Using FOI on the FBI

Al’s Morning Meeting just featured a “how-to” for requesting FBI files on the famous and not-so-famous.  WTTG-TV reporter Tisha Thompson is working on a series of reports involving the files and she shares what she’s learned so far.

If you want your file, you need to file a Privacy Act Request using the FBI’s form. You should put as much info that you feel comfortable giving out as you can to help them search for you: every name you’ve ever used (including maiden and nicknames), date of birth, Social Security number and any event you think the FBI would have interviewed or investigated you for.
 
If you want someone else’s file, you need to file a Freedom of Information Act request using the FBI’s form. Once again, put as much as you can on the form. If it isn’t someone super-famous (and I mean REALLY famous), you might want to include a copy of their obituary to save you about a month’s worth of time. Otherwise, they will automatically send you a letter asking you for the obituary.

Thompson also says you have to write a lot of letters - 56, in fact.  Because the FBI organizes its files using an antiquated system, Thompson suggests you contact all the FBI field offices that might have the records you’re looking for.

And don’t be surprised if you get nothing for your efforts.  According to Thompson:

The FBI says it has “no records” for 60 to 70 percent of the requests it receives. But critics, like the National Security Archive, say many of those files exist — the FBI just doesn’t want to work very hard to find them.

Network news on campus

In a move that could be a winner for both journalism students and the network, ABC News plans to open bureaus this fall on five college campuses. The “digital” bureaus will offer on-the-job training in multimedia journalism to students who will report on local stories for ABC News outlets, mostly online but possibly on the air. In the process, ABC hopes to learn more about 18-25 year olds, the demographic every network wants to reach. And, of course, to recruit talented new staff for multimedia journalism jobs.

The participating schools are Arizona State, Syracuse, Florida, North Carolina and Texas. And here’s the really good news, according to Broadcasting & Cable: “In each bureau, one student will be hired as “bureau chief”—and unlike many news internships, participating students will be paid.”

Video misconceptions

In a post entitled “How not to do newspaper video,” the folks over at Digital Journalist say newspaper managers don’t understand what it takes to do video well. Rule number one, according to the DJ editorial: “You are not in the television business.”

Can’t argue with that. In fact, TV newsrooms need to learn the same lesson when it comes to online video. You can’t just shovel your TV product online and think you’ve used the Web to best advantage. But I would argue with some of the distinctions the DJ column makes between the way TV and newspapers handle video.

A TV cameraperson can “turn” three or four stories a day, because he or she hands off the raw tape to a producer who takes it to an editor to complete. Newspaper photographers on the average have a much less strenuous schedule. On the average, they will do one or two stories a day. Now, they are being asked to do multitasking, shooting both stills and video. The good news is they can. But it is going to take much more time.

First off, most TV photojournalists I know edit their own stories. They might hand off a VO/SOT here and there for someone else to edit, but certainly not everything they shoot. In my experience, the producer-editor system only exists at the networks.

Secondly, photographers do need more time to produce both stills and video but not as much time as the column suggests. “Most successful video storytellers will spend weeks working on a piece,” it says. Some, perhaps. Certainly not most. Sure, TV photojournalists would love to have more time to craft their stories, but lots of them do amazing work in a day or two.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing that the “crank it out” approach of “do more with less” TV newsrooms is the way to go. But I do think it’s important to recognize both the pros and cons of that system while we all try to figure out what works best in online video.

Building audience

You work hard. You have great content. You have built it. But will they come? How can a news Web site use technology to build a bigger audience? MediaShift’s Mark Glaser offers these tips from the recent NewsTools2008 conference.

• Use social media buttons on your site, but also seed Digg with suggestions.
• Syndicate your content outside of your site. Get it out on RSS, widgets, badges — let people run headlines from your site on their site.
• If you do an audio or video podcast, break it up into 5 minute chunks, and you’ll get people to consume much more content.
• Include text descriptions of what’s in a video or audio piece.

Those are all good suggestions, but the last tip struck me as the best advice of all. Yes, it’s more work, but consider how much more useful and usable your site would be if you provided a road map to the content. Give the audience a reason to click “play” by letting them know (in brief) what they’ll get. Know any sites that do this well?

Press freedom under pressure

It’s World Press Freedom Day, and my guess is that most Americans don’t have a clue. The day was set aside by the United Nations 15 years ago to raise awareness of the importance of a free press and to honor journalists who take tremendous risks to tell stories their governments don’t want people to hear. That job is tougher than ever, according to the annual press freedom survey from Freedom House:

The current edition of the survey, Freedom of the Press 2008, points to declines on a global scale in 2007, with particularly worrisome trends evident in the former Soviet Union, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. The findings mark the sixth straight year of deterioration in the level of press freedom worldwide.

The Committee to Protect Journalists marked World Press Freedom Day by issuing its first-ever “impunity index” of countries where journalists are murdered on a recurring basis and governments are unable or unwilling to prosecute the killers. It’s no surprise that Iraq was the most dangerous country for journalists in 2007 and has the most unsolved murders of journalists. But consider this:

Most countries on the Impunity Index are democratic, are not at war, and have functioning law enforcement institutions, yet journalists are regularly targeted for murder and no one is held accountable.

Reporters without Borders issued a report on violence against journalists in Europe, a part of the world where “media express a diversity of opinion and a pluralism of ideas is generally assured.”

But the situation is not perfect for all that. Threats made against journalists, murder attempts by private groups, assaults, intimidation of families are all among the very serious risks run today within Europe.

It’s sad that most American journalists and news organizations will let World Press Freedom Day pass unnoticed. Yes, the U.S. constitution guarantees press freedom, but that doesn’t mean all is well here at home, where access to information continues to be restricted. As the New York Times editorialized last summer, the Bush administration “has disdained openness and accountability since its first days. That is about the only thing it does not hide.”

Editor & Publisher’s Mark Fitzgerald argues forcefully that this year of all years, U.S. news organizations should pay attention to press freedom, especially in China, where more journalists are jailed than in any other country.

If U.S. media companies expect to make big money from the Beijing Olympics — and they do — they have the responsibility to fight China’s oppression of journalists.

That’s not just the responsibility of media organizations. All journalists have to stand up for press freedom at home and abroad, and speak out when any journalist, anywhere is kept from doing his or her job. And we must make it clear to the public that the central problem is not really what happens to journalists; It’s what happens to democracy when press freedom is suppressed. Because a truly free press can only exist in a democratic system, and a democracy can’t survive without the oxygen of a free press.

Are J-schools doing the job?

Editor & Publisher is preparing a major feature for its June issue on the state of journalism education.

Are young journalists receiving proper training for the new digital age? What do editors think about the quality of j-school grads they are hiring? And what do the students think about their job prospects in a shrinking industry?

In a podcast preview, senior editor Joe Strupp says what he found surprising is that most students are not learning about digital journalism in the classroom. There are some multimedia offerings and technology based assignments, he said, but little is required. So students have to get digital experience on their own, usually by working at a student publication, and the amount and type of experience they get varies widely.

Editor Greg Mitchell notes that Missouri recently launched “a convergence piece of its journalism major more than 10 years after most newspapers had Web sites.” And he says hiring editors find that students know the lingo of the Web but they haven’t been taught to use Flash.

Does this assessment ring true? Do you think it applies only to print journalism sequences and students?

A “Web first” newsroom

The Rockford Register Star calls itself a “Web first” newsroom. What does that mean? Listen to staffers describe how the Web has changed their work and notice the frequent use of two key words: “creative” and “rewarding.”  [Thanks to Howard Owens for pointing to the video.]

Cranky, magnificent bastards

That’s what talk show host Craig Ferguson called us over the weekend, and it was a compliment. The host of the CBS Late Late Show entertained a packed crowd at the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington on Saturday night. Mixed in with the jokes about Vice President Cheney already moving out of his official residence (”it takes a long time to pack up an entire dungeon”) , there were a few barbs and bouquets for the press.

First, he took a shot at The New York Times for not buying a table:

They felt that this event undercuts the credibility of the press. It’s funny, you see, I thought that Jayson Blair and Judy Miller took care of that…Now let me try this: Shut the hell up, New York Times, you sanctimonious whining jerks!

But Ferguson saved his best line for last. Telling the audience he knew that the room would be full of contentious and contrary people, people who argue all the time, he reminded us “we need that.”

Please never ever ever agree with each other, never stop arguing, never stop fighting, you cranky magnificent bastards. God bless you and god bless America,everyone.

Watch it!

Personal note: I used to go to this dinner all the time when I covered Washington. It’s a very different event now–more Hollywood than DC–complete with red carpet, velvet ropes and screaming fans wanting pictures and autographs. The dinner has long raised questions about the ethics of journalists getting too chummy with their sources. But that was back when invited guests were mostly politicians or high-level government officials. These days, the place is packed with “celebrities,” although some of them must have wondered why they came. As I was leaving I saw Kal Penn of Harold and Kumar fame standing by a table looking a bit lost.

The Washington Post says the “the see-and-be-seen ethos of the event has overtaken its original purpose: to give awards.”  I’ll say. One other sign of how things have changed: Because the President almost always attends the dinner, you could usually count on seeing a knot of protesters outside, opposing some administration policy. This year, the only protestors I noticed had a different complaint: liberal media bias. Bizarre.

Going solo

VJ, one-man band, sojo, mojo. Is there a distinction? Pete Liebengood, president of the VJ training company OnQCo, says the only real difference is that a one-man band uses more gear than the others. In his opinion, a VJ, sojo or mojo only needs a camera and a laptop to do the job. What, no microphone? Anyway, at last week’s RTNDA convention, Liebengood said the “spiraling” VJ movement has both an upside and a downside:

People like the idea of ownership of the story. It’s a motivational force for them to come to work each day. The other thing is, it’s hard. Some of them don’t have time to eat during the course of a day. I’m concerned about the burnout issue. It’s physically hard, mentally hard, it’s stressful, draining.

In a video presentation, two journalists from all-VJ KOHD-TV in Bend, Ore., offered a similar assessment. “It’s a lot more work than I thought it would be but it’s also rewarding being responsible for all of the elements,” said Lauren Biskind, although she also admitted, “Some days I just want to back away from the computer and go home and go to bed.” Brian MacMillan had experience as a shooter before becoming a VJ. “I think you have to love what you do, be excited about news, and it’s tough to get in there every day and do this. If you’re not excited about it you’re going to burn out.”

KOHD (market 192) launched its all-VJ news operation a little over six months ago. If their reporters are already exhausted, how long can they keep it up?

Reporting for graphics

Developing a good graphic depends primarily on the quality of the information, according to New York Times graphics director Steve Duenes. In an online chat with readers, Duenes said one of his rules is “don’t invent,” by which he means “no guessing.”

We have software that lets us create photo-realistic renderings, but it can be a problem if we don’t know how everything was configured or what it looked like. This may seem like an obvious point, but back in 2003, when Saddam Hussein was captured, just about every news outlet did a diagram of his small hiding place, and not everyone got it right. It happens all the time. We frequently work from building floorplans, photographs, satellite imagery, but as often as possible, graphics staff members go to the scene of a story to do their reporting.

When they get to the scene, staffers make sketches, take photographs and note details that will help them reconstruct an event in a graphic. The next step, Duenes says, is to organize the information clearly and eliminate superfluous detail.

So, if the story is about someone firing a gun in City Hall, we want readers to look at our diagram and quickly understand where the event occurred in the building, and where the important players were when it happened.

“Quickly” is key.  Some people will take time to study a graphic, but the best graphics convey the central point at a glance–kind of like a billboard on the highway.

Most of us won’t have the luxury of working for a news organization like the Times, which has 30 people in its graphics department, plus a whole lot more in its multimedia department. But if you keep their principles in mind as you report for multiple platforms, you’ll produce better work. Collect all the information you need at the scene to create an accurate graphic and then keep it simple.  Simple enough.