This post started out rather ambitious. In fact, it was always intended to be several posts i.e. ” What I learned in:” RW1, NYC24, business and economics reporting, Ken Leher, etc. But I should have known better. I’m already in Vietnam, managing a new media startup by Ringier and it’s been impossible to find the patience and concentration to reflect on my time at Columbia. So I’ve condensed this post into a list of quick reminders, lessons-learned, matters-of-attention, etc. They are not in any order of importance, but rather there to help remind me of what I learned while at the J-School. Feel free to add your own or criticize mine. This list is not exhaustive.

Reporting and Writing 101 – RW1

• What is news? See earlier blog article. I learned more about this in NYC24 than in RW1.
• The first quote in your story should be your magic quote. It should get to the heart of your story. Another useful way to think of this is to imagine that this quote is something you could never write. Again, this was emphasized more in NYC24, than in my RW1.
• LIRQS  or lede, impact, react, quote, scene. Legend has it that Lawrence Van Gelder, a former reporter/editor at the New York Times developed this form of article writing. Up late at night at the Times office, Van Gelder scrutinized the papers’ best articles to see what they all had in common. The result, LIRQS – a loose formula for writing a news article. Columbia Professor Ari Goldman is incorrectly credited for LIRQS. Though it’s not his fault. Blame the Internet.
• Develop a beat list – a diverse source of contacts. Use it. Pre-reporting is more important than reporting, as you’ll more often have to go story-hunting than story-reporting.
• Don’t fall into the trap of exclusivity of new and print media. It’s not a zero-sum game. The two need to work together and serve each other.
• Don’t bury the lede/nut.
• You’re not “off the record” till I agree. Politicians are always on the record until you both agree otherwise. If it’s not “on the record,” it’s non-attributable background info.
• AP Style. Follow it. It’s a sign of professionalism and training. I’m sure I’ve butchered it in this blog post.
• Attribution. Don’t say “many” or “several,” be specific. Be very wary of using anonymous sources.
• Overall lesson, journalists tell stories. Practice and engage in story-telling.
• At times, employ the usage of a “cosmic graph.” This section or paragraph of your story describes how the story has a larger impact than the nut graph.
• For criminal reporting, start with the action in the story that has the most impact and circle back to it in a somewhat complicated chronological fashion. This writing pattern is known as an “e,” due to the shape your story would take if you began your article with the crime and then moved forwards slightly before circling back into time.
• Smile when you pitch story. Be passionate. Be excited. Articulate the news value and be sure to be able to rattle off a very clear and fascinating nut graph. Be able to be brief.

NYC|24 – Digital Media (when I was there, they called it “new media”)

• Take your time setting up your shots/interviews. Don’t let the source or yourself rush you. Make sure you’ve got the best light. The best sound. Don’t settle for hasty b-roll. Take you’re freaking time! Haste makes waste. The trick is moving quickly – as you know what to look out for, you’ve done your pre-reporting and have a script – but it doesn’t mean you should overlook LIGHT, BACKGROUND and SOUND.
• Zoom with your feet. Don’t be intimidated.
• Use the highest ISO before you go tinkering w/ f-stops, etc.
• Get close, medium and wide shots EVERY time you shoot a story.
• Hold your video shot for at least eight seconds. Count it out.
• Use a tripod when you shoot video. Only professionals can go without and they plan that effect.
• Script-preparation. Don’t go out unarmed. Have a script that identifies precisely the audio and video you’ll need for your story. You should be able cross-off items as you go along.
• Confirming sources. If a source is truly willing to be a part of your story, don’t be afraid to be explicitly clear and upfront about what you’re looking for in your story. If you are afraid your source isn’t strong, then they aren’t. Don’t rely on PR handlers/agents etc.
• Pre-reporting. The best stories come from having thoroughly canvassed your beat. You should know the environment, people and general happenings related to your story before you begin shooting it.
• B-roll is not throwaway video that’s helpful when making L cuts. It’s supposed to support your story and your nut.
• Revealing the “Scene” (see LIRQS above) shouldn’t disappear from your multimedia story-telling.
• Another difference between amateur video and professional story-telling is capturing the “action” and the “reaction.” For example, you have crisp B-roll of a boxer punching, and his trainer saying something like, “Keep em’ up. Keep em’ up.”

Learned and/or improved on:

1. Final Cut Pro
2. FTP Management
3. Dreamweaver
4. Photoshop
5. Flash 3.0
6. WordPress
7. Podcasting
8. Blogging
9. Twitter
10. Computer Assisted Reporting

Business and finance reporting

• Ask dumb questions.
• Whenever banks go chasing companies to loan money, be afraid.
• Be sensitive to ethics.
• Interview CEOs out of their office – out of their comfort zone.
• Don’t do topics, focus on stories.
• Ask yourself why you should be a journalist when you could be a short-seller.

Random

• You think you’re there to learn about journalism, and you probably will, but it will be the relationships and friendship you form with your classmates that will prove to be the most influential and educational.
• Watch your back. Without word, my master’s project adviser published an article in the New York Times about our story two days before our project went live. Very upsetting. Very suspect. Sadly, this industry requires you have lots of good ideas privately and very quickly. No one will give you a story and worse, some peers may steal them.
• Take classes outside of the J-School.
• Make sure you make at least one solid professional contact. Whether she likes it or not, I am determined to work for Cyndi Stivers at some point in my career.
• Know how to clearly articulate what is news and opinion.
• Read the WSJ, not just the Times.
• Lament that there is no good coffee shop nearby school.
• Ride your bike more often.
• Use the university gym.
• Enjoy New York.

I can’t/won’t put my finger on what should pass as good or bad design or storytelling after just one month with Duy and Carla. But I will admit that I have a much better understanding of, “What is news?” now, an understanding that I frankly do not think I grasped well enough at my old job.

What is news for a journalist?

1. The obvious: Fire burning down main street. News is a recent or unreported event that has impact on a person or group of people.
2. A trend. The rise of the finger-generation, for example. That is, as touch screen devices proliferate, younger generations are using their fingers to squeeze and pinch content in ways that those ol’ fuddy-duddy Gen-X-ers used to use their thumbs for.
3. (This is my favorite.) Something you didn’t know you didn’t know. Often this sort of news materializes itself in the “weird” section of a Web site or newspaper. For example, like tramp stamps for Barbie.
4. Information that is “contrary to popular convention,” to quote Duy. This is often a combination of items two and three. For example, a trend is emerging that you didn’t know you didn’t know. Example, despite the preponderance of Google’s search engine, there are several companies out there offering a range of unique methods to find what it is your looking for faster and more accurately.

At City Weekend, I ran editorial meetings much like a factory manager would. Articles were largely chosen less on their news value and more on how accessible the story was to the busy editor, its relevance to the readership and whether it was deemed “interesting” enough (by me/us). “What is the story? And why is it interesting?” was the best I ever got. I believe we produced stories that seemed like we could get done. That’s not to say we didn’t hit the bull’s eye every now and then, but little thought on my part was given to news value.

Part of the reason I started this blog was to jot down some of the major lessons learned at Columbia, in the event that if I ever went back to work for my old entertainment publication, I’d be better at it than before. If I had run many of the story ideas discussed in our old editorial meetings through this “what-is-news filter?” below, I think I would have hit the mark more often, and as a result, produced not only a useful guide, but also, a more newsworthy magazine.

So, nearly one year after I started at the J-school, and only three months before I graduate, I attempted hastily cobble this blog article together. I give credit to my RW1 professors, Ari Goldman and Pam Frederick, Duy Linh Tu and Carla Baranauckas for shoving the importance of this, “What is news?” exercise down my throat. I’ve begun to genuinely appreciate the value of understanding what is news. Hopefully, I’ll get better at how to plan, budget, sell, design and build it too.

New media publishing requires being able to plan, source, edit and upload with speed. Yadda yadda. If you’re new at this or like me, you’ll often have this awesome photo slideshow only to lament your lame audio actuals. While, it’s not ideal, you can bolster your slideshow or even your video by calling your source on Skype. You can record the conversation with software like, Audio Hijack and then mix the new actuals over the images.

To make this work, you should be sure that you always record ambient sound while reporting and be familiar with something like Audacity or other sound editing software.

Here’s the how to record phone conversations on Skype:

1. First, plan story.
2. Then go take photos.
3. Be sure to record ambient when you get there, as you won’t get this chance again. Record ambient sound from where ever you get your actuals from.
4. Get as many actuals as your storyboard requires.
5. Go home and edit. Realize you’re missing material. Doh.
6. Open Audio Hijacks. Then open Skype. (Only this order works. You’ll be prompted to quit Skype if you reverse order.) Ready? Test. Then call sources and explain. I’m fully honest that I’m laying this new audio over the “older” slideshow. I even ask that they imagine that they are back at the scene. If this is unethical, let me know.
7. Once you’ve got your material. Edit it. Use Audacity’s noise removal feature to help get rid of the phone tone.
8. Lay your actuals over the ambient sound you recorded. Tweak accordingly.
9. Once you’ve got your clips. Export as .WAV and insert into slideshow. Voila.

Maybe Google’s new video chat will warrant a new post about how to record online conversations, but for now, Audio Hijack seems to do the trick. Bummer is, you gotta pay $32 for the software. If you’re reluctant to cough up the cash, then consider this free stuff and other options.

This is the resulting video in its rough cut form:

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?

Duy (pronounced “doo”), began New Media Newsroom quickly today. We were in a hurry and had to go over Google Maps and each team’s profile assignments.

He started with an example of crime statistics in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Crime rate in the neighborhood had doubled and many residents and rookie journalists were quick to assign blame to the rash of new bar openings nearby. But a crosscheck of the location of the bars against the reported crimes revealed a weak link. Most of the bars were due south of the reported crimes. A journalist who actually went to the location discovered that the areas where most crimes were occuring were actually inside or near contruction lots. “This is not Wikipedia reporting. We hit the streets,” said Duy. Point taken, but it seems to me that we could have also reviewed the type of crimes reported in the police precinct report as well. Right?

We spent the rest of the class going over the ridiculously easy and simple My Maps feature on Google Maps. This is where I 100% agree with anti-new media advocates, it’s the how you use the tech here than the tech that matters. I hope not to waste any more time on Google Maps. Sadly, we won’t be going over how to make a map mashup this year.

After reviewing our profile pitches, Jennifer Preston, of the New York Times, followed with advice true to that of my own and my esteemed colleagues back in Beijing and Shanghai heart:

Editors need to work with their freelancers upfront. The better you understand the story together, the less work you’ll end up having to do later.

First, let me begin by saying, don’t buy the new 3G iPhone. As I write, I am sure I’ll soon regret smashing it into a million little pieces. “HULK DOESN’T LIKE TO EAT MASH POTATOES!” (Right Kate?)

I bring up the iPhone, as once again, its alarm functionality failed to wake me up today, sending me into a dizzying free for all of lame excuses to my RW1 professors for not attending class. After several spelling corrections, I managed to SMS to Pam, “Hi Pam, I’m sorry. I overslept. I’ll be there in one hour. I live in Brooklyn.” It was the best I could come up with at 9:08am. The story gets better, as after frantically commuting to campus, I emerge from the subway to receive an SMS from Pam reminding me that class was canceled today, as she went over again and again last week. Great. Well, thank god I finished my story on the intersection of the Vietnamese community and local government in NYC by 10am today. Or at least, that’s what I thought until my classmate Emily reminded me that it was due at 6pm, not 9am this morning. And to think I planned to wake up early to complete finish it. Thank god, I overslept til 9am! Right?

I bring all these shortcomings up, as I found myself bashing this assignment and any lingering interest I had in reporting or writing in the process. I went so far as to Twitter, “Is it wrong that I hate writing and reporting? Does that make me a bad journalist?” (I believe the answer to that question is a resounding YES.) But as luck would have it, I had plenty of free time this afternoon to write. So when two of my government story sources got back to me mid-morning, I was able to adequately put together a decent article of mild journalistic taste. And my improved mood dramatically began to revitalize my interest in the allure of reporting.

I’ve always said that the best part of publishing is how each issue is a new project, complete with its own intricacies, budgets, complications and deadlines. You’ve got to know everything about a range of issues better than and before the next guy. I now include reporting in that reflection of career and personal taste. Waking up to a rw1 daybook assignment and attempting to gain a thorough understanding of a subject – I’m hitting up NYC’s Commissioner of Child Services tomorrow on “the increasing role foster parents play in caring for children with emotional and mental health issues” – in less than day challenges the intellect and flexes the tongue.

I’m not alone, a few hours after posting my last Tweet, another multimedia reporter wrote to me saying, “I don’t like writing either. I do love reporting though.”