New Categories for Online Journalism Awards

The Online News Association and the University of Miami’s School of Communication today opened their call for entries for the 2010 Online Journalism Awards, with new categories that recognize emerging platforms and technologies.

Work published between July 1, 2009, and June 30, 2010 is eligible. Deadline for entry submissions is July 16, 2010, at 8 p.m. ET. Applicants can submit their work at JournalistAwards.org.

This year, ONA has introduced changes to acknowledge the role of investigative journalism, the development of emerging platforms and achievements at the collegiate level, as well as a new site that streamlines the entry experience and judging process. Eight awards now come with a total of $33,000 in prize money, courtesy of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Gannett Foundation, which also is supporting innovative investigative work with two new $2,500 awards.

The newest category honors Outstanding Use of Emerging Platforms, achievement by an organization in the use of devices such as smart phones, eReaders and tablets to tell a story and serve a community. To better reflect work being produced by future journalists, students may now enter in three categories — Multimedia Feature Presentation, Outstanding Use of Digital Technologies on the Web and Online Video.

Honorees will be announced on the final night of ONA10, the Online News Association Conference and Awards Banquet, Oct. 28-30, in Washington, D.C.

CATEGORIES:

The Gannett Foundation Award for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism: This category, with a prize of $5,000, honors a person or company, journalistic in focus or not, that has built a digital tool significantly enhancing the practice of online journalism.

The Knight Award for Public Service: Recognizes digital journalism that performs a public service for a geographic community through compelling coverage of a vital community issue or event; one $5,000 award.

General Excellence in Online Journalism: Honors a Web site in each of four size categories, plus two from the non-English speaking community, which successfully fulfills its editorial mission, effectively serves its audience, maximizes the use of the Web’s characteristics and represents the highest journalistic standards. The award is $3,000 for each winner, funded by the Gannett Foundation.

Breaking News: Honors digital coverage over a 72-hour period of a breaking-news event or development.

Specialty Site Journalism: Recognizes niche Web sites that focus on a single topic.

Gannett Foundation Award for Innovative Investigative Journalism: Honors stories that uncover major news based on the reporters’ own exclusive investigations or that offer compelling and original analysis and interpretation. Open to all formats, including Web documentaries; two awards of $2,500 each.

Multimedia Feature Presentation: Awards excellence in telling a story to an online audience using multimedia techniques.

Online Topical Reporting/Blogging: Recognizes beat reporting by an individual or team.

Online Commentary/Blogging: Honors a unique and powerful voice of commentary original to the Web.

Community Collaboration Award: Recognizing a news project or Web site that produces outstanding journalism through strong interaction with the community being served.

Outstanding Use of Digital Technologies: Recognizes achievement by a site in the use of digital techniques to tell a story and serve a community.

Online Video Journalism: Awards excellence in online-originated video journalism.

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Videojournalism Lessons Worth Sharing

Wonder what they're teaching the kids these days about videojournalism?

Greg Linch, recent University of Miami grad, now interning at the Dallas Morning News, strikes us as an ambitious and accomplished videojournalist-in-training.

He shares VJ lessons he's picked up along the way from notable practitioners on his blog, The Linchpen, as a bulletpointed "brain dump."

While we don't necessarily agree with all his advice, most tips are well observed, and at least serve as jumping off points for discussions about establishing protocols and standards for this ever evolving field.

Here's a sample, which you'll notice doesn't suffer from stuffy academese:

* The story rules. If it's all pretty pictures, make me a slideshow.

* Ditch standups. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear you. I’m watching your video because I care about the subject — not you. Sorry.

* On that note, I don’t really want to see them talking either. More so if it’s just them sitting in a chair, in a boring office, with their boring talking head. The less talking head, the better. If I only see a talking head once, I’m happy.

* There’s a saying that audio is 70 percent of video. Most people are more forgiving if the visuals aren’t great, but if the audio sucks, they’re probably saying see ya. I can’t emphasize audio enough.

* Headphones. Always. It shouldn’t even need to be on here. And they’re not your be-all-end-all. The audio meter to see levels is your bestest friend in the whole wide world.

*Story. Just wanted to make sure you remembered.

... and our personal favorites:

* There’s no magic. It’s not something you’re born with. It’s almost all skills you can learn with practice.

* You’re doing an important job. Keep at it and kick butt.

So thanks and kudos to Greg, as we wish him well and look forward to following the next chapter of his career, starting this fall as a producer at Publish 2, an online collaborative journalism experiment that itself deserves watching.

What Matters More: The Soup or the Bowl?

Excellent article in the N.Y.Times regarding the confused state of journalism education: "Professors are hustling to figure out how to teach journalism at a time when the field is undergoing a sweeping transformation."

The debate is no longer over whether the subject should be taught academically or vocationally -- it's over how to best prepare students for what could either be an extremely promising or dubious career choice, depending on which way the economic winds blow in the next few years.

Journalism students (and their departments) are hedging their bets with courses in public relations, advertising, and even the vaguely labeled "communications." Best part of the article is towards the end, addressing the extent to which new (and soon-to-be-outmoded) technologies should be part of the curriculum:

Fundamentally, J-schools are about teaching students how to be storytellers, says Tom Fiedler, the dean of the College of Communication at Boston University. He subscribes to the philosophy that “it’s the soup and not the bowl that provides the nourishment we need.” He adds: “We want to teach our students to make a great soup. What they serve it in matters little.”

Rich Beckman, a professor of visual journalism at the University of Miami and a guru of new media education, would beg to differ. The new media, he says, have required professors to revise their classes on media ethics and law. Multimedia reporters must know how to edit audio and video without taking quotes out of context, and to abide by copyright law when incorporating music. In updating a blog post, they must recognize when a formal correction is warranted. They are called upon to alternate between objectivity and self-expression — a new New Journalism enabled by the Web, for a generation raised on Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly.

Your thoughts?

Beyond Bootcamp Multimedia Workshops

The Beyond Bootcamp Workshops for journalists and journalism educators will premier in January at the School of Communication at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, cohosted by the Knight Center for International Media.

They are an extension of the Multimedia Bootcamp Workshops at the University of North Carolina, founded and directed by Prof. Rich Beckman for nearly a decade there, before his move this year to UMiami.

Rather than a single workshop that introduces participants to different areas of multimedia storytelling, the Beyond Bootcamp Workshops will each last three days and cover a specific skill set. The first six workshops will be offered beginning January 3-6 and 7-10, 2009.

The curriculum includes Creating Audio Narratives, Multimedia Production, Teaching Multimedia, Creating Video Narratives, and Multimedia Programming for Journalists. Tuition for one three-day workshop is $750; tuition for two consecutive three-day workshops is $1,400. Register here: http://www.beyondbootcamp.org/registration/