Steve Mort at One-Man-Band Reporter talks about tricks to create a “shallow depth of field in interviews when all else fails – ie., you have no space or background to create the desired look for your shot.”

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Create shallow depth of field in interviews

Colombia Columbia University in New York is placing more emphasis on teaching students about the business side of journalism, and all the online and multimedia skills they’ll need to make it in the future. Here’s some more info about the thoughts behind the plan.

This link comes via videographer Rudy Diaz, who shot the video for Colombia’s Columbia’s public affairs office.

UPDATE: A reader pointed out my misspelling, and I’ve updated to correct the error.

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Columbia University’s response to the journalism crisis

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links for 2009-07-10

Read Colin’s behind-the-scenes story about the story.

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Fun story from Colin Mulvany

Now the New York Times comes out with news that online videos are getting longer and longer — And people are watching just fine.

Tom Konkle, Mr. Beeler’s production partner on “Safety Geeks,” suggested that the shorter-is-better rule reflected limitations in Internet speed and server space. As computer power has improved, the video experience has too.

“A few years ago, three minutes ‘watching’ your computer felt like a novelty; now, it’s as familiar as your television set,” he said …

In short, the storytelling is superseding the stopwatch. “If there’s good storytelling and good production values, people are willing to engage with the content,” said Eric Berger, a senior vice president of Crackle, the Sony video site.

Do you think this applies to news video, or just entertainment? Will you change your ways and begin producing longer videos for your news site?

Link via NewspaperVideo Yahoo group.

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What’s holding YOU back from long videos?

Motlagh doesn’t just write stories. He shoots still photos. He shoots and edits video. He does audio. He blogs. He narrates slide shows. And because he does all of those things, he says, he has a huge advantage over free-lance foreign correspondents working in a single medium. Having multiple media skills is “still unusual,” he said. “There aren’t a whole lot of people yet who have gotten up to speed. If you are, you can make clients an offer they can’t refuse.”

Definitely read down to the part where he talks about why he decided to learn video, and how he went about teaching himself.

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A new role model for multimedia journalists

Here are some from Adam’s list that I’d like to try out:

• Vuvox
• Jamendo
• Humtoo
• Soundcloud

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Cool list of multimedia tools

I think YouTube has done a great service to online video with its new Reporters Center, which is meant to train citizens how to cover big news events with video. YouTube approached the biggest names in the business like Katie Couric, Bob Woodward and Ariana Huffington. They have created how-to videos covering topics like interviewing, telling a story, and checking facts. It goes on and on.

It launched only one week ago, and already the videos are getting tens of thousands of hits. Katie’s interviewing tutorial has nearly 80,000.

This is pretty awesome. Read more at Poynter.

Link via Journerdism.

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Great service for online video quality

Over the past month or so I’ve been collecting results for a short survey I created about solo videojournalist pay. I have about 28 responses right now, which isn’t too shabby. Still, I’d like to get more before I release the results. Could you take the survey? Only 10 questions, and a couple minutes time tops.

UPDATE: I was informed the link wasn’t working, so I’ve replaced it with the correct link. Sorry!

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Last request for survey participants

The Times produces three weekly high school shows – a game of the week, a city game of the week and an area game of the week. The goal was to create a SportsCenter style of show for readers – two talking heads (asst. SE, high school writer), a couple of coaches’ interviews and b-roll. Voila.

The trick is keeping those videos under four minutes. Talking heads have a tendency to ramble, so any insight has got to be quick and precise. It’s amazing the response those videos generate. You’re beating local TV with your extended prep coverage, which makes it all that much easier to sell to advertisers too.

When I worked at the Express-News, we produced one football video per week during high school football season, and we produced one talking-head video with a sports reporter who talked about the week in high school football. Besides that, we would sometimes do profile videos on high school athletes. These videos were always among the most popular on our site.

What are you doing to cover sports with video at your newspaper? Could you share success stories, or provide links to other news orgs who are doing a great job?

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What are you doing to cover sports with video?