From infotoys to BOPs

Journalists have more options than ever to tell great stories online. But even as multimedia skills become more sophisticated, newsrooms are focusing on just a handful of approaches because they seem to be most effective. That’s the conclusion of a terrific review in OJR by Nora Paul and Laura Ruel of the [...]

Ignore the “if only” voice

“If only his eyes were open…” “If only that clock were not behind his head…” Jack Zibluck, who teaches photojournalism at Arkansas State University, says the only way to deal with these musings is to say “No.” Just because you can make a photo better by asking a subject to move or [...]

Hyperlocal maps

How can you share data quickly and easily online? KHOU-TV in Houston, Texas, used simple PDF maps. Reporter Mark Greenblatt says in The IRE Journal that his station didn’t have time to buy mapping software or train the Web staff to use it, so they created PDF files of neighborhood maps showing where [...]

Think like a detective

Good advice from Bob Woodward of Watergate fame: Reporters should remember that investigative journalism is a lot like “what TV’s Columbo does.” Two stories from a new biography of Woodward and Carl Bernstein make the point. When the five burglars were arrested at the Watergate, Woodward asks,
What do you do? Do you [...]

Golden age of photo ethics?

There’s good news and bad news when it comes to photo manipulation. David Perlmutter, associate dean at the University of Kansas school of journalism, believes that by some standards, this is the golden age of photojournalism ethics. “If you are caught faking a picture today, you are fired,” he told American Journalism Review.
Fifty years ago, [...]

A newspaper bucks the trend

USA Today was mocked when it launched 25 years ago. McPaper, they called it, with its “news nuggets” and “charticles.” But it has survived and is now thriving. According to editor Ken Paulson, USA Today is selling more copies now than it was six months ago. Why?
During a forum at American [...]

Giggles can harm credibility

ABC’s World News Now anchors totally lost it over the summer, dissolving in laughter while reporting an attempted suicide. Ryan Owens and Taina Hernandez were reprimanded and later apologized on the air, but that hasn’t stopped them from cracking up about other serious stories, including terrorism, fatal floods and breast cancer, Broadcasting & Cable [...]

Local TV Web sites gain

Need more evidence that the Web is a growth area for TV news? A new study says one in four American adults visits a local station site every month, and many of the most frequent users are not heavy TV viewers.
“Television understands the power of the multi-media platform and stations have been putting [...]