A multimedia beef

Dear Coach,

I graduated from college last year. I’ve found that most news jobs now require multimedia experience, or at least know-how. I never took a multimedia course in college. I feel cheated. Are we now expected to shell out hundreds of dollars for courses on basic skills we should have been trained for in J-school? – Multi-miffed

Dear Multi:

The landscape is shifting as we write.

This year, more colleges are offering more multimedia courses than last. Last year had more than the year before, and so on back to the digital Stone Age of five or so years ago, when only a handful of the largest and the most forward and technologically equipped programs were thinking future.

Don’t waste your energy on being miffed. Keep up the job search. And as you search, educate yourself through a few free multimedia training resources, below.

Don’t exaggerate your skills. But do learn enough to be able to talk in a smart way about the new world we all inhabit, and to offer up good content ideas.

Remember: good journalism is good journalism; accurate reporting is accurate reporting; strong storytelling is strong storytelling, and fundamental news values are … you get the idea. No amount of technological know-how will replace these. The more you understand and practice these core skills and values, the richer your multimedia contribution will be, whenever and wherever that might be.

A few places to get you going:

UC Berkeley’s guide to multimedia storytelling: http://journalism.berkeley.edu/multimedia/course/choose

News University’s Multimedia Reporting: Covering Breaking News. http://www.newsu.org/courses/course_detail.aspx?id=ona_katrina06

Online Journalism Review (for general background information): http://www.ojr.org/archive.cfm?topic=website%20design

Miami Herald reporter Chuck Fadely’s blog on visual journalism: http://newspaper-video.blogspot.com/2007/01/video-survival-guide-by-chuck-fadely.html

Knight Citizen Media Network: http://www.kcnn.org/

News videographer: http://newsvideographer.com/

Teaching online journalism: http://tojou.blogspot.com/

University of Florida: http://plaza.ufl.edu/mmcadams/audio.htm

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