Istanbul Project Student a Hearst Multimedia Award Finalist
A multimedia story by Kat Russell, a student in the summer 2011 Istanbul Project, has been named a finalist in the prestigious annual Hearst Journalism Multimedia Awards.
Working with Prof. Brent Foster, Russell profiled Janset Karavan, an Istanbul writer and mime. Their interviews were conducted in Turkish, with Bahçeşehir University student Bürde Özçakır translating.
Award finalist Kat Russell
Russell, an undergraduate at California State University at Northridge, produced the story while on assignment for The Istanbul Project, a joint undergraduate foreign reporting program of ieiMedia and San Francisco State University. Istanbul’s Bahçeşehir University hosts the three-credit program each summer.
Students practice reporting and writing about another culture, while learning to shoot photos and video, and to work with interpreters. Their stories are considered for publication in a digital magazine, and book.
The annual Hearst Journalism Awards Program is conducted under the auspices of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication, and funded by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. The program’s mission is to support excellence in journalism and journalism education at U.S. colleges and universities.
Discovering Multiculti Istanbul
A touch of French culture near Istanbul's French Street.
The feisty Turkish republic that emerged from the Ottoman Empire in 1923 pledged to be a “Turkey for the Turks.” Yet as a foreigner visiting Istanbul, you’re unlikely to experience a monoethnic city.
France and Turkey may right now be blasting each other over whether the tragic expulsions and deaths of more than a million Armenians from the Ottoman Empire in 1915 constitute a “genocide,” but Turkish society fell in love with French culture a long time ago. The 19th century intelligentsia studied French literature, and Istanbul (then called Constantinople) happily promoted itself as the “Paris of the East.” A few years ago, in homage to binational amour, Istanbul built a French Street, decorating it with antique gas and coal-powered street lamps imported from Paris, the better to mimic Montmartre.
Students who join the ieiMedia study abroad program in the summer of 2012 will be covering this love-hate story of Franco-Turkish relations as we document Istanbul’s cosmopolitan heritage. (See the video below for a preview.)
Each student will be invited explore the ties between Istanbul and a country, ethnic group or resident minority. Then we’ll weave these stories into a web documentary incorporating student writing, photography and video. The best work will be published in a book.
As the wealthy capital of a multinational empire, Istanbul attracted ambitious people from around the world: Greek entrepreneurs and Armenian tradesmen; Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition; Albanian silversmiths who produced the finest filigree. Poles, Bosnians, Circassians, Georgians, Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Kurds all left their mark. So did British imperialists, Genoese bankers, German advisers and American missionaries, who established schools, churches and hospitals, some still operating today.
In its variety of neighborhoods, architecture, cuisine, books, views, music and dress, Istanbul still feels bound to that ancient cosmopolitanism. That’s probably why the city reminds me much more of my hometown, New York, than of some unicultural berg.
Here’s to our adventure.
Urbino Project 2011 Website Wins EPPY Award
Editor and Publisher announced EPPY Award winners at 1:30 today. Our Urbino 2011 website was a finalist. Turns out we won! The site was the top site in the category Best College/University Website: Journalistic or Documentary Report.
The EPPY™ Awards are one of the nation’s most prized and long-running honors for online content and recognize the best media-affiliated websites across 43 diverse categories.
See the complete list of winners at:
http://www.eppyawards.com/Content/Past_2011_Winners-28-.aspx
ieiMedia’s website was created in partnership with Iowa State University and James Madison University.
This a true team award combining the work of students and faculty. Congratulations again to all the students and faculty who worked on the site, including students Renee Anderson, Abigail Barefoot, Grant Bell, Kailah Bharath, Robert Boag, Genevieve Bryan, Jared Carpenter, Sarah Cumming, Kerri DeVries, Kristina Elliott, Kenneth Foo, Dorian Geiger, Olivia Gordon, Ola Mazzuca, Caroline McGraw, Mojan Nourbakhsh, Steve Odorczyk, Addie Olson, Cara Prodanovich, Jennifer Stafford, Martin Steger, Catherine Threlkeld, Cassie Thunhorst, Greg Wahler, Matt Wettengel & Yue Wu and professors Steve Anderson, Dennis Chamberlin, Doug Cumming, Bob Marshall, Ryan Parkhurst & Pawel Wyszomirski.
Urbino 2011 Website Named EPPY Award Finalist
ieiMedia’s Urbino 2011 Project website has been named a finalist in the 2011 EPPY™ Awards, which are sponsored by Editor & Publisher magazine.
The EPPY™ Awards are one of the nation’s most prized and long-running honors for online content and recognize the best media-affiliated websites across 43 diverse categories.
ieiMedia’s website, created in partnership with Iowa State University and James Madison University, is a finalist in the “Best College/University Journalistic or Documentary Report” category.
After four weeks of in-depth judging, the E&P team, along with a prestigious panel of 54 judges, voted and selected the 2011 EPPY™ award finalists.
Each EPPY™ entry is judged on its own merits within a particular category. Finalists must receive a score in the top one third of the average score across all categories within their division.
To view a complete list of finalists, please visit: http://editorandpublisher.com/EPPYAwards.
EPPY™ award winners will be announced live on editorandpublisher.com Nov. 30, 2011 at 1:30 p.m. EST.
Congratulations to all the students and faculty who worked on the site, including students Renee Anderson, Abigail Barefoot, Grant Bell, Kailah Bharath, Robert Boag, Genevieve Bryan, Jared Carpenter, Sarah Cumming, Kerri DeVries, Kristina Elliott, Kenneth Foo, Dorian Geiger, Olivia Gordon, Ola Mazzuca, Caroline McGraw, Mojan Nourbakhsh, Steve Odorczyk, Addie Olson, Cara Prodanovich, Jennifer Stafford, Martin Steger, Catherine Threlkeld, Cassie Thunhorst, Greg Wahler, Matt Wettengel & Yue Wu and professors Steve Anderson, Dennis Chamberlin, Doug Cumming, Bob Marshall, Ryan Parkhurst & Pawel Wyszomirski.
What Editors Look for in New Hires
When aspiring journalists discover I’ve been in the news business for 40 years – and still have a job at a newspaper – they pepper me with dozens of questions, one of which is a constant: What are editors looking for in new hires?
I now have the perfect answer, thanks to this job listing on mlive.com, which is Advance Publications’ (Newhouse newspapers) Web site for their Michigan properties.
I’d suggest directors of journalism schools across the nation be familiar with the prerequisites listed here. Editors see it as the template for our future. (http://jobs.mlive.com/jobs/detail/42915571/16).
Reporter (All Topics) – MLive Media Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Job Details
ESSENTIAL PURPOSE OF THIS POSITION
The Reporter will report and produce news stories for various platforms, and act as a statewide expert and discussion leader on high-value topics, meeting audience demand for immediacy, depth and engagement.
REQUIRED EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS
· Degree in Journalism or Communications or related field required
· Minimum of 2 years of journalism experience with a proven ability in reporting and writing required
· Proven experience building, maintaining and engaging an active audience
· Ability to work independently under deadline pressure and prioritize tasks appropriately
· Demonstrated reporting, writing and organizational skills
· Solid understanding of news writing, journalistic ethics and story structure
· Experience with search engine optimization practices
· Experience with using social media to source and promote content a plus
· Demonstrated capability in capitalizing on high-value topics by engaging audiences in frequency and urgency
· Understanding of the methods and tools used to deliver content across a variety of platforms such as Moveable Type CMS, SCC Budgeting and Archiving System, Smartphones
· Understanding imperatives of multiple platforms – print, mobile, Internet, etc.
· Mastery of social media and digital interaction
· Proven ability to utilize a broad set of tools to tell stories and engage the audience
· Ability to leverage relationships with sources to deliver content that differentiates the organization from competitors
· Ability to work independently and remotely
ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Duties and Responsibilities, work schedules and/or location may change based on evolving business needs
1. Gather information and write journalistically sound news elements for use in all media platforms, existing and future, that is: balanced and factual; timely and topical; and, well –sourced and contextually correct
2. Learn and employ all techniques for effective digital “beat-blogging” reporting across all platforms
3. Post frequent and incrementally posting throughout the day
4. Engage in story aggregation and topical link-posting
5. Monitor and engage in reader comment streams on MLive impact pages
6. Elevate comments into new posts when appropriate
7. Interact on social media platforms, with story shares, objective commentary, promoting your topic and news organization’s content initiatives
8. Effectively employ various means for monitoring audience interest and competitors’ posting on your topic, including setting up Google alerts, Twitter and RSS feeds
9. Maintain operational communication with editor and, when applicable, production center,
10. Understand and use hardware, software and cloud-based equipment and systems for direct-to-web production and engagement, including but not limited to:
· a posting photographs and short videos to the web and any internal production systems
· remote web reporting, using laptops and smart phones
11. Understand and use our news organization’s audience traffic tracking systems and analytical reports
12. Meet production deadlines
WORKING CONDITIONS AND PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS
Extensive computer use required. Some travel required. Ability to work flexible work schedules, including nights, weekends and holidays, as needed
The Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, physical or mental impairment, or any other category protected under federal, state or local law
Principles of Good Video Storytelling
Former NBC News President Reuven Frank once said, “the highest power of television journalism is not in the transmission of information, but in the transmission of experience.” While text is often better suited to telling the details of a story, the first person nature of video makes it well suited for conveying emotion and providing environmental context. With that in mind, one starts to see what types of stories, or aspects of larger stories, are best suited to each medium.
So, what are the key techniques of good video storytelling? Here’s a top ten list. (Thanks to Mark Anderson, former National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) Television News Photographer of the Year, for some of these gems).
10. Avoid Big Mac stories. A Big Mac is made up of alternating pieces of bread, meat, bread, meat and bread. This is like a TV news package with two sound bites (meat) wrapped in pieces of narration or “track” (track, bite, track, bite, track). It’s the easiest type of story to create and requires only that you pick two sound bites and then write around them. The middle track or end track may contain a standup. So many stories are done with this basic approach, but it’s formulaic and boring.
9. Utilize an interspersing structure. Good visual stories keep the viewers attention with a sense of pacing. That often means liberal use of short pieces of natural sound up full, interspersed with short segments of narration. Reuven Frank said, “no one writes white space anymore.” If you find yourself writing long, continuous pieces of narration, ask if there are pieces of sound you can insert between sentences, and even phrases, to break up the monotony and provide white space.
8. Stories should have a clear beginning, middle and end. This is the essence of good storytelling in all forms. It could be going from specific, to general, back to specific, but the structure should be clear.
7. Editing begins when shooting. The best shooters are also editors. They think about what shots they’ll want/need later when editing. Shooting sequences, various angles of view, sound-up full – these things can’t be created in editing if not acquired during shooting.
6. Hold conversations – don’t conduct interviews. It’s always best to converse with people in their natural settings as they are engaged in some activity related to the story. Mark Anderson says, “no more guys in ties behind desks.” If that’s the best setting for your interview, ask yourself if you really need that sound at all. Avoid taking someone out of their natural setting, standing them against a wall and conducting a formal interview.
5. Standups are non-essential. There could be cases where a reporter standup serves a purpose (such as demonstrating something or to provide perspective on something where you have no video), but these things tend to be used simply to get a reporters face on TV. Remember, you are not the story.
4. Involve the camera. Mark Anderson says, “If your shots aren’t good enough, you’re probably not close enough.” Shooting something from 20 feet away with a long focal length is not the same as a shot from 3 feet away with a short focal length even if the subject is the same size in both shots. The closer shot widens the background and seems more intimate.
3. Good sound is the essence of good video storytelling. Natural sound in the background provides environmental perspective and should be a part of all voice overs. However, most essential is finding good natural sound you can use “up full” on its own for short periods. Wireless mics are invaluable for good sound. The mic should be invisible and unobtrusive. Wire up your subject with a wireless mic and they’ll forget they’re even wearing it.
2. Avoid pans, zooms and tilts. (Previously titled “pans, zooms and tilts are evil.”) Yes, you may need to pan to follow action from time to time, but even in those cases it’s often better to “pan with your feet,” meaning to follow the action by walking alongside. There is no human perceptual equivalent to the zoom. It’s unnatural. The main purpose of a variable focal length lens is simply to give you different levels of magnification for the various shots you’ll need. And, don’t underestimate the value of a tripod. Unless you have hands of stone, you’ll get shaky video and it will look amateurish.
1. Vary your shots. The most common mistake for a beginning news videographer is to shoot almost all medium shots. Most neglected are wide shots and close-ups. Perhaps the most neglected is the close-up. Shoot many more close-ups than you think you can use. Also, think about sequences of long, medium and close-up shots with matched action.
The best examples of these stories often come from television stations in markets like Minneapolis, Denver and Seattle. These markets tend to have stations that win NPPA Station of the Year honors for their visual storytelling. Some of the very best examples don’t come from television at all. Look to the New York Times and Washington Post online sites for examples of well crafted, sound-centric video stories.
Great Advice on Writing Travel Articles
Travel writer Don George
For anyone interested in learning or perfecting the craft of travel writing, I highly recommend a recent blog post by Don George, one of the deans of the genre. It summarizes his advice on how to put together a good travel article.
Don defines a travel narrative as “the crafted evocation of a journey, usually written in the first person, that is structured as a sequence of anecdotes/scenes, and that presents a quest that illuminates a place and culture.” And he stresses the critical need for a “a theme – lesson, message, point, illumination – that you as the writer are trying to convey to the reader.”
Here’s how he boils down the essential steps:
- Figure out the lesson of your travel experience or story.
- Figure out what steps led you to learn that lesson.
- Recreate those steps in your mind.
- Recreate those steps in words so the reader can live them with you.
- Craft your tale with a beginning, middle, and end that shape and convey your lesson.
There are lots more useful suggestions and insights in his full blog post—definitely worth reading. For an even deeper exploration of the topic, see Don’s terrific book, Travel Writing.
How to Pitch Your Story, Perfectly
If a reporter can’t convincingly sell a story idea—to an editor or to a professor—the story may never be written, photographed, or produced. (It shouldn’t be, anyway.) For that reason, Susan West and I spend a significant amount of time in the early days of the Urbino magazine course laying out the elements of a perfect pitch.
We ask each student to write a memo that makes the case for the idea in one or two pages, which is very much like what we as magazine editors expect from professional freelance writers. Below is a handout from this past summer’s magazine course that summarizes the four key elements. What makes a pitch persuasive to you? Would you add anything to our list? Please post your comments below.
Elements of a Perfect Pitch
Urbino Magazine Project 2011
Focus: What is the one question that the story will answer? The single main point? The one thing you want the reader to take away? What do your target readers want to know about this subject area, this place, or this new development? Aim for their “sweet spot.” That is the focus, or angle, of your story. Specific, not general. Narrow, not “all about.”
Approach: How will you tell the story? What is the vehicle that will give the story structure and allow you to make all the salient points in a coherent, natural way? Will it be a first-person account, a straight analysis of the facts, a guided tour or travelogue (taking the reader along on a journey), a story woven together by a central anecdote, a 10-best list…? Whenever possible, give a sample of that approach in your pitch.
A Whiff of the Meat: Give some key tidbits of the information that the story will provide. Show that you have done enough research to know that there’s a there there. Ideally, the pitch previews the likely main points of the story. There’s no sense in bringing up an idea that may evaporate with the first few phone calls or after the first few interview questions. Preliminary reporting prevents nasty surprises, long hours, and drastic, unsatisfactory “save jobs” later.
Rationale: Why does the story belong in this magazine (and, maybe, why now)? How does the story hit the target reader’s sweet spot—serve his/her needs and interests? This is the “peg,” or “hook,” or justification for doing this particular story (at this particular moment). For example: You have identified an outdoor adventure sure to be of interest to the numerous nature enthusiasts among our readers and it is an easy bus ride from their base in Urbino. Or, your proposed story covers an authentic local cultural event that tourists can participate in—and it recurs every summer, when we know our readers will be in town. Whatever it is, your rationale must answer the question: Why are we offering this story to this reader in this magazine?
Award-winning Magazine Work from 2011
We had an impressive bunch of students in the magazine program in Urbino, Italy, this past summer. The best evidence of that is Urbino Now, the 92-page glossy that they created. Our challenge to them: In barely a month, create a travel magazine for English-speaking visitors to Urbino and the Marche region. Not incidentally, we wanted the students to learn all they could about international reporting and magazine journalism.
I hope you’ll take the time to enjoy every page of the magazine. You can read it online here or order a copy to be printed and mailed to you from our virtual, “cloud-based” production plant at MagCloud. Meanwhile, I wanted to share a few highlights within this blog post. Here we proudly present summaries of the especially strong student contributions that were honored at the end of the course. Each winner was awarded a “Raffie,” a cheesy yet coveted plastic likeness of the Renaissance artist Raphael, who was born in Urbino.
FEATURE ARTICLE (best overall story that exhibits exceptional writing and reporting)
Winners:
- Sydni Dunn for “Snips of History,” a warm, day-in-the-life portrait of Pippi Busignani, Urbino’s last traditional barber.
- Sunny Thao for “A Renaissance Artist in the 21st Century,” a story that skillfully balances insights about Renaissance painting with a profile of contemporary artist Vitaliano Angelini and his modern art.
Runner-up:
- Caryn Maconi for “Le Marche on Two Wheels,” a first-person story of a regional biking trip that combines a vivid sense of place with useful information for readers who might like to follow in her tracks.
REPORTING (best evidence of enterprise in reporting, including live interviews and background research)
Winner:
- Rosa Castaneda for “Versatile Verdicchio,” a story about Le Marche’s unique verdicchio wine, for which Rosa did enough backgrounding to become a wine expert, interviewed three Italians without the help of a translator, and tracked down both Italian and American outside perspectives.
Runners-up:
- Caryn Maconi for “Le Marche on Two Wheels,” for which she reported the biking trip both by bike and by car, and also researched accommodations, sights, safety, and transportation advice; AND found a bike rental shop, which was not at all as simple as it sounds.
- Victoria Staples for “Pesaro: A Sunday Market for Shopaholics,” a you-are-there story for our Day Trips section in which Victoria rummages through nearly every stall and befriends almost every merchant at Pesaro’s alternative to Urbino’s Saturday market.
SERVICE (story that provides the clearest, most useful, and most specific guidance to the Urbino Now reader)
Winner:
- Caryn Maconi for “Le Marche on Two Wheels.” As we’ve said earlier, Caryn’s biking story offers succinct, specific, well-researched, and well-written advice about where to stay, what to do, and how to do it along this 70-km bike route.
Runners-up:
- Jordan Holloway for “Shopping for Mr. Big,” a short, but extremely useful article about where to buy Big Guy-sized shirts, pants, and shoes in Urbino, Italy.
- Sarah Lorsch for “Fano: Beach Town With a Bonus,” a Day Trips story that recommends Fano’s off-the-beaten track attractions, including its unusual rocky beach, an underground city for insiders only, and a local’s favorite spot for affordable dinners of fresh fish.
SHORT ARTICLE (sidebar or stand-alone short article that exhibits strong writing and reporting)
Winner:
- Lauryn Smith for “Farm Life.” This article for our food section introduces readers to the owners and volunteers at a nearby agriturismo where visitors can learn organic livestock farming.
Runners-up:
- Jordan Howse for “Urbino 101.” This 150-word article is packed with fun facts about Urbino, such as the fact that Urbinati believe it’s bad luck for a local to visit the Ducal Palace before he or she graduates from college.
- Sydni Dunn for “Sometimes Graffiti is Just Graffiti.” Sydni’s short article for our front-of-the-book section demystifies the apparently scholarly debate that surrounds the popular graffito called “Urbinzoo.”
To Tell a Story: Get Real, Be Specific
"Rocks as big as microwave ovens" in Death Valley's Racetrack region. Talk about concrete details.
Strong feature writing is evocative, full of scenes unfolding before the reader’s eyes, and alive with people, sights, sounds, and smells. In short, strong feature writing is built from specific, real-word details.
For inexperienced writers, this is one of the most important lessons to learn and one of the hardest to apply. When students are in the field doing their reporting, it’s hard for them to collect compelling, concrete details. And when they’re writing, it’s hard for them to pull these tempting morsels out of their notes and use them to bring their stories to life. Without realizing it, students have a strong tendency to take the easier, sleep-inducing route of “telling” rather than “showing.”
So we try to make this point in as many ways as possible during our summer magazine course: If you want your article to attract readers and keep them riveted, get real.
One of the best ways to help students adopt this habit is to have them identify articles that grab and keep their attention. In class, ask each student to read aloud a passage from one of these articles and to briefly analyze its use of evocative, concrete, story-telling specifics.
Below are two excerpts that we used in the magazine course last summer to get these discussions rolling. The first is from a published piece with strong atmospheric and visual details. The second is part of a draft manuscript that suffered from a severe shortage of specifics. Do you have any favorite examples of articles rich in vivid, real-world specifics? Please share them in the comments section at the end of this post.
Example 1: “Raising Heaven / Where Rocks Go Wandering“
By Tim Cahill, National Geographic
I imagine the sight of Death Valley National Park is something akin to scientific pornography for hard-rock geologists. There are the obvious soaring mountains and abysmal valleys, of course. But in most other places on Earth, the folding and buckling of rocks, the colliding of crustal plates, the shores of advancing and retreating lakes, the evidence of volcanic activity, the scrape of glaciers across rock, the subtle and not so subtle effects of erosion are covered over in grass or dirt, in snow or ice. The Earth is a modest mother, but Death Valley is, for the most part, naked. It is also the only place on Earth where geology itself has made me laugh out loud. I am thinking specially of an area in the northwest section of Death Valley called the Racetrack, where, inexplicably, rocks as big as microwave ovens go zipping across the desiccated mud for distances of more than half a mile. The evidence is all there: deep tracks in the surface, with a rock at the end. One concludes, reluctantly, that the rocks somehow traveled a couple of hundred yards, leaving a telltale trail behind. There are over 150 of these roving rocks. But no one has ever seen them move.
Example 2: (draft manuscript, lacking specifics)
Film buffs have long been enthusiastic about the galleries’ film series, particularly the Iranian and Hong Kong festivals. Another joins the lineup this fall, when the Freer will present for the first time a retrospective of Korean cinema that spans the past fifty years. The festival begins with the golden age of the 1950s and 1960s, continues with the unsettling period of censorship in the 1970s and 1980s, and ends with the explosion of creativity of the past dozen or so years known as the Korean “new wave.” Is Korea the new Hong Kong? You’ll have to come and see for yourself. According to Tom Vick, film programmer for the Freer & Sackler, “there are many great films coming out of Korea, and this is the first time that many of them will be shown in D.C.”
2012 Locations
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Past Projects
- Urbino Project – 2011
- Urbino Now Magazine – 2011
- Perpignan Project – 2011
- Istanbul Stories – 2011
- Faces of Istanbul (Book) – 2011
- Urbino Now Magazine – 2010
- Perpignan Project – 2010
- Urbino Project – 2009
- Armagh Project – 2009
- Urbino View Magazine – 2009
- Cagli Project – 2008
- Armagh Project – 2007
- Cagli Project – 2007
- Camerano Project – 2006
- Cagli Project – 2006
- Cagli Project – 2005
- Cagli Project – 2004
- Cagli Project – 2003
- Cagli Project – 2002
Students Say...
by Kailah Bharath, Ryerson University, The Urbino Project 2011