Missoulian online editor Bill Schwanke tapes an interview with Jim Cearley, who went to Haiti last year after his daughter's untimely death. (Michael Gallacher/Missoulian)

Catching up in newsrooms:
Vets tackle multimedia

by Alaina Abbott

Missoulian reporter Rob Chaney produces multimedia stories, but to do it, he relies on one class he took in college — and that was a quarter of a century ago. The class was in broadcast journalism, not Chaney’s print specialty, but it gave him a taste of what awaited him.

A few years ago, that future arrived when Chaney shot the Missoulian’s first video. In 2004, while the new stadium for the Missoula Osprey baseball team was under construction, Chaney and a photographer flew over the field at night. Chaney had grabbed someone’s home video camera, and with his footage, he produced a three-minute clip of the stadium lights.

“(For video), the principles have remained the same,” Chaney said.

Today, he still follows the rule of thirds and takes close-ups and pan shots.

Multimedia has become a driving force in the newspaper industry, and veteran journalists, some of whom have more than 20 years of experience in print journalism, must learn to use audio recorders, digital cameras and video cameras, not to mention the editing programs for all those devices.

Joining reporters, photographers and editors in the newsroom are videographers, who specialize in visual journalism for newspaper websites. However, not all newspapers have the budget to hire such specialized journalists. Those news outlets instead turn to their seasoned print journalists to enhance stories with multimedia.

The Society of Professional Journalists and Knight Digital Media Center, as well as other media organizations, have led multimedia training sessions. But despite training opportunities, many journalists find themselves learning on their own out in the field, blundering at times but improving their skills as they go.

Understanding the technical side of multimedia is only part of the new job description for journalists.

“Deciding if video will complement a story is a big decision,” Chaney said. “It’s not just an ornament.”

Making mistakes, making progress

With no instruction in video, a journalist might return to the newsroom lacking usable material, much like longtime reporter Peter Johnson.

Last year, editors at the Great Falls Tribune of Great Falls, Montana, encouraged Johnson to shoot video at Showdown Ski Area. He struggled with the settings on his video camera all day, and then he unknowingly botched his entire footage of an interview with the president of the ski resort.

Thinking visually, Johnson had tipped his video camera vertically, a still photography technique, to capture the mountain behind his subject. He figured the scenery provided a more compelling backdrop than the walls of the president’s office.

Alas, his video turned out sideways, and therefore, was unusable.

But in some cases, the different backgrounds and interests of journalists mean newspapers are not necessarily starting from square one with multimedia. Experience with home video cameras and familiarity with editing programs from past jobs have helped ease the transition to multimedia.

Editing is Bill Schwanke’s strength. For years, he worked in radio with Adobe Premiere, the same editing program he uses at the Missoulian in Missoula, Montana. Schwanke works on keeping the length of his published videos shorter than two minutes. In the past, he put together videos that were three to four minutes long, but as he’s gained experience, he has determined that shorter clips are more viewer-friendly.

Shooting video has challenged Schwanke, who has found his fair share of unusable video when editing footage. Sometimes he discovers an excessive amount of video. That tends to happen when he forgets to stop recording and picks up dizzying shots of the ground, the sky and the rest of his surroundings. Other times, the shoulder strap of his video camera falls in front of the lens, ruining shots.

Those kinds of things don’t happen as frequently now. Today, Schwanke has produced more than 300 videos for the Missoulian’s website. That’s since 2005, when he returned to the Missoulian at age 60 (Schwanke was the sports editor at the Missoulian from 1969-1971). He calls himself the poster child for the saying, “You can teach an old dog new tricks.”

Still, Schwanke doesn’t claim to be an expert in videography. He hasn’t had any formal training in producing video. Lately, though, he’s been shooting from different angles, and since he has a feel for what kind of footage he needs, he can record less, which reduces the amount of time he spends wading through video.

Before heading out of the newsroom, Schwanke must decide which kind of camera he will need: either the Missoulian’s small, home-style video camera or the big one with “all the bells and whistles.” Taking both is unnecessary, but Schwanke can confidently select which he will need.

Schwanke realizes he still has skills to master, but he thinks his multimedia is at least above average.

“If I were getting a grade, I would say I’d get a ‘B,’” he said.

Putting the story together

The technical side of multimedia is only part of the story for journalists. Besides learning how to use cameras, they also have to adapt their interviewing style for video. And then they have to piece together visual, not written, segments to tell a story.

Last December, Chaney and a Missoulian photographer drove to Lolo, Montana, just outside of Missoula, to take pictures and conduct two interviews: one for print and the other for video. The story featured a man who collects Santa Claus figures — he owns 55 in various shapes and sizes.

Chaney and the photographer, both with years of experience, handled the print side of the story expertly. They ran into problems with the video, though. A furnace was humming during one interview attempt, and they also had issues with lighting, much to Chaney’s chagrin.

“We redid the interview three times. I asked him the same damn questions every time,” Chaney said.

Videographer Tanner Herriott of The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, knows how interviews vary for print and video. Often, he accompanies a reporter for an interview. Other times, he shoots an interview on his own, referencing the reporter’s notes. All reporters for The Oklahoman have a Flip camera.

Herriott said the types of questions a print reporter asks differ from those a videographer uses because a reporter can summarize. A videographer needs complete sentences. For video, journalists are looking for sound bites, which by nature are not as in-depth, Herriott said.

“I need four to five questions,” he said. “I’ve only got your (the viewer’s) attention for two minutes.”

Herriott considers himself more of a shooter than a producer, but, “I prefer to cut my own stuff,” he said. He spent time in college shooting videos of music tours and editing his footage into stories, and that experience made him technically proficient in video.

However, the need for efficiency sometimes means video footage is handed off to production editors to cut and produce.

Dave Reynolds, crime and breaking news reporter for the StarNews in Wilmington, North Carolina, used to give his raw footage to an editor. Then Reynolds would write his print story. However, he started learning the basics of Apple’s editing program Final Cut at the Knight Multimedia Training in January.

A couple of weeks after going through the training, which included everything from equipment usage to putting together a story, Reynolds had produced a few rough videos. He said he needed more practice to gain confidence, but he was hoping to share his new tricks with other multimedia reporters at the StarNews.

Reynolds incorporates multimedia into his reporting by showing crimes and car wrecks that have happened in the area. Commuters can look online to see whether a crime was committed in their area before driving home, for example. Being deliberate about using video is important for Reynolds.

“We try not to change what we cover because of multimedia,” he said.

Deciding whether multimedia will enhance a story warrants discussion in newsrooms. Some stories lend themselves to video since the visuals add to the story. For other stories, a visual component might not work effectively.

“Video is simply another tool, and frequently, it’s the wrong tool,” Chaney said. “Unless the city council is having a pie fight, live video is a tremendous waste of resources.”

Learning from the experts

Journalists who go through multimedia training learn from experts, or at least experienced videographers.

Last year, about 15 Great Falls Tribune journalists participated in a workshop organized by the Society of Professional Journalists and the University of Montana. Armed with Flip video cameras, the journalists spanned out across Great Falls to collect footage. They returned to the newsroom, where they gave their video some “crude editing,” said Richard Ecke, city reporter and columnist for the Great Falls Tribune.

The training lasted a mere hour and a half, but Ecke learned valuable basic guidelines to follow. For instance, he learned that he should almost never pan — experts hardly ever pan, he said. Ecke, who has been at the Tribune for more than 30 years, compared using video to being a TV reporter because he is showing and telling a story at the same time.

Ecke put his video skills to work during city elections. The Tribune ran one-minute videos of 10 of the 12 candidates, and viewers responded positively, Ecke said, in spite of background noise and other distractions. During Ecke’s interviews, trucks roared past multiple times, and once, a hang glider using a motorized kite sailed across the sky behind a candidate.

Chaney and the photo editor of the Missoulian attended a training session in the Midwest and learned video skills by sharing tips with other journalists there. Chaney supplements that experience by watching special features from movies. If he’s relaxing at home, he can turn on the commentary and have award-winning director Martin Scorsese explaining the reason a scene was set up in a particular way — to portray a certain message to the viewers.

Chaney taps into his college past as a foundation for producing video, but he’s looking everywhere for ways to tell a compelling story through multimedia.

“If you don’t have a good story with good visuals, it’s still shit,” Chaney said.

People have always been telling stories — verbally, pictorially, photographically, and of course, through writing. Multimedia simply opens up a new dimension for sharing stories. “As we get more and more tools, toys, venues and platforms,” Chaney said, “the danger is missing that initial elegance of what you were doing — trying to tell a story, capture your readers’ attention so maybe they’ll somehow better their lives.”