The end: Some thoughts

We’ve reached the point in the semester where all the graduate student brain can do is muse, so muse I will.  We’re at the end of the semester, and 14 of us have succesfully completed Journalist’s Toolkit 1.  I can’t believe that 16 weeks later, I’ve got a whole new bag of tricks up my sleeve.  They aren’t necessarily polished and perfected tools, or tricks. I might not even call them tricks, or skills.  Perhaps, I have a new bag of abilities.  I do feel more competent as a journalist, however you put it.  More importantly, I feel more competent as a story teller.

In a multimedia world, words are almost incomplete as a medium to tell stories about people, places or issues.  However, at first,  I was loath to pick up a camera or a voice recorder.  How was I supposed to tell a good story if I couldn’t even hold the equipment right?

But what you hear can be powerful.  The voice has emotion — a huge element of story-telling — that you can’t replicate in the written word.  So I was forced to experience the microphone and the digital recorder.  And I fell in love.   Editing audio was suprisingly simple and suprisingly easy.  While I’m still daunted by journalists who sift through hours of audio, I at least feel like I’ve accomplished the small mountain that was audio gathering and editing in my professional life.  Technologically savvy world, here I come!

After one really bad experience in an Intro to Photojournalism class as an undergraduate, I was even more terrified of the next bump in our technological journey.   Photo shooting and editing.  To be honest, this ended up being my favorite part of the class.  I actually got a few select photos I love and am really proud of.  Don’t sign me up for photography yet, though.  I can only edit a photo or two.  But I can even frame a good shot, through the camera lense, without a blurry quality, courtesy of my shaking hands and trembling elbows.

What was most impressive for me was that I could use these photos and audio to tell a story, online.  I could load them into Soundslides and Web pages.  I am still a little shocked.  Sure, I could use some more coding practice.  Heck, I couldn’t actually write my own Web page if asked.  But I can work within that all-important content management system, and for that, I’m grateful.  I can even make all the material required for the site.  Not only the news and written word portions, but also the audio, the photos and the infographics.  Now that’s something to put on the resume.

But now, on to the skills that I’m still working on feeling grateful for.  This very blog is probably my least favorite multimedia skill.  I say that, knowing full well that blogs could arguably be the most important asset of multimedia story-telling today.  But here’s the deal. I’m just not so hot at it.  And it was, hands-down, the most impossible thing to keep up with.  

Blogging is not a casual hobby.  It takes a lot of work.  I’m going to have to approach it differently.  Perhaps set aside a certain amount of time a day to blog.  Or pay more attention to public feeds I’ve subscribed to.  True bloggers pay more attention to blogs than the front cover of the New York Times.

What an experience.  It’s pretty daunting the ground we covered.  It’s even more daunting when you realize what’s left to learn.  Journalist’s Toolkit 2 holds the promise of video, the promise of more precise editing skills, and the promise of spicier and more exquisite story-telling.  I might not ever reach the zenith of multimedia journalism, but I’m growing, and I’ve grown quite a bit over the last four months.