Multimedia and more

Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of This American Life. It’s a radio show that comes on public radio’s WBEZ Chicago. I don’t live in Chicago, or anywhere else where it broadcasts, so I listen to the podcast on my daily commute. You can listen to their podcast either from iTunes or via their Web site here: http://thislife.org (It’s so much better if you can get it on an iPod or mp3 player of some sort. No one listens to radio from a Web site)

The reason why I bring up this show, is because they have an incredibly gifted way of telling stories. They have perfected the narrative of a story unlike anything else I’ve seen. Each of their stories enraptures the mind and single-handedly turns my commute to one of experiencing a riveting feature film.

Just take this one story called Life After Death about people dealing with a death they inadvertently caused. Or for something a little less tragic, try The Break-Up. A story about what it’s like to go through the one event that most people have gone through at one time or another. The second story in that show is even more incredible. Listen to either of these, or some of the other more compelling shows on their site, and any person can see the power of storytelling.

I guess what I’ve learned from This American Life is that the narrative is not dead. We’ve just forgotten about it. With the glitz and glamor of multimedia, we often lose sight of the part that matters most; the content. And this is coming from a Flash Instructor who advocates the need for stronger design and user-interface principles in most news packages. Sure, those things are important too, but we need to think more about the narrative arc, and weaving a person through a linear story.

Now, I know what most people think when I say this — ‘we DO think about the story, it’s ALL we think about.’ But I think we become so infatuated with what the story is, we lose sight of how we tell that story.

Okay, maybe that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but to give an example, some of the best qualities of stories involve words like like “texture” that part of the story that allows me to feel through senses other than my eyes. Or how about “surprise;” giving me a sense of suspense or tension and surprising me with something I could never have expected. Or how about “dimension” or “perspective;” there is nothing better than a story that completely turns my naive perceptions and assumptions completely upside down and opens my eyes to a larger world.

These are the qualities that screen writers or novelists take a person through. Why shouldn’t they apply more to journalism? In fact, we have a distinct advantage because our stories are real. And even more so, we’re dealing with a brand new medium. One that is incredibly flexible and capable to do things storytellers  could never do before. Novelists can’t get immediate feedback from their readers, and screenwriters can’t give their viewers choices about how they want to navigate a feature film. Multimedia, I believe, can tell stories unlike anyone has ever experienced. Check out The Oregonian’s Living to the End and tell me that story could have the same effect as only a print piece, a TV piece or even a radio piece. It’s everything that makes it so riveting. Seeing the comments, the photos, the stories… the whole package. And that’s just one example

The possibilities are endless.

So news in the consumer electronics world went crazy yesterday after the announcement of a new smartphone that runs Android, Google’s new mobile operating system. Google wrote the software, and a company called HTC actually built the device. It’s being sold initially only for the T-Mobile network. The device, called the T-Mobile G1, will sell for $179 with a two-year contract.

So, how does this affect the journalism industry? Well I’m guessing that this phone specifically probably won’t have much impact. But more generally speaking, it’s extremely revealing news because it shows the penchant for companies to make smarter cell phones that can do more.

I figure at this point Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and all of other major players in the traditional cell phone market are scrambling to come up with versions of their own smartphones. Many already have them, but will come out with newer iterations that meet expectations. I figure in two years, every company will have a host of cell phone models that have keyboards and Internet capability.

This market of Internet-connected cellphones is such a huge opportunity for the journalism industry, it almost makes me cry. Think about it; name one object that most people in the US keep with them virtually 24 hours a day? Most folks I know use their cellphones as alarm clocks at night. They take it with them to work, to school, to the movies, on vacation – everywhere. And if it is not directly in their possession, it’s usually not more than 10 feet away.

And not only do they have it with them at all times, but cell phones have a much greater psychological characteristic: it’s deeply personal. It is a means of communication with friends and family, it holds people’s conversations via text messages, accesses private voice mails, and is a keeper of personal photographs.

All journalistic mediums have struggled with a basic fundamental challenge of delivering the news to the customer. Whether it’s through delivery of a newspaper, catching a family during prime time, or finding a moment on their daily commutes via radio. The cellphone is another emerging platform.

The problem is, the offerings for news on cellphones is pretty thin. Right now, you can get all of the major players — CNN, NYTimes, CBS, and ABC — pretty easily via mobile sites. But it’s the local content that nearly invisible. If I see a plume of smoke, how can I easily find out if that is a control burn or perhaps some greater event in my town? How can I learn about my local city government — likely the level of governance that will affect me more than all of the other levels.

People praised innovation on the Web like Chicagocrime.org or Everyblock.com for its attention to hyperlocal. Now we need to bring that to cellular technology. Mobile versions of sites has to be a standard with all news sites, and reporters should learn some of the more modern techniques to connecting with readers through services like Twitter, live blogging and social networks.

Also, not quite as obvious, the news industry needs to seriously start thinking about hiring software developers to create programs for these platforms. Software that will not only communicate the news, but help facilitate community and local networks.

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?