The Power of Audio

In my last post, I mentioned that I have been currently taking a class with Damian Radcliffe at the University of Oregon. The title of the class is Audio Storytelling and I wanted to use this posting space to plug what has been an eye-opening experience over the course of this term. I'll admit I was skeptical of what awaited me in terms of the content. I enrolled in the class having taken Damian's Reporting II course in which I developed a rapport with him and I just wanted to take a class in which I had a professor I respected and trusted. I hesitantly trusted in his sales pitch of the audio course; "Audio is a dead medium," I thought. Well, I could not have been more wrong, Audio is alive and well and getting stronger as the years pass. Podcasting has a lot to do with the rebirth of the audio industry as it provides almost endless opportunities in terms of content. This post will act as a review of some of the key things I took away from my time in Damian's Audio Storytelling class this term.

I first became aware of the power of audio storytelling early on in the term when we listened to a recording of BBC radio’s Sherlock Holmes broadcast. We picked it apart little by little finding the intricacies that were layered into the production that made it as compelling as it was. We likened the Sherlock Holmes show to those of vintage and historical radio shows like The Lone Ranger or Orson Welle’s 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast that famously created a nationwide panic among listeners. Talk about a powerful medium: it sent one of the most powerful, not to mention educated, nations of the world into a panic in which a portion of the population actually believed an alien invasion was occurring.

The War of the Worlds induced panic was front page news for The New York Times

The fictional broadcast radio show is something that has been largely forgotten today but is making a comeback in the form of today’s podcasts. Prior to this I only had limited experiences with talk show style podcasts centering on a typical host interviewing a guest format. Our in-class listening assignment of The Message really opened my eyes to the multitude of possibilities of what a podcast can be. These types of fictional story telling podcasts are coming full circle from their early 20^th century radio counterparts in a big way and I think will only continue to grow to be more and more successful. The audio aspect of story telling can be likened to that of reading a book in that it has the potential to transport you to your own fictional world. Sure the writers of the stories build the basic story but everyone imagines these stories in their own unique way and that is where the real power of audio lies.

            

Being a journalism major and an aspiring sports writer I came to find that writing traditional prose and writing for audio are two very different processes. I like to be as descriptive as possible when writing about events or games that I am covering in sports and that generally means long imagery rich sentences. However this style of writing is not as suitable when writing for audio. On my early projects that required a script I found myself having to take large audible breaths while recording that were detrimental to the quality of my final product and made editing a lot trickier than it needed to be.

            

In order to adapt, I found that when writing for audio my sentences needed to be more concise. Writing this way can take a little longer to ensure your message is still coming through clearly while not sounding choppy either. It’s a fine line but the extra work you put in will come through in your final product. The Poynter Institute’s News U course, Writing for the Ear, did well to explain this notion and I would recommend any aspiring or beginning audio student to complete the course—it is free after all.

Poynter's News U is a plethora of journalistic information & provides free courses for a number of different journalism related topics

In addition to insights on how to structure sentences when writing for audio the Writing for the Ear course also gives advice on how to structure your entire story. For example one bit that stuck with me is to write your scenes as though you’re writing scenes for a movie. Start out with a wide shot of your subject and his or her environment and then gradually zoom in on your subject, but instead of doing it with a camera you do it with your words. Open describing the setting of where the segment is taking place, then move on to your subject from afar, finally describe what your subject is wearing or doing and use one of those aspects to set up the main theme of your story. Maybe they are wearing a necklace that symbolizes their religion and then move into an interview of them explaining what the necklace means to them.

            

Another aspect of audio storytelling that was, not foreign, but still new to me was the importance of pitching ideas not stories. And there is a big difference between the two. While it is important to have a general story you would like to pursue, you cannot pitch a raw undeveloped story. Having an idea, as opposed to a story, means that you have refined your story into a well-oiled plan of how you are going to execute your production. That means planning on who you are going to interview to add color to your piece, deciding on what production elements you are going to use—voiceovers, sound effects, natural sound, ambient sound etc.—and really narrowing down the message you are trying to relay in your piece. I found that explaining my message in one concise sentence greatly helps keep your focus during the production of the piece. Ask yourself: does this interview help relay what I am trying to accomplish? You can then apply that to every aspect of your production, right down to the use of natural sound or sound effects.

Audio is a powerful medium that some people seem to be forgetting about in our increasingly digitally and visually dominated world. However with the podcast renaissance in full swing, there have never been more examples of good audio than there are right now. There is a podcast out there that is tailor made for any one of your multitudes of interests and if there isn’t then you can produce a podcast relatively cheaply for any niche audience that you desire. Don’t be afraid that your production skills aren’t up to par; because one thing that is preached in the audio world is that a good story can overcome any technical shortcomings.

           

Social Media Extraordinaire Damian Radcliffe

University of Oregon's Carolyn S. Chambers Professor of Journalism, Damian Radcliffe

Today I was privileged to attend a guest lecture by Professor Damian Radcliffe (no relation to Daniel) in my Data Journalism course at the University of Oregon. The PowerPoint that supplemented the lecture can be found here. Professor Radcliffe is a leading authority on social media as well as someone who has garnered my utmost respect in my last six months of knowing him. I have taken and am currently taking courses taught by Radcliffe at the University of Oregon and I even had the honor of writing a feature profile on him this past winter -- which has unfortunately gone unpublished. Radcliffe was brought to the University of Oregon because of his social media acumen and his constant efforts to stay ahead of the curve in the journalism industry and some of these reasons were the main topic of his guest lecture today.

Radcliffe covered many points during today's lecture on social media and one of the first he covered was the importance of being aware of your digital footprint in today's ever-changing social media climate. He stressed the importance of taking advantage of your privacy settings on all social media accounts that allow you to manage them. Radcliffe himself noted that he owns two separate facebook accounts; one for his professional life that allows his life's work to be accessed by anyone who wishes to seek it out and one for his personal life that friends and family can access to see trips of his vacations or photos of his daughter. The latter account is patrolled by privacy settings, effectively ensuring his work's digital footprints and his personal life's digital footprints are on separate paths. This sort of responsible social media management is important in order to preserve your online integrity to potential employers or any other party because they will search for you on your social media platforms and whatever they may find will be held into account.

Another social media topic we covered today involved the new concept of ethics in social media. More specifically "point of death" media. Radcliffe cited the posting of a video on facebook that captured the slaying of a police officer during the terrorist attacks on the office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The original poster of the video Jordi Mir captured the video (linked previously) and immediately posted the video to facebook and then took it down 15 minutes later after realizing the sensitivities involved in the situation. But by then it was too late and the video had been shared a number of times and ripped onto youtube. By taking down his post he removed the consent to use it but soon after he was bombarded on social media as well as disturbed at his home by journalists who wanted to use his footage.

Radcliffe then posed the question, where do we draw the line in a situation like this? Along with being under a constant barrage of the media as well as the general public Mr. Mir also was dealing with the traumatizing fact that he had just witnessed a murder outside of his home and nobody in the media stopped to consider this before engaging Mir. I think this will continue to emerge as an issue and in bigger numbers as we move into the future and is something that needs to be explored more by journalists and academics alike. A line does need to be drawn and the discovery of that line has the potential to be a marquee achievement for this generation.

I left Radcliffe's lecture with a better grasp on social media and its intricacies however I did leave with questions as well. But I think that's what good lectures ultimately do, they inform you but also leave with questions that push you to do your own research.

What's In a Name?

Databases of information can provide amazing story ideas for trends that may go unnoticed without the proper analysis. That is where the power of data journalism lies. Ex-Miami Herald reporter Steve Doig discussed this fact during his skype visit with our class that I wrote about in an earlier post: "We're living in the golden age of data... the government collects a lot of data and they do a lousy job of analyzing their own data." 

One story from the U.S. Social Security database that seems to come out at least once a year is about the most popular baby names of the past 12 months. Within recent years, I have found it interesting that people have been taking the names of their favorite characters from pop culture TV shows and movies, and naming their children after them. What's interesting is that these names did not appear prior to the TV show's (or movie's) releases according to the U.S. Social Security database. Talk about pop culture influencing the younger generations!

 

Khaleesi, Daenerys Targaryen the Queen of Dragons

HBO’s Game of Thrones first aired in 2011 and inspired the creation of the name Khaleesi based on the show’s character Daenerys Targaryen, played by Emilia Clarke. Khaleesi translates to Queen in the fictional Dothraki barbarian language of the Game of Thrones universe. Although the state of Oregon only claims one Khaleesi, the name has gained a lot of traction nationally as the 755^th ranked most popular name in the United States in 2014 (up from its 1,021 ranking in 2013).  Leonidas is a name inspired by the 2006 big screen hit 300, which stars Gerard Butler as King Leonidas of Sparta. There have been four Oregonian sons named after the battle-hardened king since the movie was released in 2006 and landed as the 566^th most popular boys name in the United States in 2014.  The animated cult classic TV show Archer, which first aired on FX in 2009, sparked the use of the last name of the show's anti-hero protagonist (Sterling Archer) as a first name for boys in Oregon. There has been one Archer born in Oregon every year since the show debuted in 2009 and according to nameberry.com, another name database, Archer ranked the 303rd most popular boy's name in the U.S. of 2014.      

     TV/Movie Inspired Oregon Names

Year	Archer	Khaleesi	Leonidas
2009	1		1
2010	1
2011	1
2012	1		1
2013	1		1
2014	1	1	1

Speaking of famous TV and movie characters there have been many famous actors that play those characters that call Oregon home, but how many other people shared the name of a soon to be famous person in the same year they were born? Modern Family’s Ty Burrell is a noted Oregon native and University of Oregon football super fan. He was born Tyler Gerald Burrell on August 22^nd, 1967 in the small city of Grants Pass, Oregon. He was one of only eight Tylers born in the entire state in 1967. 

How about actress and noted supermodel Sara Jean Underwood? Underwood is a Portlandian who was born March 26, 1984, and is one of 157 Saras born that year. And perhaps the most famous Oregonian of recent memory, Matt Groening the iconic creator of TV’s The Simpsons, who based The Simpsons universe he created off of Springfield, Oregon about an hour south of his native Portland. Groening is 1 of 40 Matthews born in 1954 in Oregon.

A mural of The Simpsons in downtown Springfield, Oregon

There are many more trends not mentioned in this article that can be found in the annals of forgotten massive databases like the U.S. Social Security database. Be it a journalist struggling to find an idea for his or her next big story or just an average citizen that has an overactive sense of curiosity databases can provide a plethora of information to satisfy any of the questions you may have about our society in the U.S.

Data Visualization... In Space!

A lot of people mistake data journalism and power journalism for simply putting numbers into perspective and using massive data sets to find outliers and trends. While that is true, what you do with those outliers and trends after you've located them can really take a story to the next level. Sure you could just simply relay your findings in the traditional for of prose or you could add some extra punch to your numbers and utilize a data visualization that works for your story.

In my Data Journalism class on February 23rd, our class was visited by data visualization expert and University of Oregon professor, Nicole Dahmen. Professor Dahmen noted that human beings can process images 60,000 times faster than we can process text. Now that's power journalism. Dahmen also runs her own blog on the power of data visualization and how it is being utilized in the digital age.

There are a lot of good examples of data visualization out in the world today; the example I am going to cover in this post comes via Josh Stearns blog entitled Writings on Media, Culture, Nature, and the Media. Stearns is the director of journalism and sustainability for the Geraldine Dodge Foundation and he included a sciencenews.org piece named The Martian Diaries, in which the author creates a vast interactive diary scrapbook of the Mars Curiosity Rover, on his list of best online journalism and storytelling of 2015 contributions. The piece is filled with data visualizations, tweets from the Curiosity Rover's twitter account, maps of the rover's journey, as well as photos, videos and gifs of the rover's activity during it's two and a half year stay on Mars' surface.

A screenshot of the homepage of The Martian Diaries

What makes The Martian Diaries successful is it's interactivity bar at the top of the page that allows you to skim through the important days (or sols as they are called on Mars) to streamline the use of the page and eliminate monotonous scrolling.

You can click on each sol to fast forward through Curiosity's journey

Another successful feature of the piece lies in the simplicity of the numerous diary entries. There is usually no more than a paragraph or two describing the events of any given sol and the prose is paired with one or several pieces of additional content to give the information in the entry better context. The diary entries are playfully written through the first person view of the curiosity rover itself and gives the piece a more personal feel despite the massive scientific importance of the subject matter.

The graphic on the left depicts the direction water would have flowed down a specific crater

I was hard pressed to find a flaw in this piece and can easily see why Mr. Stearns chose this as a favorite contribution to journalism and storytelling in 2015. The only complaint I have is that the page itself is kind of drab and feels like it could use some punching up for something as vast and imagery heavy as the never ending frontiers of space. The visuals that are provided in the content itself are solid and allowed me to look past the blandness of the page until I was actively searching for flaws. All-in-all though, sciencenews.org truly has created a wonderful addition to the world of data visualization in journalism. Another important feature worth pointing out before I end this post, lies at the end of the page: it allows for continuous additions of more entries so that this piece can keep growing alongside the Curiosity's journey. I know I'll be keeping up with it; I hope you will too.

Ruhl Lecture Featuring Stephen Engelberg: Editor-In-Chief of ProPublica

Stephen Engelberg, Editor-in-Chief, ProPublica

In the swanky annals of the Gerlinger Lounge located on the University of Oregon's campus Stephen Engelberg Editor-In-Chief of ProPublica -- a nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest -- delivered a guest lecture entitled Accountability Journalism in the Digital Age. Mr. Engelberg has many ties to the state of Oregon: he was a managing editor of The Oregonian in Portland from 2002 until 2008 before he moved on to ProPublica; his father is also a University of Oregon alum.

The main theme of Engelberg's lecture obviously pertained heavily to accountability in journalism; one of the core values attached to the concept of a free press. ProPublica is devoted to keeping individuals in the public eye accountable and there is no better example of this than in their contribution of the Dollars for Docs application. The application allows citizens to input their physicians into a database (which was developed entirely by ProPublica) who have prescribed them medication. The application will then tell citizens whether or not their doctor is being paid by the pharmaceutical company that created the medication they are being prescribed. The application was built in response to a growing number of doctors and physicians taking large payments from big pharmaceutical companies in exchange for pushing their newest drugs onto patients and publicly endorsing them at lectures. Engelberg noted that in some cases doctors were earning $200,000 to $300,000 annually from pharmaceutical companies for endorsing and prescribing their drugs and could even make $10,000 in an hour to endorse the drugs at lectures.

A screenshot of the dollars for docs application on ProPublica's website

Not only is this application able to be utilized by everyday citizens but also by smaller news publications around the country who cannot afford to pay programmers full time to create databases and applications. This disruptive technology prompted medical schools and medical practices around the country to begin vetting their physicians to not take the money offered by large pharmaceutical companies to peddle their newest drugs. Now that's what I call power journalism.

Along with talking about the concept of accountability in journalism today Engelberg also covered the current state of the journalism industry as a whole. He seemed very passionate about re-commodifying journalism: “I’m going to make a wild prediction so bear with me here. I think we may have to persuade people to pay for the product that we’re giving them,” Engelberg said. He then went on to use the example of the Bell, California civil budget scandal as an example of the need for the public to invest in the news at a local level. These city administrators approved a budget that went unchecked by local media and as a result, the public was taken advantage of. As a journalist myself I can obviously appreciate the monetary gain that would be had by my profession but I feel this vision is ultimately unrealistic. In the age of Twitter and Facebook people simply will not invest in something that they feel they can get for free through other channels.

Despite Engelberg's call to re-commodify news, he expressed optimism for the future of the journalism industry as a whole citing the Internet as an ironic hero of the industry, "Lost in the chaos there is some good news. The Internet which destroyed the newspaper industry represents endless possibilities in the field of journalism." I would like to echo the endorsement of Mr. Engelberg and say that I believe in the future of journalism and as long as our societal structure stands, journalism will be there standing right behind it watching over it making sure it doesn't step out of line.

“Two centuries ago it was established, a probing journalism was an essential element to maintain our democracy. You cannot have democracy without a free press.” - Stephen Engelberg

Class visit with Steve Doig: Data Journalism Pioneer

Steve Doig

Today we had the privilege of hosting former Miami Herald reporter and current Knight Chair in Journalism at Arizona State University in a discussion via Skype. We covered several topics during our time together including his work with the Miami Herald on his most famous article: The Big One! Doig used computer-assisted reporting to cover the severe damages left by Hurricane Andrew. The article also won the Miami Herald the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service. Unfortunately, the article was published well before the internet was being used by the Miami Herald and I haven't been able to locate a link for you readers. We also discussed the present state of data journalism and what has improved in the field since his work on The Big One.

"Good data journalism might only have one number involved." - Steve Doig

That was the response to a question I posed to Doig on finding the correlation between the damage caused by Hurricane Andrew and the possibility of human error being involved in the severity of that damage. That one number in The Big One was the year in which homes were built that were damaged by the storm. Doig used census records, housing inspection records, political campaign contribution reports and over 60,000 damage records to find that there were factors found in all those data sets that pointed to the lowering of housing standards in response to a housing boom that had taken place in south Florida during a 27-year hurricane hiatus. Politicians and private building companies had taken short cuts in order to keep up with the demand of the housing boom. 

A 1992 weather map of Hurricane Andrew's contact point with Florida's southern coast

"We're living in the golden age of data... the government collects a lot of data and they do a lousy job of analyzing their own data." - Steve Doig 

Doig gave that response when asked to give some words of advice to our class for the aspiring journalists about to enter their careers. Doig went on to say that because of the availability of data that there will never be a shortage of stories. That is a very insightful point and it demands a very raw and pure journalistic quality that is too often left underutilized. Sitting and poring through data sets to locate trends and anomalies is not something you would find most millennials as having the patience for but it is a quality that is essential for finding stories.

Later in his pitch on advice, a classmate asked Doig how he approaches a data set that he has been presented with. He offered the idea that often times you can work backward. He went on to say sometimes it's easier to think of the end of your story and then go into the data set and find the numbers you need to get you there. Once you're in the data set you can find the variables you need to present the numbers and place them into your story. He also made sure to impart a disclaimer: don't be surprised if you find something you didn't expect in your analysis as it almost always occurs. It's an unconventional process that makes almost all too much sense. I am very excited to use the Doig Method in my next of many journalistic endeavors.

Wild Card Post: Live Television

This evening I participated in viewing a television event that is rare these days: a live studio broadcast. The Fox Network had been advertising its live performance of Grease for several weeks and even as a "macho" guy I had to admit the idea of a live production of a musical that I had grown up on intrigued me. I was instantly flooded with flashbacks of my mother singing the musical's hit song Summer Nights while she cleaned the house. I had to watch it.

It was an excellent performance that went off without a hitch. The production team really went all out and even managed to acquire quite a few surprise celebrity appearances to bolster the intrigue throughout the show. There was a repressed giddy school girl trait that escaped from me every time a celebrity popped up unannounced.

And then it hit me, everything I was feeling while watching the show was one of the purest moments of nostalgia I had ever experienced in my entire life. The combination of a live television broadcast  mixed with a musical that harkened back to the time of chrome diners and white wall tires screamed vintage Americana. I couldn't help but yearn for a return to a time that I had never even personally experienced.

I took to twitter at the shows conclusion and not surprising to me #GreaseLive was the top trending hashtag on the social media network. The hashtag had amassed 991 thousand tweets at the time of writing this entry, seemingly all in support. Celebrities and everyday citizens alike were flocking (shameless twitter allusion) to applaud the backbreaking production.

The broadcast included shots of the actors in between scenes rushing from set to set on the 10 acre studio plot which really lent itself to how much work went into the production. Even the most casual of TV viewers had to appreciate the effort. It is because of this that I am officially calling for a return to the Golden Age of Television. Well it's broadcasting methods anyways. Sure we have Saturday Night Live and well that's it. The major networks don't even broadcast their individual late night shows live anymore. NBC's live broadcasts of The Sound of Music and The Wiz in late 2015 couldn't compete with the panache Grease: Live accomplished tonight. NBC and ABC have possible live broadcasts of Hairspray and Dirty Dancing in the works but the bar was set pretty high tonight on Fox.  Hopefully they follow suit and don't take any shortcuts with their telecasts.

I wasn't the only one immune to the nostalgia bug this evening and I think it The TV industry would be wise to jump on this nostalgic jet plane-- a Pan Am jet plane of course.