Online photo, audio and video took off as broadband access to the Internet grew.

1. Online Tools of our Trade
Photos, Audio, Video & MOBILE
Presented @ NITDA
Challenges of Reporting
Information Communication
Technology in a digital age
Achi Celestine
Chief Digital Marketing Strategist
Cihan Group
Twitter: @cihangroup
celestine@cihangroup.net

2. Social Media Today Is...
 where radio was in 1912
 where TV was in 1950
 where the web was in 1996
Imagine discussing the future journalist at those
points in time - we'd make bad predictions then, and
we'll make bad predictions now.
Fact is, the future of journalism is full of
opportunities, pitfalls and mistakes we are all
going to make - TOGETHER.

3. The Future Journalist knows:
Fundamentals Are Critical
 Great reporting
 Great writing
 Journalistic ethics
 Beat work - specialization
 Investigative skills
 News judgment
 Understands the world
 Critical thinking
 Critical reading

4. The Future Journalist has:
A New Media SKILLSET
&
A New Media MINDSET
• ...you need digital skills, but you also
need the ability to THINK digitally.

5. The Future Journalist is:
A Multimedia Storyteller
 Able to use the right digital skills and tools for
the right story at the right time
 Has high-end digital skillset and mindset
 Knows how to use words, visuals, audio, video,
interactive graphics and slideshows
 Able to do stories in many formats, but
specialist in one
 Producing, editing, live-streaming video
 Online video consumption is growing

6. The Future Journalist is:
A Community Builder
 Facilitating conversation
 Each their own
“community manager”
 Maintaining Web beats
 Connecting audiences

7. The Future Journalist:
Works Collaboratively
 Knows how to harness the work of a range of
people around him/her - colleagues in the
newsroom; experts in the field; trusted
citizen journalists; segments of the audience,
and more.
 Doesn't try to start every story from scratch -
can work collaboratively with existing
material and concentrate, when necessary,
on advancing the story.
 [A simple test: can you work on a story with another journo

8. The Future Journalist:
Gets Social Media
 We mean, really, really gets it.
 Uses it to LISTEN, not only to broadcast
 Uses social media to:
 find new story ideas, trends and sources
 connect with audience(s)
 bring attention and traffic
 help them create, craft and enhance their personal
brand

9. The Future Journalist is:
Blogger and Curator
 Has a personal voice
 Is curator of Web content
 Participant in the link economy
 Knows value of speed and SEO
 Builds a community

10. Statistics
Online photo, audio and video took off as broadband access to
the Internet grew. Here are some statistics
 Podcast: 4 billion views and clicks per day and 1 billion
unique visitors each month.
 Flickr: The popularity of online photos can be measured by
the growth of the Flickr photo sharing website. Launched in
2004 and now owned by Yahoo, Fiickr passed 8 billion photos
uploaded to its site by 2012.
 But that is surpassed by the more than 15 billion photos
Facebook reports having in its database.

11. Statistics
 And Instagram, launched in October 2010, has 100 million
active monthly users who upload 40 million photos a day.
 Blogs: 126 Trillion Blogs
 Youtube: Nigeria watches 4bilion hour s of video a month
 Emails: Number of Emails sent in 2009 – 90 Trillion
 Mobile Subscribers as at Aug., 2014 – 130,867,452M
 5 Nigerians sign on with twitter every minute
 7 Nigerian Professional signs up with LinkedIn every second

12. Digital Media: New Genre of Journalism
With the rise of digital media, there is a move from the
traditional journalist to the blogger or amateur journalist.
Blogs can be seen as a new genre of journalism because of
their “narrative style of news characterized by
personalization” that moves away from traditional
journalism’s approach, changing journalism into a more
conversational and decentralized type of news.
Blogging has become a large part of the transmitting of
news and ideas across cites, states, and countries, and
bloggers argue that blogs themselves are now breaking
stories. Even online news publications have blogs that are
written by their affiliated journalists or other respected
writers.

13. So what is a blog ?
• Weblog - An online dated diary
listing your periodic thoughts on
a specific topic, often in reverse
chronological order.
• Blog - short form for weblog
• Blogging - the act of posting on
blogs
• Blogger - a person who blogs
• Blogosphere - The internet
blogging community.

14. Aggregators
• Beyond news, there are several popular aggregate
blog sites for specific areas of interest
• Examples:
– Technorati.com
– BoingBoing.net

15. 3 reasons why you should blog
Editorial Leads, speed, space
Commercial SEO, distribution, accountability
 Professional Networking Pulling power
Development

16. How are Journalists using Blogs
 Encourage audience feedback and involvement
 "Over-the-shoulder" diary
 Cultivate audiences
 Cover events
 Follow varied rural issues and affairs (and coverage of
them)
 Offer views and opinions
 Support freedom of expression

17. You have to think about
 Blog’s Mission Statement
 List Your Blog Goals
 List Short Term Objective
 Primary Target Audience
 Secondary Target Audience
 Topics
 Develop aContent Repository System/Editorial Calendar
 Name
 Frequency
 Niche
 Use hyperlinks to authoritative sources

18. TYPE OF BLOGGING
 Photo Blogging - a blog predominantly using and focusing
on photographs and images. Photoblogs are created by
photobloggers.
 Podcasting - a method of distributing multimedia files
(audio / videos) online using feeds for playback on mobile
devices and personal computers. Podcasts are created by
podcasters.
 Vlogging - Also called video blogging. Shortened to vlog.
Posted by vlogger. A variant on the blogging using video
instead of text.

19. What are the technologies that underpin
Podcasting?
►Mp3
►Audio
►Videos
►RSS feeds
►Online radio
►Atom feeds

21. Podcasting
 Besides radio stations, other news organizations,
especially newspapers, had jumped on the
podcasts bandwagon in the late 2000s, but
usually with disappointing results in terms of
listenership.
 Audio podcasts also can be valuable as a way to
provide content for mobile devices that are
increasingly in use.
 But on a website, combining audio with photos in
a photo slideshow can be more effective as a
storytelling device.

22. Journalism and Podcasting
Documentary: Just as long-form journalism has a place in
the digital sphere, so too do long-form photo, audio and
video documentaries using TV and cinema conventions of
storytelling.
Storytelling: With the advent of online came new
storytelling techniques such as photo and audio
slideshows, graphics and ways of visualising data.
Contextual video: Advances in web browsers allow new
possibilities. Here are three examples made using
Popcorn JS, a JavaScript open-source library from Mozilla
allowing audio and video to link to real-time web content
such as tweets, Google Maps and Wikipedia entries.

23. Journalism and Podcasting
History in the Streets is an audio recording uploaded to
SoundCloud with locations linked so that when the audio
refers to a place, the viewer is taken to that location on
Google Street View and can navigate and explore.
Development of Mozilla’s Popcorn Maker tool could
allow journalists without coding skills to produce similar
podcast.

24. Journalism and Podcasting
History in the Streets is an audio recording uploaded to
SoundCloud with locations linked so that when the audio
refers to a place, the viewer is taken to that location on
Google Street View and can navigate and explore.
Development of Mozilla’s Popcorn Maker tool could
allow journalists without coding skills to produce similar
podcast.

25. Podcasting Tools
Gabcast.com is a free service for recording by phone.
Hipcast.com has a seven day free trial and lots of
features.
Gcast.com is another free service for phone recording. All
of the phone posting services listed above are compatible
with Odeo in that they produce podcast feeds, which can
be imported to Odeo. Any audio file at Odeo
(http://odeoenterprise.com/) can be posted on a blog by
copying and pasting some embed code.

26. TYPE OF BLOGGING
 Audioblogging - Also called audioblog, MP3 blog or
musicblogs. a variant on the blogging using audio instead
of text. Created by audioblogger.
 Moblogging - Also called moblogs. A blog posted and
maintained via mobile phone. Moblogs are created by
mobloggers.
 Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to
write brief text updates (usually 140 characters) and
publish them.

27. Blogs are becoming popular
 A new blog is started every second
 Many remain unread and semi-anonymous
 A few end up with a strong following
 Most are not created by journalists!
 We have over 126 Trillion Blogs
online

28. Blogging is Beyond Text
Bloggers are using more than
simple words to tell their stories:
– 72% Photos
– 30% Audio
– 15% Video

29. EQUIPMENT REQUIRED
The minimum set of tools you need to do a
Video Blog are ultimately
• A video Camera/Camcorder
• A computer with video editing software
installed
• An Internet connection
• A blog Account /space
• An online video account/space

30. THE PROCESS OF VLOGGING
To do a video blog.
You first need to take a video: an individual telling
a story or doing an illustration, a person sharing an
experience.
The video is then edited using various video
editing programs such as I movie, Final Cut Pro or
Windows Movie Maker. With these editing
programmes, you can edit your videos by giving
them titles and doing other changes that make
your video very interesting.

31. THE VLOGGING PROCESS CONTD.
You then upload your edited video onto a video site on
the Internet. Popular sites for hosting videos are
Google video, youtube.com and www.blip.tv.
From these spaces, you then share your video with
your blog.
On your blog, transcribe the video you have uploaded
into text to give it meaning.
Announce your video link on your network or to
individuals to make news

32. THE VLOGGING PROCESS CONTD.
You then upload your edited video onto a video site on
the Internet. Popular sites for hosting videos are
Google video, youtube.com and vimeo.com.
From these spaces, you then share your video with
your blog.
On your blog, transcribe the video you have uploaded
into text to give it meaning.
Announce your video link on your network or to
individuals to make news

33. VALUE/IMPORTANCE OF
VLOGGING
It is interesting to note that Vlogs provide an
accurate media for presenting an otherwise
long stories or presentations in very simple
and attractive manner.
Short videos have an added advantage in view
of the visual component that helps promote
deeper understanding of stories, especially for
people with less educational background and
or for people who do not have a reading habit.

34. VALUE/IMPORTANCE CONTD.
The power to reach an unlimited audience
with minimal cost
The Vlogging process furthermore requires no
specialised expertise and can be easily
controlled by any non-technical person
It is technologically simpler and cheaper to
maintain than a website.
Videos are interactive medium often
encouraging readers to comment

35. Video and VideoBlogging: VLog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkMaUwFpXLA

36. Video and VideoBlogging: VLog
http://www.punchng.com/
http://www.thisdaylive.com/
http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/
http://leadership.ng/

37. Video and VideoBlogging: VLog
http://www.channelstv.com/

38. CAPACITIES REQUIRED
Fortunately, there is no special capacity required
for video blogging. It can be easily done and
controlled by any non-technical person.
However, you need to be very Innovative and
creative
 Those of you interested in becoming video
bloggers only need to follow the processes to
become great video bloggers.

39. TOOLS YOU CAN USE
A digital camera which has a camcoder, A smart
mobile phone or a laptop with a camcoder, to
take a video normally five minutes or less.
Download the video onto your laptop or ipad and
do editing using Windows Movie Maker or any
other software and then upload to online space
from where you can now share the video
Video sharing and Compressor softwares. (Get
the softwares from the organisers)

40. CHALLENGES OF VLOGGING
The major challenge is connectivity or access
The challenge of getting people to share
Information and Knowledge.
Cost of equipment

41. MobileBlogging: MoBlog
Mobile blogging has been made possible by technological
convergence, as bloggers have been able to write, record and
upload different media all from a single, mobile device. At the
height of its growth in 2006, mobile blogging experienced 70,000
blog creations a day and 29,100 blog posts an hour.
Mobile blogging is popular among people with camera
phones which allow them to e-mail/MMS or SMS photos and video
that then appear as entries on a web site. As the ability of camera
phone users to publish their own blogs has increased, so to has the
ability for collective submissions.

42. How will audiences be finding and sharing
content?
Social sharing is key to the future of podcast and the
format lends itself to a social experience with flickr,
istagram, YouTube demonstrating how podcast can go
viral.
Social is overtaking search as a way to discover content.
Facebook overtook Google in March as a traffic driver to
the Guardian, largely down to the news outlet’s
“frictionless sharing” Facebook app.

43. How will audiences be finding and sharing
content?
New audiences will be finding and frequently viewing,
listening and watching video on social networks.
Storify is a free tool allowing anyone to curate a story by
dragging in tweets, Flickr photos, SoundCloud audio and
video from YouTube and Vimeo.
And platforms such as Storify, YouTube, Vimeo,
Bambuser, and many more have their own communities
and networks too.

44. Online Photo
The New York Times reported in 2007 that online photo
slideshows were accounting for about 10% of the website's
total pageviews
The Mansfield News Journal similarly found that visitors to
its website spent the most time looking at the paper's online
photo galleries..
An example of a successful photo gallery was msnb.com’s
"The Clarks: An American story of wealth, scandal and
mystery," which got 78 million page views by 2.2 million
unique vistors. The average viewer spent 13 minutes looking
at the photos and reading the story

45. THE BIG PICTURE: ONLINE PHOTO
Good photos are ones that help tell
the story better than text alone
would, so the photo must ADD
something significant.

46. THE BIG PICTURE: ONLINE PHOTO
The Value of photojournalism to tell
stories in compelling ways

47. Differences
Photojournalist
Photographer
Capture action verbs
(cries, explodes, fights)
Capture nouns (people, places, things)

48. Basic Tips
1) Find a topic
Subject meaningful to you, of interest - something others
will not see
2) Do your research
Document, discover, dig deep - untold stories
3) Find real story
Determine your angle - be what you are photographing
4) Dynamic capture
Connect, draw out emotions
5) Plan the shot
Visualize - walk through the venue, place, event

50. Key point #1 :
Pictures of people shaking hands or
receiving awards (better known as
“grip and grin” photos) do not add
very much to a story.

51. What makes a photo great?
•Photographs are more than just having fun...

52. So what helps tell a story?
• Humans (we respond more to people than to objects)
• Motion
• Emotion (faces!)
• Danger/Heroism
• Action
• Unusual perspectives
Look at each of the next four slides and consider
which of the elements from the list above are
present.
How does the still image convey emotion? Action?
Danger? Heroism?

53. Photo Story 1

54. Photo Story 2

55. Photo Story 3

56. Key point #2 : Faces are always better than
backs of heads.
 Faces should be at least the size of a dime when printed,
or we won’t be able to see them.
 Back of heads are dreadful to look at

57. Key point #3 : The subject of the picture
needs to be in focus.
 Bubbles are cute, but they are not news, and if they are, they
MUST BE IN FOCUS.
 This photo should never appear on a news page

58. Key point #4 : Good photos capture action.
 This is especially true with sports photos. Take photos of people
doing things.

59. BEST

60. FINAL POINT
• The purpose of a photograph that
accompanies an article (also any video,
slideshow or audio used to accompany an
article) is to help tell the story better than text
alone would. The photo must ADD something
that is not already in the article.

61. FINAL POINT
• Example: This young woman cries at the grave of her dead husband
who was killed in Iraq. The photo adds a visceral human element to
an article on the Iraq War death toll that may otherwise be too
abstract to move the reader.

62. ONLINE TOOLS FOR JOURNALIST

63. TWITTER

64. HARO

65. YOUTUBE

66. MS WINDOWS

67. Flickr

68. Picnik: Free Photo Online Editing

69. Podcasting

70. Podcasting

71. Podcasting

72. Google Trends

73. SKYPE: LIVE AUDIO/VIDEO INTERVIEW

74. LIVE VIDEO

75. Google Alert

76. Technorati

78. Wikis

79. Wikirage

80. Google Maps

81. Digital Camera

82. Social Bookmarking

83. Online Photo, Audio & Video
Q/A