interviewing

Video Interview: In Michael Pollan’s garden

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

Ashley Zammit and I asked to do our interview with Michael Pollan in his garden. We found him sitting there at a table at the appointed time, quite friendly but also on a bit of a tight schedule. After our 45-minute interview, Michael agreed to let us take some shots of his small but packed garden, which we did before running off to talk to locals at the farmer’s market down the street. Since his garden and gardening talk was cut out of our final video on food and fossil fuels, I quickly put together … Read More >>>

Tags: interviewing, storytelling, video
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Packaging: Piecing It Together

Monday, July 27th, 2009

When approaching this project, “The Agony of the California Entrepreneur,” I wanted to tell the story from the perspective of multiple people. I thought the best way was to pick three or four subjects that represented the different trends in business that California is experiencing. I wanted to show how entrepreneurs were adjusting to the recession and what dilemmas they faced. The interactive map was the piece that integrated the different stories together to show where businesses were heading and why they were based in their geographic location.

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Tags: approach, interviewing, packaging
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Explaining Your Project(s) & Approach(es)

Monday, July 13th, 2009

This is our nod to transparency, where each News21 fellow or team explains what you did, why you did it — and what others can do to take your approach to the next level.

Our goal is to well-crafted explanation of how and why you did your project in the manner you did, concentrating especially on what you did in an innovative manner so that it might be refined or replicated in the industry.

Think about it as Coulda-Shoulda-Woulda. You can link to some of your early blog posts that may tell a bit about what you did. But then you should explain your early strategy on how you set about doing your journalism. And now, knowing what you know, you can summarize from lessons learned what you would have done differently. And finally, offer tips for people to learn from your innovation and how they can possibly incorporate it into their journalism. You can also spice it up with screengrabs or photos.

Recently, I noticed Propublica’s “Steal Our Code” explainer for its ChangeTracker feature and the Toronto Star’s nerdbox, accompanying its series on mapping data. Those details and tips are what other journalists will find of great value.

For instance, UNC fellows Monica Ulmanu described her process in skinning a video player programmed by Zach Ferriola-Bruckenstein, who explained how it allows users to search for certain phrases in a video. An overarching post will summarize the challenges and victories in the process, and showcase examples in the “Powering a Nation” project. In fact, can this paragraph be turned into a post? Pretty nearly, topped by a sharp, relevant SEO-savvy headline.

Given the power of tags, we can do a lot to let people know about your work via automation. When you complete your post, please tag it with at least one of the categories (let me know if you require a different one).

Remember, the greater detail you can provide, the better.

Tags: approach, databases, design, how-to, infographics, interactives, interviewing, packaging, photography, presentation, reporting, social media, visuals, writing
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Street interviews in Berkeley

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Check us out trying to get folks to talk on camera about why they eat local foods.

Ashley Zammitt and I camped out at the Berkeley Farmers Market recently and asked individuals to tell us why they eat local foods. We thought it might be good for The High Energy Diet story.

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Tags: interviewing, video
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