break and next assignment

Class- the next project story pitch will be due on at 9:30 on Tuesday, January 5th. Please have it printed by the time class begins as we have a guest that morning and I will look at your proposals during that period. You will be able to start working on your piece on Wednesday, Jan 6. YOU HAVE PLENTY OF TIME. Script approval is not until Wednesday, January 13 at noon.

We will screen you final semester packages on Friday, January 15 at noon.

The pieces should be around 2:30 and SHOULD INCLUDE A STAND-UP. As with the last project, you can do any type of story you like. As usual, please write an anchor lead-in. Make sure this piece is complete when we view it. Nothing from this semester can roll over to next semester.

On a nicer tone....I want to wish all of you and your families a Happy Holiday and safe and Happy New Year. Best to all-
Marian

Friday screening

We will screen projects at 9:30am SHARP in Lina. We'll be starting promptly. See you then.

groups for next shoot

Tomorrow morning, we'll split into groups for shooting.

next week

A reminder that class starts Monday morning at 9:45am. Also, Wednesday morning, a pitch is due for your next project (to be shot Friday, over the weekend and Monday). The piece can be any type of piece you want...hard news, feature, In Your Own Words. Please include a stand-up (unless it's an In Your own Words) and the running time of the piece will be 2:30.

You'll have plenty of time to shoot, write and edit. This will be your final project before break, but not your final project this semester (there will be one more after we return from break).

On Monday, I will go through the schedule for the remainder of this week.

Enjoy your Sunday.

a few items

OK, let's try again...my computer took on a life of its own, sorry for the other emails.

Please note Akaash's entry from yesterday in the student blog; some good info on Brian.

Tomorrow, I'll expect you at the visitor center at NOON. As some of you may have noticed, I am losing patience with tardiness. PLEASE be on time.

We have lost use of Kubrick for most of the remainder of December. The school will move the printer next to the xerox machine, so you can still print scripts. We will be back in Kubrick for the second semester.

Next Wednesday afternoon, Dec 9...please bring some of your projects to class. We are going to show them to the production workshop teachers. it is mandatory each of you brings at LEAST one project. Feel free to bring more.

Story ideas for the last project before the holiday break are due WEDNESDAY morning (already printed), December 9. We will be at 30 Rock that morning, so please bring them with you. this is for a longer piece...2:30-3:00 INCLUDING a stand-up.

Next Monday, class will be at school in the morning. From there, I will go through the schedule for the week.

See you tomorrow at noon. After Brian speaks we will head to school to screen the projects.

a few items

a few items

Thursday and Friday

Confirming the schedule for tomorrow and Friday. Please be at school with your printed script between 11a-1:30pm for script approval. For those who have asked me to help track, you have to let me know when you have tracking time, please (preferably shortly after noon).

You have time to edit in the morning until you need to be at 30 rock at NOON on Friday. We will hear from Brian Williams for approximately an hour and will return to school to view your pieces from 2:30-5pm. If we need to go past 5pm to see all of the pieces, we will do so.

Tuesday and the holiday/next project

Please be at 30 Rock CHECKED IN and ready for pick-up by 9:45 tomorrow. please also bring a DVD copy of some of your work. We'll get though as much as we can. I'm particularly interested in your tracking and on camera appearance. After the morning session, we will arrange groups for the next project.

We will have a two hour break from noon-2pm. Plenty of time for Holiday shopping and lunch at The Plaza.

Some of you are signing equipment out early, which is fine. Just remember you need a sheet from the equipment room that I need to sign.

Bob Dotson, a veteran correspondent and tremendous storyteller, is now involved in some other projects. please check out this link which is a worthwhile Q & A with some starting journalism students. http://hsbj.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=387

Also, please read Chapter 7 (Writing for the Web) of Advancing the Story. While you have the books out...please read Chapters 7 and 8 of When Words Collide.

Committee to Protect journalism books

I received the shipment from Cheryl's office with the additional books. When you are at 30 rock Thursday, I'll give them to whomever did not receive one last week.

Reminder tomorrow morning, Wednesday, I'll see you at 10am.

This week...TAKE 2

Tomorrow, be at school at 9:30am, please. Rob Kaplan, an NBC Nightly News editor will discuss some techniques with you. We will take a short break at 11:30am and regroup on the third floor at noon to meet Nicole for editing in the projection room.

Wednesday, we will start at 10am...we will have two guests, one in the morning, one in the afternoon and we will finish by about 4pm.

On Thursday, please bring the script from your most recent package to Paul Warner's class at 9:30am.

ALSO--please remember your story pitch is due Friday morning at 9:30am. I'd like a printed copy with some research already done so we know the piece has the elements you hope for.

This week

a couple of things

Please be at 30 Rock Thursday (tomorrow) ALL CHECKED IN by 10:15. I will meet you at the Visitor Center at that time. And please be in the school lobby at 10:15 on Friday (for our field trip to Long Island City).

Please read the following article by Brian Stelter in Today's NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/business/media/11adco.html?_r=1
We will hear from someone next week who can discuss the business side of the Internet.

Next Tuesday, you will have a a Final Cut Pro class with Nicole at 1pm...we WILL be in the edit lab. I am also working on an NBC editor coming to class Tuesday morning to discuss technique.

The last thing is please start thinking about your next project...it will be a hard news piece running 2:00. A stand-up is optional, though I do prefer you do one. The pitch will be due first thing Friday morning, November 20 (next Friday). I would like a printed copy at that time. You will shoot AFTER Thanksgiving...there will be no assignment over the Thanksgiving break.

Information for next week

We will spend the afternoon at 30 Rock on Tuesday with members of Nightly News. Half the class will stay and watch the evening newscast from the control room, the other half will visit Wednesday and will watch that night. We will break into teams on Monday morning.

Thursday, class will also be at 30 Rock. In the morning, we will speak with Senior Vice President Cheryl Gould about the Committee to Protect Journalism (CPJ). Please read the enclosed articles by Cheryl to help in understanding what the CPJ does. Also, please bring resumes to the afternoon session with Tracey Leaf from Human Resources.

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/16/1202158.aspx
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/30/1234379.aspx

We'll discuss the remainder of next week's schedule on Monday morning. You will not be shooting any pieces next week.

Journalists' Rights

Please read these two articles on the rights of journalists.

Freedom of the Press

Deal in Senate on Protecting Sources

8 week graduation

If there are any students originally in the 8 week program who would like to stay for the first semester or the year, please let me (and the school) know. Conversely, if anybody signed up for the one year, but has decided to leave after 8 weeks, please let me know. The school indicated to me there might be one or two of you.

I also suggest any 8 week students take advantage of the one on one consultation cards for camera, audio and final cut. If you can't fit it in this week, try to get them in as soon as possible.

A number of you have already contacted me with questions/issues regarding your projects. Remember, if you do have questions, please ask!

Tuesday morning/camera-lighting class location

Nick will be holding lighting class tomorrow at 9;30 in the screening room on the 4th floor.

more information

With apologies, Chris Tine has to go out of town Wednesday and I have to be out of town Thursday so another change in next week's schedule. You can use Wednesday until 3pm to edit (from 9a-3p) and we will then screen and critique from 3p-6p. Shooting will be Thursday, Friday, over the weekend and Monday morning. that should give you PLENTY of time.

Please let me know if there are any problems with your current shoots.

Duties and responsibilities

Any students who were out sick yesterday, please ask me for the Duties and Responsibilities sheet that I went though yesterday.

Also, in order to allow more time for script approval on Monday, I have rescheduled the Audio #4 class for November 9th.

Brian Williams is rescheduled for Friday, December 4. at 12:30p I apologize to the 8 weekers, but anybody who is in NY is welcome to join us.

information

Here are directions from Nicole as to how to transfer from a P2 card to your laptop.

You have to use a FW to DV cable to connect to the computer. After connecting the device, turn camera's power on.
On the Setting Menu under the Other Functions screen, select PC Mode: 1394 Host.
Press Menu button twice to get out of the menu screen.
Press Mode button to light up the MCR light, then hold down on the button for 2 seconds so PC is selected.
The camera should then show up as an external hard drive on the computer. From there, it's the same steps as in the lab. Create a P2 card folder in the project folder on your hard drive. In said P2 folder, create a new numbered folder for each card. Drag & drop all the files from the P2 cards in the camera to their respective folders on your hard drive.
A lot easier than it sounds. :)

A reminder that you will be using the HPX from now on rather than the HVX. I'm told it's a better camera and the menus/settings are the same.

Tomorrow, we will split into groups for shooting your pieces. Remember, they run 1:30-1:45 with a stand-up optional. You will be able to check-out by 1pm Wednesday, you need to be at 30 Rock at 9:15am Thursday (visitor center) and you will be done at 30 Rock by noon.
Also, don't forget to write an anchor lead-in page when you write your script.

Friday, you are shooting all day and equipment is due back at the end of the day Friday.

Over the weekend, you will be screening and writing. Monday morning, class starts at 11am with Natalie. Please bring your vosots (again). Natalie will finish at 12:30 and we will then go directly to script approval. I am trying to push the audio class back a little bit, so it is possible class finishes at 6:15p Monday. If you want to track Monday, book time after 6:15 pm.

Tuesday morning, you have camera class and I have already asked for Nick to cover lighting. By noon, you can start editing. Please remember to book time for that afternoon.

Next Wednesday morning, BEFORE class, your story pitches will be due for your next project. The piece should run 2:30 and I would like it to have a hard news angle. Wednesday morning, Chris Tine will be with you and then you will have the afternoon to finish editing. We will screen and review the pieces on Thursday morning (that's a change, the original schedule says Wednesday). SHOOTING for the 2:30 project will be Thursday afternoon, all day Friday, all weekend and Monday morning. We'll get into the remainder of the schedule next week.

See you in the morning. There are a couple of you who owe me story pitches...PLEASE GET THEM TO ME.

Beyond Google

Suppose you’re asked to find what intelligence the CIA’s interrogation of “High Value Targets” had produced. Where do you begin? Isn’t that highly classified and thus off-limits? Is there an easy way to find the most basic material?

How about tracking a tip that Congressman Mark Foley returned thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to unhappy donors after he was caught sending inappropriate emails to congressional pages? Is there a place where that can actually be found?

Or what about a way to track, in real time, a rumor that North Korea had detonated another nuclear weapon. Come on. Is there really a website where that is readily available…for the public?

The answer to all three questions is Yes. All of those answers can be found...and reasonably quickly. All of them are available online. And all are the result of your tax dollars at work…and thus are free.

In the first case, the results of HVT interrogation, no website is going to give you the interrogation transcripts, particularly not the CIA’s. But a good place to start your research is the 9-11 Commission Report. It’s online in PDF form. You can find all references to “interrogation” in that 500+ page report with a mouse click on the “find” button…all 373 of them. And if you go to the commission monograph on terrorist travel, you can find another 59. Most are detailed, with the name of the individual interrogated and when he was questioned. (You can also access details on each paragraph where interrogations are mentioned by using a “clustered” search engine, Vivisimo.com.)

The Federal Election Commission requires all campaign contributions to be recorded and detailed. But what a lot of people don’t know is that FEC requires candidates like Foley to list all their campaign expenditures, including returned contributions, as well.

As for the North Korea nuclear tests, it’s a little bit more complicated. Go to the National Earthquake Information Center and find the link to worldwide earthquakes with a magnitude of 2.5 or above. It automatically updates in real time. Knowing from previous research that the first nuclear test in the North had a magnitude of 3.4, anything in that range--and near the site of the first test--has to be considered suspicious.

Journalism and research in general is often a matrix of personal observation, interviews, information retrieval and analysis. Being good at one aspect of the matrix often helps you master another. Being good at retrieving information will help all the other aspects. Moreover, the oldest dictum in writing is that you write best about what you know best. The more detail you have, the more it will help your narrative.

Google may be the greatest reporting tool since the invention of the Xerox machine, but it is not the be-all and end-all for research. In fact, it can be a crutch, an easy piece of software to lean on. But remember, without exercise, legwork never improves. Bottom line: if you want a question answered, go to Google. If you want to research something, think bigger. (Google understands the needs of journalists and put together this site for NBC journalists recently.)

This document is not meant to be all-inclusive, but rather a starting point for discussions of what’s out there…and how to find it.

What should be your first question when trying to know the unknowable?

When thinking about retrieving public information, think about who would have it out and where they would put it. More importantly, think about why they put it out? Is it the result of government regulation, or is it the product of a proud government bureaucracy? More often than not, information is public to fulfill one of those purposes. Regulation usually follows a scandal. Political contributions—and expenditures—are regulated because of the excesses of Watergate. Publicly traded corporations are regulated because of various scandals, from the Great Depression to the Internet Bubble. Labor union finances are public because various congressional investigations have shown organized crime influence in the labor movement.

Bureaucracies understand they exist at the whim of the elected officials, so they want as many people as possible to know what they do and how important it is. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency provides great public service on its hurricane and other weather websites. But is also knows that its funding can be cut. By putting its best foot forward on the web, it builds constituencies for its services. Same goes for the Energy Information Agency, without which commodities trading would come to a halt, and yes, even the Central Intelligence Agency, which increasingly believes openness helps the public understand what it does.

So what gets produced…and what is retrievable?

If a private organization—a corporation, a not-for-profit, a union—is regulated, that regulation produces paper and in most cases that paper is now digital as well.

Regulation can be heavy, with full financial disclosure required. A non-profit like United Way of Los Angeles must publicly disclose its annual tax return public with contributions, expenditures, top salaries, fees paid consultants, etc. Labor union officials who do business with corporations whose members they represent must file conflict of interest statements. A corporation like GE facing an enforcement action for pollution must at least list the allegations as part of its quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Aircraft tail numbers reveal aircraft ownership at the Federal Aviation Administration.

If a public organization can be described as a bureaucracy, that bureaucracy produces paper…or in today’s digital world, Word files or PDF files or Power points or RSS feeds.

NOAA has separate web pages for hurricanes and tsunamis, for severe weather warnings and inland flooding, for volcanoes and volcanic ash forecasts, etc., etc. One of the more interesting sites is the National Data Buoy Center, which captures data from buoys on the world’s oceans. You can learn how rough seas might be affecting a Coast Guard rescue by checking wave heights and frequencies on the NDBC site. Other countries’ disaster agencies do the same…and often in English. The Japanese Meteorological Agency tracks tsunamis. The Russian Weather Service does what its name suggests.

NASA has a wonderful site, where you can track images from its MODIS weather satellite. You can search for images by geographic location. You won’t able to find the level of detail you would with Google Earth, but MODIS images are quite current, running about three hours behind real-time. You can track air pollution in China as well as fires in southern California or in Iraqi oilfields. The latter capability came in handy during the early days of the Iraq War when reporters were trying to determine if Saddam had set the Kirkuk oilfields alight. He hadn’t. You can also find 3-D perspectives of natural features, like this one of the San Andreas Fault and animations drawn from passes over parts of the earth undergoing “significant events”, like an eruption of a Mexican volcano or a mega-cool comparison of the largest volcanoes on Earth and Mars.

EPA has a page where you can find any hazardous material in your hometown or neighborhood, searchable by zip code. Enforcement actions are easily retrievable as well. And even the FAA has a barebones website to monitor arrival and departure delays.

And to insure that the public knows the extent—if not the details--of domestic wiretapping, the Justice Department has to file annual wiretap reports, listing by US court the number and type of taps, the crime being investigated and the number of people and intercepts produced.

The data isn’t always raw either. Bureaucracies that gather and cull their own data will often analyze and freely distribute it as well. How valuable is the latest research on bird flu mutations? Health and Human Services updates its site daily with the latest reports from around the world. How is the economy doing region by region? The Federal Reserve periodically issues detailed “Beige Books” on line. How about the status of clinical trials for new drugs? It’s there for patients as well as reporters. What’s the CIA’s assessment of the threat posed to African governance by HIV/AIDS? Will it lead to more women leaders in African governments? How about a CIA analysis of worldwide trafficking in women? And how about the latest health threats around the world? There’s the Center for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report website.

Even the White House can be valuable in spite of its political biases. Every press briefing, every public statement or policy paper on Iraq, every Radio Address can be found at the White House site. In spite of its penchant for secrecy, all public testimony by the CIA’s directors and deputy directors going back 10 years as well as all key documents released under the Freedom of Information Act can also be found at cia.gov

Don’t restrict yourself to the executive branch, either.

The legislative branch is another wealth of information because it is congress or the state legislature that first wrote the laws and set up committees to continually monitor them.

Oversight subcommittees, particularly the House Government Reform Committee, do investigations into industries, into how the laws are enforced. Appropriations committees look into each individual line item in the budget. And they sometimes will publish their audits. House.gov and Senate.gov are places to start. Increasingly, it is easier to find out the people’s business.

Buried in those reports are nuggets of great value…and again, the key is finding out which congressional committee monitors which agency, which regulation.

Congress is online…not as much as the executive branch but certainly better than it was only a few years ago. You can also track legislation through THOMAS, the congressional website that tells you where a bill is and what has been added or subtracted. You can usually find all the key committee reports on the committee’s website.

And remember the Government Accountability Office is part of Congress. Its reports and testimony are searchable going back more than a decade.

States have never been as forthcoming as the federal government, with few exceptions. One is the recently unveiled Project Sunlight in New York, which has a number of searchable databases, for campaign contributions, lobbying, tracking the progress of legislation.

How do you get information quickly as well as accurately?

Not everything is as easily found. A lot of what is out there needs to be collated, to be analyzed, to be translated to English from the lawyerly or bureaucratic or even a foreign language...the US government is not the only one to put such material online.

The fastest way nowadays to get that information is to find someone, a watchdog organization or individual who monitors the subject area you are interested in. It’s hard to find an issue that some watchdog group or even an individual isn’t monitoring, culling public records, setting up databases that almost always more user-friendly than the government’s.

Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen was the pioneer in this, long before the internet era. Public Citizen prides itself on culling and analyzing data from government and other sources, then publishing it in readable form. The research of course supports the goals of the group and that always has to be taken into account. But for many organizations, disclosure is the main goal.

Here are some other examples:

Guidestar monitors tax-exempt organizations and has a very simple search engine to help you find an organization and its annual tax returns, called Form 990’s. Which former president’s library is pulling in $50 million a year in donations? Which professional athlete is really giving back to his community? It’s all there.

One of the best sites anywhere, the Center for Responsive Politics’ “Open Secrets” site, monitors campaign contributions to federal campaigns. And for state campaigns, where big contributions are often hidden, there’s the Institute for Money in State Politics. And some of those same watchdogs are on the case in the internal workings of the legislative branch as well. “Open Secrets” tracks lobbyists, for example.

Wondering how much money a particular company gets from federal government contracts. OMB Watch has a great site permitting simple searches of federal spending…by fiscal year.

Then, there’s Cryptome, which keeps track of national security documents, both publicly released and purloined. It also has a great library of aerial photographs of secret sites around Washington, called the “Eyeball” series. The site is so good the FBI launched an investigation of its sources, only to learn it was all public. Want to see what the interior of Vice President Cheney’s new residence in St. Michael’s, MD. looks like?

The Federation of American Scientists has a vast library of national security documents as well as analysis. One of their best pages is the Secrecy Project, which like Cryptome keeps an archive of material. It is particularly good at archiving the Congressional Research Service reports, which the Library of Congress produces for congressmen and women, Senators and committees, but which are not made available to the public. The Library by the way also produces some excellent unclassified reports for the US intelligence community through its Foreign Research Division.

Global Security does the same, focusing on proliferation of WMD. For historical material, there is the National Security Archive which organizes material it has culled into “briefing books” on subject matter from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the Iraq War plan. And one of the smartest new sites is the once-staid Council on Foreign Relations, which does excellent multimedia “Crisis Guides” on subjects like tensions on the Korean Peninsula to Darfur.

Zillow culls real estate records to show current home prices, by zip code. The information is retrieved from county land and tax records, then overlaid on a Google Map. It can be handy personally, but for a reporter covering a municipal beat, it can help determine, for example, what effect a nearby environmental disaster has had on home prices or give you a sense of the market in general. Zillow has been called “real estate porn”. It’s an apt description. (Zillow is a Google Mash-up, overlaying a Google Map with specific data, whether of New York City building permits or Bakersfield potholes.
A good blog on the phenomenon is Google Maps Mania.)

There is a very good free people search machine, ZabaSearch, which culls various real estate data and other material to present basic information. It doesn’t provide the level of detail Factiva or Accurint does, but it’s quick and it’s free.

Trying to track someone down on one of the social networking sites, but don’t know which one. Try Yo Name

And if you’re looking for the latest avalanche information from around the world? The American Avalanche Association keeps various databases up to date. How about pirates? Yes, there are still pirates and yes, there is a website that tracks them. The International Chamber of Commerce has a Weekly Piracy Report, which summarizes incidents of piracy around the world. (The New York Police Department uses the site to monitor ships entering New York Harbor.) There’s also a live piracy map online as well.

Beyond bad men on the bounding main, there’s the common ordinary ship traffic. And just like the air traffic control trackers, there is at least one very good ship tracker, SailWX. It offers real time tracking as well as data on the ships…and it’s one of those sites that’s worth spending some time looking around. There is a lot of data available.

And how about this? A Google Earth application that show you real time locations of aircraft approaching major airports…fboweb’s 3-D flight tracking.

What about the courts?

The courts remain the last vestige of shoe leather reporting. You often must go to the clerk’s office to sift through the records, but in no other place have I found as much as I have found in the courts.

One recent example: a computer programmer from Queens recently pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism. In his guilty plea hearing was, in his own words, a discussion of how he had provided money and equipment to a “high ranking leader of al Qaeda” while traveling in Pakistan. The document was unsealed…BY MISTAKE. The day after we got it and broadcast its contents, it was resealed.

Some court records are online…in places where you would least suspect. The complete 8,100-page transcript of the 2001 East Africa Embassy bombing trial is online at Cryptome. It cost the website, run by a New York architect, a dollar a page to get in electronic form, but he got it.

And bloggers and watchdogs do a nice job keeping up with the Supreme Court and US Appellate Court news, as does FindLaw, a one-stop shopping center for legal issues, organized well.

Is there the ONE SITE that will take you everywhere you need to go?

No, and that’s a good thing. It’s much more valuable for a reporter to spend hours going through websites, looking for valuable nooks and crannies, comparing notes with other reporters to get the critical information available.

But one good site where reporters have shared some secrets is: Power Reporting
Resources for Journalists, which is run by msnbc.com’s Bill Dedman, a pioneer in online reporting. Another is the database library at National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting and Investigative Reporters and Editors’ Beat Source Guide. Both are excellent.

Bottom line: this is just a summary of what you can find. It’s worth the time and the effort. Spent both!

Anonymous Sources

Please read this article on anonymous sources.

next week schedule...week of Oct 19

here is the new schedule:

MONDAY: Class starts at 11am with Natalie Morales (Today Show anchor)
Please bring a VOSOT to class. Natalie will not be able to look at every project, so I'll ask the one year students to indulge those short termers who would like to be critiqued. Natalie will come to school again a few weeks down the road. By then, she can look at your packages.
1p, Bob Windrem on sources
3p, review/critique of interview projects

TUESDAY: 9:30, Audio
1:30p, Elena Brodie, Archives
3:30p, Production Duties

WEDNESDAY: 9:30a, on camera production workshop
1p checkout/shoot package (1:30-1:45 with stand-up bridge or close)

THURSDAY: 9:15am AT 30 ROCK
Mike Taibbi/Mario Garcia, Writing
12:30p, Brian Williams
2p, shoot remainder of the day

FRIDAY shoot, check-in 5pm

Screen and write over weekend

Schedule this week

PLEASE start thinking about a story idea for your first package...you will shoot at the middle/end of next week. Story pitches (yes, the way we learned at the beginning of the semester) will be due Monday, Oct 19. It will be a traditional package with narration, sound bites, stand-up, etc. We will discuss more when I next see you.

Tomorrow, you have Final Cut Pro with Nicole 9:30a-12:30p. By 1pm, you can finish transferring your interviews, screen, write a script and put a few bites together for a practice "In Their Own Words." PLEASE DO NOT WORRY ABOUT JUMP CUTS or lack of B-roll. feel free to put in dissolves if you like. The exercise here is to learn to get good sound bites and to have THEM, NOT YOU, tell a complete story....and I bet some of you will realize you should have asked more questions or formed questions in different ways. For the practice project, please write an anchor lead-in, but you can read it in class, you do NOT have to track it.

Wednesday morning at 9:30, we will look at the practice projects. After that, I will split you into groups of three and you can shoot Wednesday afternoon/eve and Thursday until 5p. Please check in at 5pm, this is a good way to make sure you are on schedule to screen, write and have a script (1:30) ready for the 3-5:30pm script approval on Friday. please include an anchor lead-in that you will track and edit (with a black slug) to your interview project.

If there are any questions, please let me know. I will not go over this again in class.

Friday, October 16 script approval

Script approval will be from 3p-5:30p (instead of starting at 4p).

Tracking problems and "In Your Own Words"

I believe some of the the tracking problems will be alleviated next go round. The school has put a brand new computer in Chaplin, so it should not shut off on its own. Upcoming projects allow for a more scattered tracking schedule, so I don't think you'll get as backed up as in the past.

As for your "In Your own Words" practice and real projects: the practice, based on the interviews you do at school on Monday, should run :30-:40 seconds. The actual interview project should run 1:30. It does NOT need an o/c or a sign off; it only needs a suggested anchor lead-in.

Don't forget, the idea of the interview project is for the viewer to see/hear a complete story by putting the subject's soundbites together to tell one. You will need to shoot b-roll to cover jump cuts and help tell the story we are hearing. You do NOT need to worry about b-roll in your practice interview....there will be jump cuts, it's as simple as that.

Examples tomorrow before we screen the VOSOTS with stand-ups.

Start focusing on an interview subject!

Monday interviews and Tuesday edit time

Monday from 12:30-3:30p, we will continue with practice interviews. Again, you will interview one another...or your TA or production workshop teacher, if you want. THESE WILL BE USED TO EDIT A PRACTICE INTERVIEW.

On Tuesday, we will screen, write and edit them. When I say "write," I mean you will use soundbites from your interview subjects and string them together to create a story in that person's words. You will not write any narration or track anything yourself.

PLEASE sign up in the edit lab for Tuesday POST 1pm, to screen and, eventually edit.

Friday

Please plan to check out at 9a and shoot your stand-ups from 9:30-12:30 (at the latest). If you have time to go to the location of your vosot topic, great...if not, shoot anywhere. If you want to use the vosot for your reel, you can re-shoot the stand-up whenever you have time.

Please be back, totally checked in by 12:30 and head to the edit lab. If you have NOT already signed up for time, please do so today. There should be room as Nicole has assured me they will have space for all of you.

We will REVIEW your vosots WITH stand-ups starting at 3PM SHARP. After screening, we will bid adieu to the four weekers leaving us.

Resumes

Jessica Grothues will address class late Monday afternoon (at 30 Rock). She will help describe the best way to present demo reels and resumes (CVs). If you like, bring your resume with you and Jess will take a look.

Monday morning, a slight change in schedule. You will have class with me from 9:30-10:30am and the Lester Holt will join us. For those of you not familiar with Lester's work, please make an effort to watch Nightly news either Saturday or Sunday and/or TODAY Show either day. Lester anchors all of those broadcasts.

See you tomorrow. Don't forget, you will be on camera and we will take a look at the video, so you should put on a nice (or sorta nice?) top.

Thanks.

schedule changes/clarifications....

First of all, don't forget class doesn't start until 10am tomorrow (Tuesday). We will review/critique your VOSOTs from 10a-1p. We will break from 1-2p and we will have class from 2p-4:30pm.

The 4 and 8 week students will then come with Alex and me to 30 Rock.

I am switching the Thursday morning New Media class with the the Wednesday afternoon production workshop. So, Wednesday afternoon, Chris Tine will be in class and all day Thursday we will have production workshop. The morning session will be shooting on camera stand-ups (outside, dress appropriately) and the afternoon will be our first taste of sit-down interviews.

A couple of deletions from the school's schedule...on Thursday, Oct 8, please ignore the "hand back o/c scripts" and the "stand-up script due." Also, on Friday, October 16, please delete the 2pm slot for "edit interviews." On that day, you will write and get script approval and THEN track and edit (just as we have been doing).

See you tomorrow.

From classmate Julia

Julia thought this story would be of interest to all. I am posting it in case you didn't receive it otherwise.
http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/?q=en/node/5299

Sunday tip

Please bring "Advanicing the Story" to class tomorrow. Thank you.

New reading assignment

Please read chapters 5 and 6 of When Words Collide and Chapter 2 of Advancing the Story(Reporting the Story) by Monday.

thanks-

VOSOT project and changes in schedule

Tomorrow, from 1:30-4:30, we will practice shooting MOS interviews. I want you to start feeling comfortable going up to people, identifying yourself as a journalist ( journalism student) and do quick interviews. I will give you some tips on techniques tomorrow before we head out.

For the VOSOT, here's what I am looking for....basically, a voice over with some sound on tape in the form of a short interview response or a soundbite from a press conference or official briefing. The story does not have heavy news value, but i would like it to have SOME news value. If you are not sure, please send me an email with your topic or ask me tomorrow.

This is the format/process....
1. Your script should run :40-:45 seconds NOT INCLUDING the stand-up close.
2. Track the entire script INCLUDING the stand-up close.
3. Edit a VOSOT (with slate that includes your name, the length, the title) that has TWO SECONDS of video pad prior to the FIRST word in the script where you want the video to start.
4. At the end of the VOSOT, go to BLACK for the STAND-UP CLOSE which you will ALREADY HAVE TRACKED. The STAND UP CLOSE will be part of your final DVD but WILL NOT be part of the :40-:45 seconds.
(thanks to Alex for helping me with that list)


Next Tuesday, October 6, the schedule is now:

10am-1p Review and critique VOSOTs (giving you your half hour back!)
2p-4:30p Creative Thinking

From school, I will go with the 4- and 8-week students to 30 Rock. Your day will end by 7:15p or so. The one year students will conclude your day at 4:30 and we will go to 30 Rock in a couple of weeks.

New Articles

Please read the attached articles.

How Did This Happen?

Coast Guard Drill, Misunderstood, Sets Off 9/11 Scare

New Schedule

Tomorrow, at 1p, we will meet in Kubrick to finish screening today's video. I will split you into groups of three and you will check-out about 2pm. Each student should shoot his or her own project. You can shoot the remainder of the day/night and until NOON on Thursday. ALL equipment should be checked in by NOON.When your entire group has finished shooting, you can start screening (or if you have down time, but don't leave the rest of your group if they need help). After screening and logging your material (taking notes as to what video/sound you have and where the shots and audio are), write a :30 (30 seconds) piece of copy that tells the story you will show us.That copy (v/o script) is due between 2pm and 4pm Thursday. Please go to Kubrick for script approval. After you have been given approval, you can track and then edit. NO scripts will be approved AFTER 4:45, so make sure to meet the deadline.We will look at your final project on TUESDAY. Please come to the afternoon class with your project on a DVD (the edit lab will help you with that).I hope that clarifies some things.
scheduled

New schedule

Tomorrow, at 1p, we will meet in Kubrick to finish screening today's video. I will split you into groups of three and you will check-out about 2pm. Each student should shoot his or her own project. You can shoot the remainder of the day/night and until NOON on Thursday. ALL equipment should be checked in by NOON.

When your entire group has finished shooting, you can start screening (or if you have down time, but don't leave the rest of your group if they need help). After screening and logging your material (taking notes as to what video/sound you have and where the shots and audio are), write a :30 (30 seconds) piece of copy that tells the story you will show us.

That copy (v/o script) is due between 2pm and 4pm Thursday. Please go to Kubrick for script approval. After you have been given approval, you can track and then edit. NO scripts will be approved AFTER 4:45, so make sure to meet the deadline.

We will look at your final project on TUESDAY. Please come to the afternoon class with your project on a DVD (the edit lab will help you with that).

I hope that clarifies some things.

New Schedule

Tomorrow, at 1p, we will meet in Kubrick to finish screening today's video. I will split you into groups of three and you will check-out about 2pm. Each student should shoot his or her own project. You can shoot the remainder of the day/night and until NOON on Thursday. ALL equipment should be checked in by NOON.When your entire group has finished shooting, you can start screening (or if you have down time, but don't leave the rest of your group if they need help). After screening and logging your material (taking notes as to what video/sound you have and where the shots and audio are), write a :30 (30 seconds) piece of copy that tells the story you will show us.That copy (v/o script) is due between 2pm and 4pm Thursday. Please go to Kubrick for script approval. After you have been given approval, you can track and then edit. NO scripts will be approved AFTER 4:45, so make sure to meet the deadline.We will look at your final project on TUESDAY. Please come to the afternoon class with your project on a DVD (the edit lab will help you with that).I hope that clarifies some things.
scheduled

a couple of things

Today, you asked a number of questions about the v/o project, one of which was regarding the length. I should clarify that the TOTAL time should be :30 seconds...that means the COPY should be :30, since we will see you (theoretically) at the top (start) and bottom (end), figure about :20 seconds of video. I will show you examples of voice overs tomorrow before you shoot.

Remember, your goal is to tell a short story...starting with an establishing/wide shot, then using a medium shot of some sort and a tight shot. As with every story, there should be a beginning, a middle and an end. Video is important, it helps us tell a story...and don't forget to screen what you shoot before you write.

There are a lot of news standards issues and I will have Geraldine (or her boss, David McCormick) come back in a few weeks to help clarify additional issues. In the meantime, please ask questions as they come to mind. I will refer questions to the lawyers or news practice group if needed.

Sorry for the late posting. See you tomorrow.

New student

Hi class--I met late this afternoon with our new student, Asa (pronounce oh-sa) from Scandinavia. She will see all of you tomorrow morning, so please welcome her.

Alex A. (the male version) asked me a good question this afternoon regarding the story pitches. Although the pitches MIGHT end up being a story you would like to do as a package, it does NOT have to be local. You may be as creative as you like. The purpose of the exercise is to get an idea what what work is needed in order to propose/pitch a story.

For those who celebrate the upcoming holiday, Happy New Year. To the rest, have a good weekend and see you all Monday morning.

Twitter Reading

Please read the attached articles for Monday's discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of Twitter as a news source:

Stark Images Uploaded To The World

Twitter on the Barricades: Six Lessons Learned

Real Time Criticism of CNN's Coverage of Iran

Media Seeks Ways Around Iran Clampdown

Some changes and reminders

Please read chapters 3 and 4 of When Words Collide, as well as Chapter 1 of Advancing the Story. Don't forget about the "Writing Broadcast Copy " chapter I handed out today. It's not vital you read all of this by tomorrow, but please had it read by Monday. Also, on Monday, bring in two PRINTED story pitches/proposals.

In addition, we will post some Twitter oriented stories in the blog tomorrow and discuss the Twitter phenom on Monday.

Friday's edit class will be from 9:30-12:30p (NOT 9am). Class will be held in the edit lab.

One more thing, I am reversing the order of things for Tuesday, Sept 22. The morning will be camera class and the afternoon will be your first production workshop.

See you tomorrow.

Tuesday posting

Hi, please remember to read Chapter 5 of Advancing the Story, "Writing the Story." Also, please bring When Words Collide with you to class tomorrow. I hope camera class was informative, see you in the morning.

The blog, the class, the future

Hello, all. Welcome to the class blog.

Don't forget to read the first two chapters of When Words Collide by tomorrow (Tuesday). In addition, please read the articles I handed out in class. And, of course, read the paper or the Internet or watch a news broadcast....that should quickly become a habit.

Welcome to the NBC NYFA Blog

First class: September 14th.