Toluu : Teaching Online Journalism

Teaching Online Journalism

Notes from the classroom and observations about today's practice of journalism online

Attention span for Web videoJanuary 5

Peter at Video 2 Zero wrote a provocative post, with data — Ideal length for web video — a couple of weeks ago. The gist is, fewer people stick with an online video to the end if the video is longer. Longer than what, you ask? Just longer. In general, people open a video, start watching, and then begin dropping off.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. It’s the same way you act when you open any Web page — you look or scan or read until you feel like you’ve had enough. Then you leave.

I don’t think this is any different from the way people read printed newspapers. You start, and eventually your attention wanes, and then you quit.

Now, before you start arguing — yes, sometimes I have searched for exactly that information (that video, that Web page, that story, etc.), and then I am likely to stick with it to the very end. So your fascinating video, or text story (about the cause of a plane crash, or the rescue of some avalanche survivors, or the future of our 401(k)’s) might be long, but I am already committed to it, and I am predisposed to watch (or read) the whole thing.

Most things that we encounter online do not meet that criterion. Most things we encounter online are not the exact thing we have been searching for.

So we sample. We take a little taste and move on to the next thing.

A 17-year-old re

Using WordPress.com with new DashboardJanuary 2

I’ve been using WordPress (both the free WordPress.com version and the self-hosted option from WordPress.org) since June 2007 — 18 months. In that time, I’ve taught probably a couple hundred people (students and working journalists) how to start and manage a blog on WordPress.com. (It doesn’t take long, but you know, many people just prefer to be shown how instead of going in alone.)

Now WordPress has radically redesigned the Dashboard, the control center for your free blog. This kind of redesign can be really disorienting for lots of folks. I, for example, had been resisting the transition to Microsoft Office 2007 until just last month — precisely because I found the new interface for menus and panels really confusing! The new WP Dashboard is not as radical as the MS Office redesign, but it took me a bit of time to get used to it nonetheless.

With WordPress.com, you don’t get to choose — it’s a free service, and everybody got the new Dashboard whether they wanted it or not.

So, for journalism educators or anyone else: Don’t be intimidated by the new Dashboard! Here’s how the new stuff works (with refs to the OLD stuff):

Go to WordPress.com and log in. (That is, if you already have an account. If you don’t, go there an

Preparing for your second jobJanuary 1

College students have always felt nervous about their job prospects as their graduation day draws near, but in a lousy economy, that nervousness grows even more. One thing stays the same, though, in good and bad economic times — your first job is exactly that. A first job.

I advise students to look at ads for jobs they would like to have and, rather than feeling depressed because they do not (yet) meet the requirements, plan ahead. If you see the kind of job you would like to have, then make sure your first job will serve as good preparation for that future job.

Case in point: I read this ad for a news and features editor at The Hollywood Reporter. Plenty of young journalists fantasize about writing entertainment news. Well, here are the requirements:

5+ years journalism experience
3+ years Web experience
3+ years in a 24/7 newsroom environment
Experience working with established media brands
Experience working with Internet publishing tools

Frankly, I’m not sure what they mean by “working with established media brands,” but the rest is pretty clear. If you had put in two to three years at a daily newspaper, slinging copy on the Web site, you would probably have a shot at this job. I think they’d slide on the “5+ years journalism experience” if you had, say, a couple of internship

Multimedia journalism from 2008December 31 2008

My friend Regina McCombs moved from the Star Tribune newsroom in Minneapolis to Poynter, in sunny St. Petersburg, Florida, earlier this year. (I think she finally quit complaining about the heat and humidity about two weeks ago!) This means she has started blogging for Poynter, and she’s put up a great roundup of online journalism packages from this year:

Multimedia Projects You May Have Missed in 2008

I’m in the middle of preparing syllabuses for the spring semester, and I’m sure I’ll be lifting some examples from Regina’s list!

Best journalist gear (audio & video)December 30 2008

In response to a comment on Monday’s post, I searched in my archives for some of my posts about audio recorders and video cameras:

See also the list in my “hardware store” at Amazon.com — I updated it a few weeks ago to make sure the latest stuff was in there. There’s a new Olympus recorder for $50, a slick new mini-Marantz for $300+, and the tiny MinoHD video camera from the people who gave us the Flip.

If you have any new recommendations, please pass them along!