Multimedia and more

Clay Felker died to day. The pioneer of the print magazine was immoralized by the New York Times in one of their classic obituary style articles, written in the only way the NY Times knows how.

But, what fascinated me the most when reading about Felker’s life, was his persistence during the 60s to reinvent this medium of journalism in the face of the burgeoning TV broadcast news industry. I think the New York Times put it best in this paragraph:

“New York [Magazine's] mission was to compete for consumer attention at a time when television threatened to overwhelm print publications. To do that, Mr. Felker came up with a distinctive format: a combination of long narrative articles and short witty ones on consumer services. He embraced the New Journalism of the late ’60s — the use of novelistic techniques to give reporting new layers of emotional depth.” - NY Times Felker (July 1, 2008)

I couldn’t help but realize the connotations to what is happening today with digital media. As the cacophony of Internet publishers, bloggers, PR firms, social networks and everyone else (and their brothers) overwhelm the traditional print format, no one seems to really be stepping up and saying: Let’s reinvent storytelling to fit this new medium and establish it in the best way we know how.

As we have proselytized during every Knight workshop, the Internet should not be just another distribution platform for news; it’s a brand new medium fully capable of its own merit. It’s almost disheartening to see newspapers simply shoveling the same exact print stories that run in the newspaper straight to their Web site — and then ask why they can’t compete for attention.

It’s unusual because every other medium of news has adjusted the craft of storytelling to fit the medium its told in. Radio news isn’t some print story read over the air. Radio news reporters molded the craft of journalism for the spoken word. TV especially had to adjust their format to fit the medium of communication. But it seems like every industry these days simply shovels their stories online; whether they work for the medium or not.

In the same fashion that Felker defined the glossy pages of the magazine, the long-form narrative, the beautiful full-page advertisements, we need a pioneer to come along and truly define the Web for what it’s capable of producing. We need a news organization to serve as an example of what journalism can be on the Web. There are lots of great multimedia projects out there, but that’s just what they are: single pieces of great work. I would like to see an entire organization serve as a shining light to the rest of the industry; one that says, ‘Hey, we’re taking this thing seriously.’

Okay, I feel like I have been waiting a very long time for this. And now it finally has happened. Someone has built a completely Web-based Flash application over at http://sproutbuilder.com.

This is a momentous occasion for me. I feel like over the last two years, I have been wishing for this very thing to well, sprout up.

OK, enough with the puns. But this application is really really cool. It is, for all intents-and-purposes, Adobe Flash ultra-simplified, and it’s on the Web! And it’s FREE. You launch the Web app without having to download any software (except Adobe Flash Player, but there is a 97 percent chance it’s already on your system) Once inside, you can choose from a number of template themes, or opt to create your own. You don’t even have to setup an account to start using it.

Boy, did I put this baby to the test. I teach an Advanced Flash course at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and one of the first things we do is create a Flash template. A Flash template is simple but powerful. Basically it’s a Flash project with three sections, one that takes you to a Soundslides sections, one that shows a map mashup, and another that plays a video. I was utterly shocked when I found that I could do ALL of this, and MORE, with Sprout.

The interface is very much like Flash. You have a property inspector, tool pallet and a components window.  Building the project was absurdly simple. I didn’t have to click a help button once. Though, this is coming from someone who is quite familiar with Flash. I would imagine someone who has never touched Flash might need a few references to understand how the program works.

You can create buttons, multiple pages, add video, mashups, news feeds, twitter feeds, calendar components… and the best part of all, you never even have to touch a lick of ActionScript. I think that learning code is the by far the biggest challenge for people wanting to really do amazing things on the Web. And now the tools are making is just so much easier.

I tried looking for some of the fall backs to this program. And from what I can tell, there are very few. The major one is that the Flash file is hosted on Sprout’s Web site. They will give you the embed code to put it on your own Web site or blog, but you still are relegated to having hosted on their servers, which seems to be a major issue with news organizations that want branding. It would be nice if they let you download the .swf file — much the same way Picnik.com (a sort of online photoshop) lets you download the photos you edit.

Also, in the Sprout editing environment, there is no timeline. It only works with pages — which is how most advanced Flash projects are made these days. No one uses tweens anymore, unless you’re an animator. Flash has evolved to be something so much more; a non-linear storytelling platform.

It also lacks layer arrangement, which can be frustrating. If one element gets lost underneath another element, you are left using a set of “bring to front” tools to rearrange the layers. It’s a little finicky, and I wouldn’t doubt that a person could get left with a malfunctioned project, especially if it’s complex. But Sprout doesn’t seem like it’s the best platform for overly complex projects. It’s easy and simple. It’s all about User Interface, and that seems to be the emerging trend in software these days.

OK, here is a little tidbit a few people might not know about me. Back in my first year of college, I was a computer science major. Then, journalism stepped in the way.

I was taking photos for the campus newspaper part-time, which seemed like a whole lot more fun than programming classes. So, one afternoon I switched my major from computer science to journalism. Newspapers seemed a lot easier to do than programming, and the male-to-female ratio was a little bit better in that department. I never thought I would have to touch a lick of code again.

Fast forward a few years, then lo and behold journalism is all about multimedia and suddenly coding skills are in high demand. I guess those 10 months of intro to programming classes really paid off. But now I’m finding, maybe I should have stuck with the programming gig after all.

I had this very thought a few weeks ago when Apple announced the Software Development Kit (SDK) for the iPhone. As soon as heard the news, my first inclination was “I gotta do that.” It turns out, Apple software is based on a programming language called Objective-C. I took a peak and was utterly delighted to learn that ObjC is quite similar to another programming language called C++ that I had to make friends with once upon a time.

I actually went out and bought a book on ObjC and it has very quickly brought me back to common phrases I once cringed to hear, like polymorphism, inheritance, pointers and methods. (I can hear echos of liberal arts majors running away screaming)

OK, so all of that aside, here is the million dollar question: What should I program? So far, I’m successfully mastered the “Hello World” program (a program that displays those respective words). Apple has a ton of really great documentation and coding samples of how to do things like take advantage of location aware functionality, etc. They just released a program tool called Interface Builder, which is essentially a drag-and-drop program builder. It makes the coding part much easier for a novice such as myself. I’m ready to go, but where should I start?

Here are a couple of ideas I was throwing around:

• Location aware app that will tell you nearby services like shopping, theaters, gas stations, etc. Maybe I can connect it to http://www.everyblock.com/ ?
• A journalist toolbox, that will offer you Computer Assisted Reporting tools at your finger tips. Everything from where to get a person’s home tax records to how to file a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA). Maybe I can store it in the phone’s mysql lite database.
• RSS aggregation program that will give you headlines from a variety of sources (I’m sure this someone else already has done this. It’s pretty easy to do.

Any more ideas? What do people want out of their iPhones?

Over the last few months I’ve been listening to podcasts during my morning and evening commutes. I’ve never been much of a podcast listener, but now that I have a 45 minute commute via BART train, I’ve turned into an avid listener, even an obsessed fan. I can’t leave home without my earphones, and if I do, I feel like I’ve wasted a precious morning that could have been spent enlightening my life.

I used to listen to the radio when I had a driving commute at a previous job, but this time I get to choose exactly which casts I want to listen to and in which order.

Lately I’ve been listening to Slate, NPR and a few others. Just so many of the segments are incredible. I actually feel rejuvinated when hearing a great piece that opens my eyes to larger world we live in. Most of the time I’m left intrigued.

So why is podcasting still a small niche in the total number of audio listeners? Well, logistics plays a big part. You need an mp3 player and, software to aggregate the casts. But more importantly you need time. Time to listen. No one actively turns on a radio to listens to news. Its a passive form of news consumption. You listen to it while doing something else, like driving or doing the dishes.

This question came up recently during a Knight multimedia workshop we were teaching at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Someone described podcasts as “radio without listeners” and my heart sank. How could this precious piece of daily enlightenment simply not exist in the lives of so many people. I suspect once cars become further integrated with iPod, this form of news consumption will become more and more widely used.

If you still don’t believe me, I challenge you to listen to the following cast and not be fully intrigued. It’s a piece from NPR’s Driveway Moments about a man trying to come to terms with a lobotomy he had when he was 12. I know, the topic sounds a bit weird, but this bit of audio is one of the most incredible pieces I’ve heard. The quick cross edits, the haunting voices, everything about it is so riveting I forget I’m listening to a news story. It’s 20 minutes long. You might not have the patience to listen to the whole thing sitting here on this blog (the reason why radio doesn’t work online), so remember you can always download the podcast.

Howard Dully\’s My Lobotomy piece from NPR\’s Driveway Moment

Apparently a new feature from diet.com is making the rounds and becoming quite popular. The latest is that you can text message the name of a popular restaurant followed by a menu item to “D-I-E-T-1″ or 34381, and it will return all of the nutritional facts of that item. News of this feature has gone viral and has already appeared on several news reports, numerous talk shows and radio stations. I first heard about it on the radio, and now I’m seeing it on digg and other Web sites.

I have to admit, the service works pretty well. It’s free except for the cost of the text message your carrier charges (most carriers give an allowance of text messages). In a test I text messaged “carl’s jr. six dollar” and got back information that their Six Dollar Guacamole Bacon Burger was 1117 calories. That’s not counting the fries or the large soda. Pretty soon I was texting the name of everything I’ve eaten in the last couple of weeks. (I didn’t have the six dollar burger in case you were wondering)

This type of feature isn’t anything new. Lots of organizations are using texting services to get or return information, including Google’s new 411 service. Just text your search query to “G-O-O-G-L-E” or 466453, and it’ll return local info. (Ex. “sushi 94720″ will return sushi restaurants near UC Berkeley).

Local KITS Live 105.3 San Francisco uses text messaging to get responses from listeners to polls or song requests. The DJ will ask a question like “Text in your favorite place to vacation” and within seconds the messages come pouring in. It’s crowd-sourcing at it’s most immediate form.

It seems the only people who aren’t using a text messaging service are news Web sites. At least, I haven’t seen any. A few will provide “SMS alerts” but even then, I’m not sure I want give the power to a company to send me text messages all day about a range of topics I can’t control, dwindling down my monthly 250 text message allowance. I’d rather have the query-answer method any day.

Why is it that the San Francisco Chronicle or the New York Times can’t be the one to provide me with directions to restaurants or the latest movies playing via my cell phone? Google wins again.