I had this fancy new manifesto prepared to display here only a few short hours ago. But despite my best intention, today’s Critical Issues in Journalism lecture and its subsequent discussion ruined what surely would have resulted in a new dawn of journalism ethics. Instead, you’ll have to settle for another set of flawed (but hopefully somewhat more of a realistic application of) ethics in investigative reporting.

My basic rules to follow as a reporter:

1. The central premise remains unaltered for me: A journalist’s obligation is to the truth first and foremost. As Professor Duy says, “What is your intent?” If it’s obscures the truth, then prepare for consequences.
2. Yes, it’s cheesy and Google-esque, but a journalist should strive to leave this place a better world than when they first found it.
3. Reporters should begin their investigation using the strictest moral standards available i.e. don’t lie or conceal that you’re a reporter to hopefully glean information from a reluctant source. If you can do it, without lying, you should. Aim VERY high at first, as it’s a long and slippery slope afterwards.
4. A reporter should not be deterred from adopting more aggressive tactics, as long as the reporter’s intent is to report as accurately as possible what they believe is a verifiable truth. I say verifiable using a scientific connotation. A well-reported story, in my meager opinion, is one whose outcome can be reproduced under similar circumstances.
5. I find sympathy for my opinion from the Heisenberg Principle as it relates to journalism. If you reveal yourself to be a journalist to a source, then you have most likely altered what (and how) that source will reveal to you. My brittle yardstick to handle this dilemma is: If you believe that be revealing yourself to be a journalist you will greatly distort what the source will say to you than had you not, then it is permissible to not reveal that you are a journalist – you may engage in subterfuge. Why would the fact that I am a reporter alter your response to my question? Another way to put this is: You’re first goal is to report the truth. If revealing your identity as a journalist prevents you from reporting the truth, you may consider not revealing your motivations behind the reporting.
6. The free market will reward those who abuse investigative journalism in pursuit of an agenda other than that of reporting a verifiable truth. If your reporting sucks or violates rule number two, then we won’t trust you. Readers, advertisers and publishers should reward brands that follow these rules as best as possible.
7. The process of your work shouldn’t result in causing yourself or anyone else physical harm or death. (If however, your death or detriment is less than the good you’ll cause by reporting your work, then you may consider moving ahead. This one is up to you. But please keep in mind those others affected by your dangerous work and that your best stories may be ahead of you, not behind.
8. Don’t knowingly report work that would directly result in harming others i.e. X of guerrillas/troops will be here at Y time. I’m sort of old fashioned, when it comes to this one.
9. This one is just pure frustration and perhaps even laziness, it’s okay to use someone’s original work if you properly credit it.

What are your rules?

After nearly five hours of photographing and recording the NYC bocce finals in Staten Island, I spent another eight hours+ editing the material down to create this two and half minute long slideshow. It’s still too long, in my opinion. [Post edit: Class review of slideshow was positive, however, everyone, including myself, agreed that there was way too much use of the Ken Burns effect.]

The amount of time it took to plan and source the content vs. the amount of time to edit and design it was terribly disproportionate. The first lesson at Columbia was to “zoom with your feet” so to speak – to report closeup. The natural byproduct of that is a prodigious amount of content to edit through later. How to reconcile “zoom” with “speedy reporting?”

It seems obvious, but the trick to producing these digital stories quickly (probably any story), is knowing what you want to get in advance of getting it. I often lump too much time in the “zoom-first-edit-later” category. But the bottom line is: to be a professional new media journalist, you need to have a strong storyboard before going out to shoot. So storyboard.

The best tutorial I’ve found for storyboarding is at Knight Digital. It focuses on knowing what you want before going to get it. Quick tips to get started: Seek out a smaller anecdote in your story to tell the larger one. Try and find a beginning and responsibly predict an end to your story when you arrive. Find a character and chronicle their story. Just don’t point and shoot and hope for the best.

Once you get better at knowing how to look for the “story” in the article, the trick then becomes knowing what you can avoid or overlook. You speed up. You begin to produce not only quality work but you can also outproduce your competitor or deadline.

A short cut to embedding your SoundSlides slideshow in your blog
It should would make SoundSlides a whole lot more easier and probably, more popular if it could host the slideshows its users make. Without this hosting feature, it’s a pain in the ass to embed your slideshow in your blog or site. Knight Digital has a great tutorial on how to do this, but even still, this critical embed component is too hard to find.