I taught a class on Associated Press style and on visual journalism this afternoon. I showed the students this video:
I use it a lot. It is very touching and incredibly moving. It is relatable. It has a lot of great production elements, video and photographs. Color and black and white. It tells a story from beginning to end. There is music, which I see as a mileage may vary kind of thing. I don’t think it is really necessary, but it is clear where they are going with it.
The best parts are where the producers interject in the story and where they are smart enough to stay out of the way. There’s an art to that.
We watched this unembeddable slideshow from NPR, too. In it we meet Steve Campbell and his Iraqi bride as they negotiate the day to day struggle to make a life for themselves in Missouri. Natural sound, coordination of the audio and the visual, and the everydayness just make an interesting story.
We tend to overlook those sometimes.
Therapy this evening, pushing small weights up and down, or left and right as the circumstance required. Rode a bit on a bike. Cleaned up, had dinner, went back into the office.
Tonight the student-journalists at the Crimson are putting their first paper of the year to bed. We start the school year a bit later than most, and we’re a weekly, so it feels like a late beginning, but we’ve used most of the time well.
There is a lot to learn, we have a young staff this year, but they are all eager to do good work, and that’s the key. Also, having fun. They introduced me to mershed perderders which, approaching midnight, was funnier than it should have been. I did not know turtles have such poor diction.
Tomorrow the students get to see the fruits of their labors. Just as exciting as the first night of layout is the unheralded first critique of the year.
