Welcome from the “Evangelist”
April 2, 2008
I joined the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute in February as the Manager of Multimedia Education. I lobbied hard for the title of Multimedia Evangelist but found a blog poster who already was using that handle. I may win the title back because of my passion for journalism and multimedia. For now, I’ll have to go with Multimedia Guru.
As the MG, I’ll be teaching young journalists from diverse backgrounds how to record and edit audio, photojournalism, audio slideshow production and to shoot and edit video. The training is intense. Students who complete training at the John Seigenthaler Center in Nashville will be able to walk into any newsroom and produce multimedia content.
In future posts, this blog will give you tips for creating multimedia, storytelling, geek-speak (my own term for technical issues) and links to “must-see” multimedia.
To get you started viewing multimedia content, check out www.mediastorm.org. Brian Storm, creator of Media Storm, produces and hosts multimedia content from photojournalists throughout the world. Now playing on mediastorm.org is Marlboro Marine by Los Angeles Times photojournalist Luis Sinco.
Another place to watch groundbreaking newspaper video journalism is at WashingtonPost.com. Check out anything by Travis Fox, who travels extensively and produces visually stunning video. This link will take you to some of Fox’s video: Travis Fox
What a great job title!
You wrote, “As the MG, I’ll be teaching young journalists from diverse backgrounds how to record and edit audio, photojournalism, audio slideshow production and to shoot and edit video.” This is a great calling.
But I’d like to point out that age is the new diversity issue. The Institute calls for newsroom personnel to reflect the communities they serve. Not only are communities increasingly ethnically diverse, and continue to be at least 50% female, but they all have growing populations of older people.
According to the Metlife Foundation, 54% of people ages 44-70 want or have “encore careers.” The biggest barrier is fear of being behind in technology savvy.
How about considering older journalists with “older” skillsets, too?