F.R. "Fritz" Nordengren

A speaker emphasizes his point with a hammer during a rally to support dairy farmers in Manchester, Iowa

A project I worked on last week reminded me of work we were doing in the late 1990′s and early 2000′s with story telling on the web.  Before I  tell you about that, let me explain how I got to Manchester, Iowa for rally to support dairy farmers last Saturday.

The work of college faculty isn’t just about standing at the head of a class.  In professional terms, faculty members on most college campuses have three components to their job description:  teaching, service, and research.  There are many nouns for these primary responsibilities.  There are also a myriad of way to define and divide a faculty member’s time spent on these activities.  This is collectively called the “workload policy” which is  something similar to the Loch Ness creature and Sasquatch…a great deal of fun to discuss and debate, but no one has actually seen one.

Service is work a faculty member does, often at no fee, for the community in which he or she lives and contributes. They become the public scholar, sharing their expertise with those who want and need it to make a strong an move vibrant community.

If you follow farm and consumer news, you are aware of a very difficult time in dairy farming.  As I reviewed my Twitter account last week, I learned of Farm Aid’s search for volunteers to help at a rally. So I reached out to the people of Farm Aid and offered to help them document the efforts in Manchester to bring attention to the problems facing dairy farmers in Iowa and the US.

Self serving disclosure:  Not only is this “service” but it is providing background for an elective I am co-developing with colleagues from several disciplines tentatively called “We Are What We Eat:  Nutrition, Policy, and the Public Health of America’s Diet”. That elective deserves a post of it’s own.

A mother fans her daughter following surgery in Yerevan, Armenia in this 1999 photo. It is one of the last film images I shot on mission trips.

The project in Manchester was easy, compared to what we did in 1999.  I needed to shoot the images and hand them off or post them to Flickr.  There is even a coffee shop with free wi-fi in town.  I was shooting with Nikon D1 – a gift from a friend.  It took me back the early days, shooting from Armenia with Tom Burton, and the first time I saw a Nikon D1 digital camera.  After shooting with it for a day, in 1999, I never returned to film except as a back up.  Photography for me had changed.

I also recalled going into countries with only the hope of a modem line and access to AOL as a way to publish our work in real time.  Huy Nguyen’s photo of me in surgical garb, listening to the modem sounds on an Apple G3 Powerbook reminds me of that November, being in Ha Noi on election night 2000 and trying to explain to our Vietnamese hosts what was going on in American politics.  Later that week, we were evicted from our hotel room a few days early to make room for the secret service and President’s Clinton’s entourage.

Thinking of those trips, and how we crated remote live Web reporting, and producing some projects for clients like MAG -  the Mines Advisory Group featuring the brilliant lens work of Sean Sutton, there is still something powerful and immediate about Web documentary making.  It is even more powerful with the addition of so many new storytellers.  it required a strong edit and a producer who can focus the message.  That’s what I’ll be doing with my colleagues as we put together our elective….the subject of my next post.

Okay, here it is: A record company executive, an educator, and a cell phone executive all go to a meeting in at the Venetian in Macau….

Clearly by now, you’ve figured out the joke: educators don’t have a travel budgets that let them go to Macau. So the educator wasn’t there! So instead, we rely on media and blog reports of the event.

Media Post, MacUser, a PC World staff blogger, and Slashdot picked up the quote from Warner Music Group CEO Edger Bronfman about their company’s mistakes in understanding content and consumers.

Take it from us music industry folks. We used to fool ourselves. We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding.

And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find…and as a result of course, consumers won.

Today there’s a new consumer war being waged on the mobile front. And the perceived wisdom that consumers are “complacent” or that the “stickiness” of mobile services—established billing relationships, breadth of network coverage, brand loyalty—is enough to grow or even preserve your subscriber base without continually providing compelling consumer experiences, will prove to be wrong, dead wrong.

Bronfman’s corporate mea culpa was urging the mobile phone industry leaders not to imitate the failed business model of the recording industry. When I substitute “higher education” for “music industry” and “lifelong learners” for “consumer” or “customer”, and I see amazing parallels and similarities to what we do.

A group of my colleagues were involved in an email exchange over the weekend which included a citation that is similar to my earlier blog on EDUCAUSE Connect about the “producer” role of faculty. My colleague shared this from Lynch’s The online educator: A guide to creating the virtual classroom.

“To use a theater analogy, the traditional instructor serves as the lead actor- the one who must carry the show, even though there is allowance for other characters to interact. In contrast, the online instructor is more like the director- one who ensures that all the characters play their part and that the show moves smoothly from beginning to end, adding his or her expertise only when the actors seem to need assistance”

As educators, much of what we do is the creation of knowledge (content) and the delivery of knowledge (content). Whether the new role of the educator is director, producer, or some new iteration, there is significant strategy to learn from the missteps of the music business.

If you like, you can grab a .pdf version of Bronfman’s speech directly from Warner Music Group’s web site.

Has the media pounded this topic into the ground yet? Do you remember what happened today in 1997? Do you remember what you were doing?

I remember because it changed the way I tell stories. And probably served as a role model for the way others tell stories, too.

Mark Hertzberg broke the news via an email discussion group for the National Press Photographers Association. I was a member and when his email popped up around 8:30, I read with great interest:


Subject: AP/Princess Di accident and Paparazzi
From: Hertzberg
Date: 1997/08/30
Message-ID:
Sender: NPPA Discussion List
Comments: ********************************************************
Reply-To: Hertzberg
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.nppa-l
One posting, two subjects, to save bandwith:

1)
>I had a hiatus from daily PJ'ing for a few years, but back then AP paid us
>for submissions. Is this still the case? or only for freelancers and not
>newspaper staffers? Some photogs say yes, others say no. All I know is that
>I ain't getting paid for stuff I send from my paper.

The policy varies from state to state. Wisconsin does not pay. Contact your
local bureau photographer or bureau chief to find out more.

2) It's about 8:30 p.m. central time and CNN is reporting a serious
accident involving Princess Diana in a tunnel near the Seine in Paris. The
gentleman she has been recently romantically linked to was apparently
killed in the crash. A bodyguard/chauffeur was apparently killed, as well.
What is going to be interesting for us to follow in our profession
is that the CNN anchors are questioning tourist eyewitnesses about the
possibility of paparazzi on motorcycles being in the area. They want to
know if they were indeed following the princess, and, if so, if they have
have been the possible cause of the crash. An American tourist says a
photographer with a "professional camera" was on the scene in "five
seconds."

Mark Hertzberg

In the aftermath, the idea of paparrazi and photojournalists being one in the same created an opportunity to tell a story about life as a daily photojournalist working in a community newspaper.  The result was Behind the Viewfinder – A Year in the Life of Photojournalism.  The photojournalists, through me as editor, wrote journals — early blogs — about their daily work and life.  These increbly talented individuals brought digital storytelling on the web to a never before seen level.

Later this year, the site will include a recorded interview of the people who participated in the project.  The interview, recorded in 1999, has been reedited from it’s original public radio broadcast.

Okay, it’s a 15 year old reference to a Mel Gibson movie, but I think it works. A Year of Living Dangerously is the Peter Wier directed story of Guy Hamilton (Gibson) in his first job as an international correspondent.

Sigourney Weaver is Gibson’s co-star and the story paints international journalism in a very romantic light. I suppose having Sigourney Weaver on your next shoot would even paint the “ladies of the D.A.R. potluck” assignment in a romantic light, but that’s the subject of anther column.

Billy Kwan, the photojournalist in the story (played by Linda Hunt) tells Hamilton, “We’ll make a great team, old man. You for the words, me for the pictures. I can be your eyes.”

And they set out to tell an important story. One they hope will change the world in 1965 Indonesia. It’s a romantic notion, using your skills to make a difference. Photojournalists often hope that something they do with make a difference. The Year of Living Dangerously is the stuff war stories are made of. Our own site, the Digital Journalist is filled with some pretty intense stories – both of the subjects shot by the talented people here, but also the behind the scenes stories of what it took to get the photos. The “dangerous” makes the story seem even more important.

But if you read the title of this piece – and have been patient enough with me to read this far, you can change your focus from dangerous to generous.

2001 is going to be a year of living generously for some producers and photojournalists I know. They are giving back to people in need by working with a non profit organization called “New Media for Non Profits” http://www.nmnp.org/. New Media for Non Profits grew out of some conversations with a number of people – and much of it connects to the columns I write here. The interesting thing about a non profit like NMNP is that no one “owns” it. It’s a collaboration of talents that has a board of directors who govern it, but the work produced is directed by need rather than profit, commercial appeal, or shareholder greed. (Don’t get me wrong, profit, commercial appeal and greed are all good in their right time and place, NMNP just isn’t one of them.)

So living generously this year is a way of saying these producers and photojournalists are giving back, working to make a difference with the images, words, and stories they tell.

Donald Winslow is my fellow producer and co founder of NMNP. Both of us have been extremely fortunate in our careers and by coincidence were in a position to devote some time and energy to getting this non profit started. In his words, its time to help other non profits do a better job of telling the world who they are, “This is why we founded NMNP.org, to better help the people and non-profit organizations of the world who work hard to make life better for those who can’t help themselves when they need help the most, and to help those organization’s whose goal it is to improve our society, our culture, and the environment.”

NMNP will be securing grant money, foundation support, and other funds to make it possible to fund new media and traditional story telling profits on behalf of charities in the world. Charities that need to tell their story and producers and photojournalists that are looking to tell stories are coming to the group. NMNP will be the place that helps bring the two together, and find reasonable budgets to fund quality work.

People who are able to give their time and talents are donating some of the work being done. Some of the work is paid work at fair rates. But it’s through the generosity of producers and photojournalists like you that the real work will be done. Generosity in the form of a donated print, generosity in the form of bringing a creative mind to a project, and generosity in the form of taking the time away from vacations to shoot a project that makes a difference in someone’s life.

2001 is my year of living generously. I hope that by the 2002, we can all look back at something we’ve done this year and seen that we have made a difference.

Learn your skills. Find your passion. Make a difference.

PS: There are literally hundreds of people who have been instrumental in getting this rolling. I can’t thank each of you here, but if you’re reading this, you know who you are and thank you.

Interactive categories went over big at 58th Annual Pictures of the Year competition.

There were a combined 51 entries in the two interactive categories at this year’s POY judging in Columbia, Missouri.

As a new media producer, and someone who has seen the high quality work that typically wins this award, I was curious about the judging process and when given the chance to watch part of the judging, I made the trek to Columbia last month.

How is it done? Web entrants are asked to send in a CD or other hard media version of their site, along with the web address of the project. One of the most striking things about judging was the presentation of projects. The judges then sit and watch a large screen projection of the project as an assistant navigates the mouse and their collective direction. The judges toss out links to “click” like captains barking orders to navigate ships into a harbor.

The other most striking thing was that the projects were viewed on one OS (Mac) and only in one browser (Netscape 4.7) and through a large multimedia projector, which makes the screen taller than the judges.

As a producer, I know two things about the web. First, it’s a one-to-one medium. Unlike television where several people can sit across the room and watch a linear program together, the web is one person in front of a screen, making choices about what to read or see or hear next.

The other thing I know is that web browsers show web sites differently. We typically test our projects in a number of web browsers (The Netscapes [4.05, 4.5, 4.7, 6 and 6.01] both on Mac, PC, and Linux) and the Internet Explorers (4.0 5.0, 5.5 again, on Mac and PC) and a few others like Opera. And also, 3 or 4 flavors of AOL’s built in browser on Mac’ and PC’s.

But for this judging, POY chose to limit the experience to Mac and Netscape 4.7. Which really reinforces the fact that on the web, it is an audience of one that matters most. In this case, the “one” is one system viewed by 5 judges.

The judges had a range of new media experience. Some had build multimedia projects, others had not. But really impressed me was the time they spent with each entry. Even if a site didn’t immediately grab their attention, they dug deeper to explore and review it. However, it usually was true that if a project didn’t capture the judges immediately, the deeper site was just as un-interesting.

The judging was kind. In most cases, the occasional broken link was assumed to be functional by the judges. During first round judging, any judge who felt strongly about a project could request that it be included in the second round, even in the other judges had voted it “out”. As a result, here are some things I came away with as general reactions:

1) Big media houses have finally embraced new media. As you look at the list of winners, it accurately reflects the number of entrants from large media organizations. It’s odd to me that a media so easy to publish in, in a contest essentially made up of entries submitted by individuals, lacked a majority of projects entered by individuals. I know from my own surfing, lots of quality sites did not enter the contest.

2) In general, judges disliked technology for technology’s sake. Two projects, judged back to back, included panoramic interactive photos. The judges universally disliked the one of photos only, but enjoyed one which included other story telling elements. As one of the judges commented, ” (if there are) lots of bells and whistles there better be a tune.”

3) Flash is universal. The use of Macromedia’s Flash technology in web projects is everywhere. The projects used flash seamlessly and in most cases, the use of Flash added to a project’s liability.

4) A universal dislike seemed to be Flash interactions that completely removed control from the user. A note to remember, make sure there is some way to navigate and control flash presentations including: stop, back to beginning, or jump specific images.

5) Judges seem to really like flash presentations that teased  in an almost television style – the subject or content of the story. Usually 10  15 seconds in length, these “attract sequences” pulled judges into the project and gave them an overture to the story.

6) Unlike Flash, the use of video is still a hodge podge of interfaces, and technology. One large media company had several entries, and each one used a different metaphor and interface for video. Even accounting for different delivery of video (Real, QuickTime and Windows media) video applications were clumsier than Flash. As interactive sites use more video, producers will need to have developers take care of video details behind the scenes in server based scripts to determine the appropriate format of video, and then show it to the user consistently.

Some of the projects were photography for photography’s sake. Online portfolios of amazing images caught the judges eyes even when there was a lack of a story other than “here’s my work on line.” Others were photo packages designed to supplement on-line reporting. Audio seems to be thought of as an add-on, rather than an integral part of the project. One of the projects I watched had the depth of audio experience of good public radio reporting, Some used audio effects to give feed back on mouse clicks (clicks, music notes, or the over used shutter-motordrive sound), the judges were split on whether this helped or hurt a project.

The winners are good projects. The content was interesting. If more individuals would enter their private stories, next year’s POY could be a very interesting contest.