Could you tell us about how you discovered the need for this volume? What problem(s) did you encounter in teaching multimedia journalism, and how does this book help you fix those problems?
Over the last two decades, I was really looking for a journalism textbook that would act as a guide for a novice writer and media producer who wanted to produce journalistic content. The ideal book would be something that I could give to a student as a kind of “graduation gift” that would assist them after they left college and were going for their first journalism job. There were a few multimedia journalism books out there, but nothing really that was a step-by-step guide.
I believe if it doesn’t exist, you gotta create it.
I put together the various notes from my time advising students for Northern Review and the classes I taught in the Multimedia Journalism program at Ohio Northern. The end result of this pooling of information was “Writing Multimedia Journalism.” It solved the central issue of students not having the framework to develop their articles with some sense of logic. It also introduced a common language that we could use during one-on-one sessions after their stories were published. This language became the “Journalism Breakdown,” a set of writing steps that helps a student from their initial pitch to their final review before publication.
The major issue that the book focuses on is understanding that journalistic writing and media production is fundamentally different from what the students normally produce. My wonderful public relations students would be too promotional towards the subject matter of their stories. Those coming from the STEM traditions would be unable to find the narrative thread within the facts, thus writing the story as if it was a lab report. “Writing Multimedia Journalism” acts as a guide that walks the student towards the two most important aspects of journalism. They need to craft a compelling narrative that highlights the reality of the story through the sharing of its central truths. If the story isn’t compelling enough, the audience won’t read the full article. In addition, the student reporter must find a reason to make the audience care about the story and the people in it. We want to see the humanity in the daily lives of our community, which includes the student body.
It’s almost a cliché to say that journalism is rapidly changing as both a profession and as a practice; how does this textbook help students and instructors prepare for today’s realities of working reporters and editors?
I really wanted to focus on having readers of this book develop their critical thinking skills around the series of non-routine tasks that are embedded in the workflow of a modern journalist. Everyday presents a different set of challenges to journalists in the field, and I wanted this book to prepare them for that reality. As a profession, journalists need a level of social intelligence that will allow them to survive the changes in the news industry. Specifically, the last part of the book has a series of what I call “bolt-on courses” that allows the reader to improve their skills in a wide variety of specializations. For example, the chapter on multimedia writing is designed to have the reader work on their skills in developing scripts regardless of the platform that they are working on. There is another chapter that addresses sports journalism and how to teach it as a one to three credit hour course.
The key to preparing for today’s realities really comes down to the relationships that reporters build with their editors, producers, and the executives in their organizations. I believe that the reason that Northern Review has won over 160 regional and national journalism awards during my tenure is based on the great working relationships reporters have with the editor. That success is the main reason that the last chapter of the first part of the book focuses on editorial and executive reviews of the journalist's work. We go over in this chapter the five criteria for journalistic content. They go over the mechanics of the article/journalistic work to make sure that the grammar, syntax, and structure of the piece is clean. All of the rhetorical elements of the work are examined next, including the AP Styleguide requirements. As we deal with multimedia works, the use of media is examined to make sure that it fits within the narrative of the story. They go over the context of the story to make sure that it is the type of story that would be published in Northern Review. Finally, as we are an educational news organization, we make sure that the student reporter is developing their voice in the writing and media production. I often tell students that voice is the most unfair thing that I grade because they have to make an argument that they are not simply producing a “robotic” sounding version of the news, nor are they journaling the events without thinking about their audience.
Many governments protect the freedom of the press because the connection between journalism and democracy is widely recognized. What do you tell your students about journalism’s contemporary social impact? Do journalists have new and/or different obligations to the public in today’s digital and multimedia environment?
Talking to the alumni from my program, the main new obligations that journalists have with the public is that the journalists are more of a personal brand with the support of their news outlet. They are engaging with the public on social media in the comments of their stories, creating posts promoting their stories on online communities that support the work they are doing, and offering commentary on the topics and issues that impact the local community. This engagement is a new feature of the era of Disruptive Journalism (that is, the modern era of multimedia journalism).
In the days of Legacy Journalism (think when the news was exclusively spread by newspapers, magazines, radio, and television), the obligation was being a part of a news organization that was responsible for being the voice or record of the local community. Social media platforms have evolved to the point that it has caused fragmentation in where people get their news. There are at least four different Facebook pages in my village of 3,500 people that report the events that are happening. This hyperlocal level of reporting is a byproduct (for better or worse) of the ease of publication that social media platforms provide. This acknowledgment starts the conversation I have with students regarding journalism’s contemporary social impact.
My concern is with what I call the “influencer journalist.” I am not concerned with influencers as a role that celebrities take. In fact, I wrote a book that explains the value of influencers as part of the social media platform ecosystem. Rather, my concern is that there are a strata of influencers that are pretending to wrap themselves in the flag of journalism to present a manipulated version of reality that the community that those “journalists” are reporting on would not recognize it as any version of the truth. Journalism only works when there is a workflow that supports fact-checking, verification, following up on sources, and reporters to take the time to tell truthful, compelling narratives that the audience cares about.
To take back an old saying, “the truth should get in the way of a good news story.”
I believe you advise or have advised your school’s student paper. Is there an example of a case where your students’ journalism made a tangible impact on campus and/or in the local community?
That is absolutely true. I’ve been advising college media for almost twenty years. The Society for Collegiate Journalists and the College Media Association each honored me with an Advisor of the Year award based on my work with Northern Review.
I can think of four such examples based on advising the student journalists of this wonderful organization over the past decade. The most impactful of these examples was the story that Arin Wade wrote on the impact of the closing of Rite Aid pharmacy on the village of Ada and Ohio Northern University. She used the Journalism Breakdown to develop her story and the best practices of data journalism to craft an interactive map that showed the issues with a lack of pharmaceutical coverage for our local county and the distances that the elderly citizens of the area would have to drive to get their prescriptions filled. It spoke to what a pharmacy desert does to an area like Ada and the surrounding communities. It also spoke to the power of ONU Healthwise supporting the local community in this time of crisis.
Cole Zaferakis produced another example of impactful journalism with his in-depth reporting on the reason that local crop prices were on the rise. His article pointed to the need to support the farmers in the area, as they were dealing with price increases on the supplies they needed to make sure their farms were successful for the upcoming year. Students were more aware why groceries cost more in a way than simply explaining that farmers were charging more.
Gabe Mott was really good at getting the student body to care about what was happening on campus, especially when it came to issues surrounding the budget. He did it in a really creative way. Specifically, he wrote a series of articles that asked the student body to pick how Ohio Northern University should spend its money. Quoting myself from a retrospective I wrote about my first ten years being the advisor for Northern Review.
Gabe is able to take an analytic view of an issue that impacts the entire campus community and translate those numbers into a narrative that explains where we are currently and where we would like to see ourselves. It uses interactive infographic tools well to engage the audience to think about the resources that we share and how we can best use them.
It is honestly a beautiful example of how data journalism can inform the audience what is happening better than tons of quotes from experts and community leaders.
The last example I would offer for the ways that my student journalists have impacted the local community is Grant Pepper’s masterclass on how to handle stories that deal with mental health. “Finding peace in the penalties: Inside the conflicted mind of Dean McNeil” is a spotlight on a student athlete who could no longer be a student athlete. It is a thoughtful feature that really deals with self care in a manner that was before the popularization of that term. It forced a conversation on campus about mental health that a series of pamphlets could not do for the student body.
I am very proud of the work my students have done during my tenure as their advisor. The reason I think that my students were able to affect the local community is that they had the tools they needed for effective journalism without me needing to micromanage the work they did. I can thank “Writing Multimedia Journalism” for being the foundation of their high-quality journalism.