet is that you can choose what your interface is: if you just want to look at the pictures , or read the words, or look at the pics, you can do any or all of those.

Audio editing, though, takes more time. You can add an article right away, just to get the spine of the story up, and then edit the timeline-ijntesive stuff as you go.

RH: Silence can be golden in interviews: let them talk.

RH: Ask questions in pairs so you dont' get plain ol' yes or no answers.

Hang on, he's talking about user-generated content. He's calling it
"the karaoke of journalism", which is actually an incorrect analogy.

But he's acknowledging that it is an inevitable development in journalism: the Zapruder film, anybody? 

News media needs us, but they are selective about what they run with, and they need a way to make sure we're legit. They don't want our cutesy cat videos, but the NEED our eyewitness input.  We're the journalistic Freddy Kreuger: even if you don't believe in us... we're here!

The photojournalists in the room are genuinely upset by this: they're afraid that viewers can't tell teh difference between a snapshot and a photo tkaen with a $6000 DSLR rig by a trained pro. 1) Have a little faith in yourselves, guys, and 2) the two styles accomplish different things.