An Interview with Teresa Lane

Anyone out there who reads this blog will know that I both break promises and am terrible at blogging.  The post on the two local filmmakers never got put up because after my interview with them they invited me to come onto one of their shoots and get some behind the scenes footage for my piece.  Since then we have not been able to work out a time we can all get together and make this happen.  I’ll keep working on it though so look for a post on this in the near future.

In the meantime I’m posting an assignment for my Journalism 111 class, the first part of a series on a news organization and their switch to multimedia reporting.  This interview was with a young student from WSUV.  She’s also an old friend of mine, and really it was just a treat for me to sit down and talk to the gorgeous Teresa Lane.  Be sure to check out her blog linked at the end!

April 27^th, 2012

I met up with Teresa Lane by the coffee machines in the new downtown library.  She greeted me with her usual, “hey what’s up?” as she sat totally comfortable and relaxed.  After snapping batteries into my audio recorder and letting her know that she should feel free to interject with interviewing tips, we began talking about multimedia journalism.

Robbin Goss:  Alright, this is Teresa Lane.

Teresa Lane:  Hello.

R.G.  Hello.  Um ok Teresa so we’re going to be talking about multimedia journalism and I hear that you work for the VanCouger newspaper and WSU Vancouver.

T.L.  Yes.

R.G.  What is your position at the VanCouger?

T.L.  I’m a reporter at the VanCouger.  I’ve been working there since January.  Mostly I just, you know, every edition of the VanCouger I try and put in 2 articles.

R.G.  At the VanCouger, how have you seen, or have you seen at all, any kind of a switch from printed news to a multimedia grounding?

T.L.  The VanCouger itself hasn’t really done that.  We don’t have a website yet.

R.G.  In how you have used multimedia in your journalism, what do you see as some advantages and then some disadvantages of using that?

T.L.  Well one of the articles that I wrote was about disability services at WSUV and I think, you know, one of the things is that it’s really beneficial to be able to take pictures of things and to videotape things because it allows people that maybe can’t read or don’t have as good of vision or that kind of thing to also experience whatever you’re reporting about.  There’s that - of course there’s that aspect of being able to describe something entirely without words which is also nice.  I mean you don’t really wanna read an article that’s all description.  You wanna know the facts.  But when you see a picture you’re like, “Ok that was what the event looked like,” and that is cool.

R.G.  What do you think the future of new reporting and journalism is going to look like?

T.L.  In my COM101 class, we talked about mobile applications a lot.  And I think that, you know, and more these days people want to, even instead of computers or just the internet on the computer, they wanna be able to have an application on their phone that says, “Tell me the news,” and then, “Oh well this happened today,” and, “oh isn’t that sad.”

One of the things someone said in my class was that, “Instead of looking for the news, the news finds you that way.”  I think that that’s really powerful.  And in some ways, it’s also kind of scary because we’re being told what to think rather than going out and trying to find things that we want.

We walked down to The Academy to take a couple pictures.

R.G.  As a news writer do you embrace your reader getting found by the news, or would you still like the reader to be actively looking for your writing?

T.L.  Being part of a newspaper, I think it’s really powerful to be able to appeal to your audience definitely.  And I think that if we had an online website that we would be able to access more readers and access maybe the people that don’t want to pick up a newspaper every day or someone like that.   I think that being found by your reader is not necessarily the way people are going about things any more.

Teresa’s blog:  wherethingsbegin.wordpress.com

Thanks everyone for reading and till next time, Valete!  (Latin)

Multimedia Journalism Assignment: Tracking 2 Blogs

             The two blogs I have been tracking for the past two weeks are; Philip Bloom’s blog about filmmaking, specifically with DSLR cameras, and the United Nations Wire, a blog written by the UN and containing top news stories from around the world.  In this week’s update on the two blogs, I will give each of them a brief overview and talk about their target audiences.

            Philip Bloom’s blog is the main part of his website philipbloom.net.  As I found out by following Philip Bloom on twitter, he is very tech savvy and vocal.  He tweets almost hourly.  His blog is likewise updated around 5-6 times every week.  Most of his posts are about events that he attends or hosts, reviews of new equipment, features of people (both photographers and not), and occasionally segments containing tips for up and coming filmmakers. 

            The demographic that Philip Bloom’s blog is aiming for is fairly diverse.  Although the theme of DSLR filming is probably prominent in most of his followers, there is not much else that singularly defines them.  Age targeting does not play into his posting (although he does tend to use younger phrases and things like smiley faces).  He also travels all over the world making frequent comments about the places he stops, so location doesn’t play a part. 

            The UN Wire takes firstly the form of a daily email to its followers.  Getting both the emails and subscribing to the blog like I did is completely pointless because they contain the same articles, although many more people use the email option.  Many of the articles cover similar topics to things being discussed currently in the UN as far as I can tell, and many of them have fairly brief commentary and additional information sections and then link you to articles from world known media outlets that cover the same topic of the article or were cited. 

            The UN Wire doesn’t seem like it has an audience that it actively seeks out because there is no commercial purpose behind it.  That being said, most of the briefs and linked articles have a sophisticated upper-class feel to them that will both appeal to some and get on other’s nerves.  The fact of many more email subscribers than blog followers could also hint at a slightly older and less tech savvy audience.

            Next week I will go into more specifics about the blogs and explain what I think about some of their blogging practices.  

Ha det bra!  (Norwegian) 

Purposes

Of course the umbrella purpose of this blog is to complete an assignment in my Multimedia Journalism class at Clark College. For this reason I will be posting occasionally about topics not related to the theme of the blog, but which are required studying for the class.
The second purpose of this blog is to continue my enlightenment into the world of the interconnected web of the world wide web, whether it is on a device or a good old tower and monitor. This enlightenment of such social and news media as Twitter and Blogger are a result of necessity. I hope my previous view on these sites, and current view, will become clearer as I post about Multimedia Journalism.
The last purpose of this blog is an outlet, and hopefully a catalyst, of my interest in learning about and producing cinematography and photography.
To leave with a cliff hanger, I will say that I am lining up an interview with a local duo who produce quirky YouTube videos. I hope to have a filmed interview and a link to their page up by late next week.
Thanks for reading and till next time, tot siens! (Afrikaans)