Podcast Archives - Page 3 of 35 - It's All Journalism

#296 — Cinematic video journalism shakes up old model of visual storytelling

The concept of video journalism is as old as the television broadcast, but it doesn’t need to be predictable or boring.

“It’s been through the ring,” says David Dunkley Gyimah, a video journalist who leads the Innovatory disLAB (UK) and is currently an Asper visiting professor of Journalism at the University of British Columbia.“Video journalism, as a label for whatever this thing is, has been around since the 1950s. It meant something else then. It surfaced again in the 1990s as a way of one person doing video … one person would grab a camera, go out, shoot, do the stand-up and sometimes come back and edit.”

David Dunkley Gyimah

The BBC itself adopted the one-person-band approach to video reporting in the early 2000s and newspapers soon followed, he said.

Reporters are still out there telling stories, finding and searching for the truth in their work, but Dunkley Dyimah compares it to the impressionist painters that came after realists.

“Impressionists came along and say ‘we’re going to do the truth, but this is our impression of it,’” he said. “That’s what happened. The idea of training people still within the (premise) of telling the truth, being honest, letting them tell their stories in a myriad of ways and styles changed. It became something akin to the package,” or the concise ways in which broadcast reporters produce and air their stories.

But therein lies a risk: Now there’s a generation or more of “marketeers and PR people” who can present information in visually the same style and cadence as a reporter’s package because they know and understand how this presentation works.

“The result of video journalism being absorbed into this mainstream idea of oh, it’s just TV journalism, it’s forced a number of people, including me, to look for new ways to define this thing,” he said.

They’re finding inspiration in cinematic elements – not of the big screen Hollywood variety, but of powerful, strong images as a way to grab viewers’ attention and bring the news in more meaningful ways.

Visual storyteller and cinematic journalism expert David Dunkley Gyimah joins producer Michael O’Connell to discuss how video journalism has changed, and stayed the same, since its inception in the 1950s.

#290 — What’s it like to report from North Korea?

#295 — Putting sports second, athletes first

Sports fans love their teams. They love to quibble about which player should or shouldn’t have been traded; which general manager or coach deserves to stay or should be kicked out; what the future holds for a team that has identified with a city for generations.

Tim Graham has written about the highs and lows of the sports fans in Buffalo for the better part of 20 years as a writer for the Buffalo News, covering both the NFL’s Bills and the NHL’s Sabres through more valleys than peaks, the bankruptcy and sale of the NHL franchise and the death of an iconic owner that could have relocated the Bills to California or Canada.

Buffalo News Sports Writer Tim Graham. {Photo by Derek Gee / Buffalo News}

Buffalo fans are a passionate breed, as it could be argued are most fans in any city of any team, but Graham prefers to focus on the bigger pictures: What happens after the game is done and real life sets in.

“Once that game’s over, it really becomes a triviality,” said Graham, a writer who first joined the Buffalo News in 2000 and spent seven years there before going to Palm Beach, Florida, before a stint at ESPN before returning to New York’s second-largest city to cover the Sabres and, later, the Bills.

“When you talk about your team going bankrupt (as the Sabres did), or your owner being ushered into a federal court (Sabres again) or serious issues like CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), the brain injuries going on in the NFL, the national anthem demonstrations, all of these thing matter on a much larger scale,” Graham says. “I really get into writing those stories because I know if you do it in a comprehensive way, it’s a story that will stand the test. You can look back on it and – my goal is to have written the definitive story on a subject instead of a game played in November. Nobody goes back to read those stories.”

Graham has profiled some legendary athletes: Bills great Darryl Talley; NHL goon turned soft-hearted good guy John Scott, even Bjorn Nittmo, a kicker who played just a handful of games but caught the attention of David Letterman.

Sports writing is less about the scores, wins and losses as it is about the lives the athletes lead off the field, the struggles they face and the risks they take in pursuit of their dreams and in order to live up to their potential, not just athletically but personally.

When it comes to CTE, the brain injury closely associated with football players who suffer multiple concussions, it resonates with readers because “the prospect of death is universal. We’re all afraid. … When you write about things like CTE, you’re able to humanize these people that wear helmets on Sunday afternoons. They wear these team colors and they go out and fight for your city’s honor and these are the guys we really root for and don’t think about it much more beyond that. I’m certain that’s why NFL rating have slipped … because of what we’re learning about brain injuries and football players.”

Tim Graham, an NFL writer for the Buffalo News for the better part of two decades, joins producer Michael O’Connell to talk about the highs and lows of covering a city whose teams are better known for losing than winning and why, in the big picture, the W/L column is secondary to everything off the playing field.

#215 – Learning from the best of the best in sports

#294 — Polk Awards honor gutsy investigative reporting

For the first time, three digital journalists and outlets have taken home major prizes with this year’s George Polk Awards.

Iona Craig of The Intercept won the Foreign Reporting Award for her work investigating a SEAL raid on a village in Yemen, hailed as a triumph by the Trump administration but rife with destruction and civilian casualties.

Melissa Segura of Buzzfeed won the Local Reporting Award for her investigation into the practices of a Chicago detective playing “fast and loose” with facts, locking innocent people away in prison for decades, people who Segura’s work helped free.

Ralph Engelman

Elle Reeve of VICE News won the National Television Reporting award for her astonishing and first-person reporting of the Charlottesville protest last summer that resulted in one woman’s death. Her work included one-on-one interviews with the leaders of the alt-right group that organized the event. (The work was also the subject of a previous episode of this podcast).

The Polk Awards were once referred to by a New York Times columnist as the “guts awards,” said Ralph Engelman, a senior professor of journalism at Long Island University Brooklyn and co-administrator of the awards.

The awards “recognize reporters who break important stories and are enterprising and sometimes take risks even getting the stories,” he said. “We live in a time when journalism is under attack, all the references to fake news, the changing finances that have hurt investigative reporting. But there is still important, great investigative work going on that has impact.”

He noted that one of the big prizes this year went to a team of reporters from different outlets, Jody Kantor and Mean Twohey of the New York Times and Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker for their explosive piece on Harvey Weinstein. They won the National Reporting Award for their efforts.

“The repercussions are incredible,” Engelman said of their work. “I think it is important to basically encourage the great tradition in investigative reporting. This kind of recognition is a message to newspaper publishers and editors as well as the American public about the great cause of investigative journalism because of the kind of impact we’re discussing.”

Ralph Engelman, a senior professor of journalism at Long Island University Brooklyn and co-administrator of the George Polk Awards, joins producer Michael O’Connell to discuss this year’s award winners, including three first-time awards for digital outlets, and why newspapers need to reconsider the importance of investigative journalism.

#280 — Vice News Tonight and its different take on political news

#293 — Need new skills? ONA is here to help

It’s pretty obvious we at It’s All Journalism believe our industry is alive and changing, not shrinking or dissolving.

The Online News Association agrees and has started offering new community-level training programs to help reporters on the ground develop the new skills they need in an ever-changing world.

Meghan Murphy is the community manager for the Online News Association.

“Our executive director says journalism isn’t dead or dying. People in our community are excited for these tools,” said Meghan Murphy, ONA’s community manager.

By listening to on-the-ground volunteers and organizers, ONA has worked with five trainers to create curriculum to teach journalists new skills, ranging from backpack journalism – “what can you bring for mobile storytelling that will look professional and nice but not take a ton of time” – to newsletter design elements, digital journalism, how to tell one story on multiple platforms and tools for validating social media posts to determine what’s real when news breaks.

“This isn’t an industry where you start it, learn the skill, then perfect it over the course of a career,” Murphy said. “It’s constantly changing. That’s exciting for people in our community.”

ONA has sponsored and helped coordinate meetup groups around the country for a few years now. It’s an opportunity for journalists to come together, swap ideas and best practices without having to dedicate long hours or big chunks of money to improve their skills.

There are 25 events currently scheduled through June that will keep the five trainers busy. In the meantime, ONA offers some information on its website about the courses it offers and where to find meetup groups across the country in order to keep the conversations going.

It’s another way ONA supports and encourages journalists to interact and engage with their communities and better serve their readers, listeners and watchers.

“You’re starting to see the industry embracing journalism as service,” Murphy said. “We have this extremely powerful role, an important role in communities to make sure they’re informed and connected with each other.”

Meghan Murphy, the Online News Association’s community manager, joins producer Michael O’Connell to discuss new training opportunities developed and offered by ONA to help journalists learn skills to keep up in the ever-changing industry.

#244 – Newsrooms need to build trust with their audiences

#292- Where do college students get their news?

It all started last August when I met Miranda Spivack, an independent journalist and the Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. She’d just participated in a panel on government transparency at the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s annual conference in Washington, D. C.

It’s All Journalism Producer Michael O’Connell talks to a student during a live podcasting recording at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. (Photo courtesy of Miranda Spivack)

I invited Miranda to come on into the studio and record a podcast. We had a great conversation. In turn, she invited me to visit DePauw to talk to students about podcasting.

That’s how it is sometimes. One invitation leads to another.

So, on Monday morning, Feb. 5, I showed up at DePauw with my laptop and recording equipment, ready to spread the good word about podcasting.

I had a blast.

First up, I talked to eight of Miranda’s students about how to put a podcast together. They’d each gone out and interviewed their fellow students about “fake news.” I helped edit the interviews down to a six-minute podcast and posted it to the It’s All Journalism SoundCloud account.

Later in the day, I gave two presentations about launching a podcast and what makes a good podcast. During the second presentation, rather than do a Q&A, I turned the tables on the audience. I handed out wireless microphones and ask them: “Where do you get your news?”

On this week’s It’s All Journalism podcast, Producer Michael O’Connell travels to DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, to talk about podcasting. In a live podcast recording, he asks a room full of college students how they get their news. It’s a fascinating peek how young people consume their news.

#272 – Lack of government transparency leaves press, public in the dark

#291 — Ear Hustle’s remarkable success in podcasting from prison

It’s been almost a year and a half since we first met Nigel Poor, the cohost and co-creator of the Ear Hustle podcast.

“We had no idea what was going to happen. It really took us all by surprise,” said Poor, a Bay Area photographer and educator who produces the podcast along with Earlonne Woods and Antwan Williams, inmates at San Quentin prison in California.

The three producers of the Ear Hustle podcast sit on stairs at San Quentin Prison in California.

They work together in the prison’s media lab, interviewing other inmates about incarcerated life. The podcast got its start after winning Radiotopia’s Podquest contest in 2016, starting its first season in May 2017.

“Ear Hustle is, to my understanding, the first podcast to ever be completely produced inside a prison,” she said. “We are not a crime podcast. We concentrate on the everyday stories of life inside prison from the perspective of those who live it. We really concentrate on the small details that help give life meaning and really explore how you make a life once you become incarcerated.”

Unlike other podcasts, Poor and her hosts don’t have the luxury of fancy equipment or even soundproof settings or recording their interviews. They share space in the media room, negotiating with others working on videos and varying projects.

San Quentin has been supportive of the project, but each episode must be reviewed and cleared by the prison’s public information officer, Lt. Sam Robinson. He listens for factual errors, ensuring the correct language and terminology is used, but also keeps an ear out for any conversation that could cause problems for inmates.

“We have not been told there’s a story we can’t do yet,” Poor said. In fact, the most difficult episode so far, according to the PIO, was one on the prison’s “boom boom room, which was about how people are legally and illegally finding ways to be intimate with their partners. [The officer] said that was the hardest story to deal with. He’s really gone to bat for us.”

Robinson is even included in the podcast’s “About Us” page for his contributions.

Nigel Poor, co-host, co-producer and co-founder of the Ear Hustle podcast, joins Michael O’Connell and Nicole Ogrysko to provide an update on the surprising — to her! — success of the podcast, believed to be the first one ever wholly produced from inside a prison.

#PM16 – Ear Hustle: Podcasting from behind bars

#290 — What’s it like to report from North Korea?

For a woman who grew up in a small town in the south of England, America was the dream.

Charlet Duboc

Working as a fashion journalist, of a sort, or as a digital journalist wasn’t the dream – because Charlet Duboc didn’t know it was even a possibility.

“My life seem pretty limited: marry a boy in the village and have a few kids,” said Duboc, a correspondent and senior documentary producer at Vice Media. “I was very much a black sheep. None of the women in my family had much education.”

Some of Duboc’s education came from American culture: ET, pizza, Walkmen, MTV. “America was a magical world. I became obsessed at a young age – I ended up studying American studies at university in London.”

The world of pop culture led her to London’s social scene and a stint as a DJ. She made friends with people who worked at VICE, eventually interning there and writing music reviews. When she was told VICE wanted more fashion stories, she ended up on a plane to Pakistan with a friend and a camera to cover that nation’s first fashion week.

“I never wanted to be a fashion journalist,” Duboc said. “I didn’t have much reverence for the fashion world. I love clothes, but it wasn’t something that drove me professionally. I wanted to do culture.”

If she thought American culture was a different world from what she was used to in the UK, one of her most recent expeditions, to North Korea, was something altogether unexpected.

Except it wasn’t.

“The thing about North Korea is that you only get to see what everybody else has already seen,” she said. “I’d seen it all before on TV. I knew what the hotel looked like, I knew what the landmarks looked like we were going to see. But nothing can prepare you — the thing that feels weird is that you feel weird all the time. You’re anxious the whole time.”

In all, she filmed and produced two shorter pieces for Vice’s nightly news show on HBO and one longer piece, about 15-20 minutes, for the network’s weekly news magazine.

She was in the country for nine days in the fall of 2017 but it felt much longer, Duboc said.

“You’re under scrutiny the whole time. You have to behave like you’re in boarding school.” A call to her boss in the middle of the night would notify her of an early morning call time. Information about the next day’s schedule was routinely withheld.

On the one hand, Duboc knew she was getting an opportunity very few people in the outside world will ever have, taking that chance to peak behind the curtain of one of the world’s most secretive nations. At the same time, she found herself thinking “get me out. I want to go home. You want to enjoy it but you’ve got this constant feeling of dread following you around.”

Charlet Duboc, a correspondent and documentary producer for VICE, talks with producer Michael O’Connell about her obsession with American culture, her adventures in fashion reporting and a recent trip to North Korea during which one of the most controlled nations in the world felt at once too familiar and alien.

#280 — Vice News Tonight and its different take on political news

#289 — Illustration: What’s included and what’s left out

David Plunkert decided early on he probably shouldn’t try and pursue a career in cartooning.

Instead, he studied graphic design at Shepherd College (now Shepherd University) in West Virginia and found he really enjoyed the coursework.

David Plunkert

“You can make the argument that all things artists create are a form of visual communication,” said Plunkert, a Baltimore-based illustrator and graphic designer. “I like to think of myself as a visual communicator as opposed to someone who makes pretty pictures.”

Following the violent protests that left one woman dead and dozens injured in Charlottesville last August, Plunkert put together an idea that would become his first cover for the The New Yorker. It’s a strong image of President Donald Trump in a small black boat, blowing wind into a white sail shaped like a Klansman’s hat.

Plunkert worked for several years with an art director at the magazine and came to understand that covers were either designed based on a prompt from a different art director or the result of unsolicited submissions from artists.

“After the events of Charlottesville, I wasn’t thinking about illustrating something for them until Trump made his statement where he seemed to be giving cover to white nationalists,” he said. “I sent over Sunday night a crude sketch that had the essential elements that are on the final cover. Sunday night they contacted me and said they were interested in developing it as a cover.”

David Plunkert’s first cover for The New Yorker.

The next day, Trump went to the podium again with a stronger statement disavowing white nationalists. Plunkert thought his idea would be passed over and no longer timely. But that didn’t happen: “The next day, he walked his comments back again, so they contacted me Wednesday morning to do a color comp.”

The final piece was submitted Thursday morning and was live as the cover on the New Yorker’s website by noon that day.

The magazine’s staff “felt it was very clear in regards to what (the cover) was showing. It was reflecting the general audience’s feelings of what Trump’s position was,” he said. “It’s important what the cover doesn’t say: it’s not calling the president a Klansman or even a racist. It’s saying he’s in the boat with them or giving them some amount of cover. Context is important. Over many months, you had the president talking about different events where he’s not shy about calling out violence that involves minorities or immigrants, but when you’ve got white nationalists involved, he’s equivocating there’s bad people on both sides.”

Graphic designer and illustrator David Plunkert joins producer Michael O’Connell to discuss his view that designers are visual communicators who need to convey ideas and stories in a single piece of work and how it’s the little details that can make a powerful statement. He recently illustrated the new edition of Mary Shelley’s novel: Classics Reimagined, Frankenstein.

#254 – Cartoonist Adam Zyglis and the all-consuming news cycle

#288 – Telling stories of the past to change the world’s future

She’s traded a newsroom for a museum, but Erin Harper is still a journalist.

Erin Harper, multimedia producer at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Harper, a multimedia producer at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, got her start at the Chicago Tribune, working on digital video and multimedia production and eventually working in collaboration with the web team on development. When offered a buyout, she decided to move to Washington, without a job, because “I had a network here and it’s a media town, I’ll land somewhere.”

Within a few months, a friend had recommended her for a job at, of all places, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“What does that mean,” she recalled asking.

Come to find out, it’s a lot like working in a newsroom.

Among her first tasks was taking the museum’s Instagram account and changing its focus. Instead of providing information on upcoming events and exhibits and encouraging visits and donations, Harper and the team went deep into the museum’s archives.

“We took (the Instagram account) into the storytelling realm,” she said. “We found photos in the archives that would tell a story of the holocaust. Now the platform is exclusively historical photos and their stories. With dedicated engagement, we’ve gone from 5,000 (followers) to 30,000 in two years. We’re connecting with our audience on a deeper level.”

In August 2016, she was involved in a project called Save Syria. Three Syrian-American doctors from Chicago visited the museum and told their stories of two weeks spent in underground hospitals in Aleppo during heavy bombings. “We recorded their stories and used the content from the Aleppo Media Center to tell the story of Syria through the lens of these doctors. We got into the museum and online in 15 days – that might not sound impressive, but in museum time, it had never been done before,” Harper said.

She very much still considers herself a journalist.

“I think part of that is the same skills are not just fully utilized but completely embraced by my colleagues and celebrated,” she said. “I’m getting to move quicker and getting more comfortable with acquiring rights (for media projects) and deadlines. They appreciate that we have innovated the museum” and how it tells the stories of those who can’t speak for themselves.

Erin Harper, a multimedia producer at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, joins producer Michael O’Connell to discuss how her journalism and newsroom skills are helping to tell important stories at one of D.C.’s most powerful institutions.

#261— Being flexible and listening key to a good interview

#287 — That time of year when reporters count backwards

Michael O’Connell and Jason Fraley

Casey Kasum made a career out of counting backwards. For decades, the famous deejay counted down the top songs of the week on his American Top 40 radio show.

Every December, reporters of all stripes begin counting down their top stories of the year. Heck, we here at It’s All Journalism did that just last week when we counted down our Top 10 podcast episodes of 2017.

Readers like these year-end lists and reporters appreciate the chance to recycle content and try to put it into some type of context.

In the spirit of counting backwards, Jason Fraley, entertainment editor at WTOP in Washington, D.C., and the co-host of the Capital Culture podcast joined It’s All Journalism producer Michael O’Connell in studio to count down the top movies of 2017. The pair discuss their favorite films, the top grossing movies of the year, movie criticism and how digital streaming has impacted the movie-going experience.

Jason Fraley’s Top 10 for 2017

Full coverage of Fraley’s Top 10 movies for 2017 can be found on WTOP.

#218 – Podcast explores DC culture beyond Capitol Hill