The First Two Weeks
Friday, June 2, 2006
This report comes after finishing my second week at the San Jose Mercury News. At this point, I’m still mostly trying to orient myself to the newsroom while being trained for the editing desk. As per the original intention, I’m working/training as a photographer and editor and I’ve had both a shooting assignment and one features editing shift. Since the Mercury News photo department is making a big foray into Multimedia, there’s also a bit of training/learning with audio and video shooting and editing. So we’re anticipating that it will take a little bit longer for me to get up to speed.
So far, people seem optimistic about the MediaNews/Dean Singleton takeover. In a meeting with Singleton and in a recent New York Times article, Singleton seems to indicate that the Mercury News will be his multimedia laboratory:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/business/media/22singleton.html
“Mr. Singleton intends to make a showcase of The San Jose Mercury News, in the heart of Silicon Valley, as a kind of laboratory for how to meld print with the Web. He is so excited about the prospects that he plans to buy a home in the Bay Area, while keeping his primary residence in Denver. ‘All the issues we're dealing with as an industry happened first in San Jose and are more dramatic in San Jose,’ he said in an interview. ‘And if you begin to find solutions to the dramatic changes that are going on there, you've found them for all newspapers.’”
Still, people seem to be leaving every day for other papers, though just as many people are being hired. In our department, they recently hired a photographer as well as fellow Mizzou grad, Elly Oxman, as a photo editor.
I also spent a bit of time talking with Richard Koci Hernandez, the Deputy Director of Photography/Multimedia, and learned a bit about how the Mercury News is approaching their multimedia. Right now, multimedia is being treated as a new frontier. In conversations with Richard and Geri Migielicz, the Director of Photography, there seems to be a willingness to try new things without worrying about success of failure. Basically learning as you go – this same sentiment was reiterated by Nancy Andrews, the D.P. at the Detroit Free Press in a conversation about 7 months ago. Both photo departments seem to be letting the photographers learn and develop their own style and methods of multimedia presentations, rather than following the models of film and television, though I’m sure they’ll adapt some of their methods and tools.
Some details and comments about their approach:
The photography website (mercurynewsphoto.com) is basically independent of the Newspapers online site (mercurynews.com). Richard and Dai Sugano, set up the site for the department from an independent web hosting service that was paid for through the department budget. In an interesting aside, in two recent regional photojournalism contests, mercurynewsphoto.com won 1st place awards for multimedia or online journalism. In the Best of the West, they also placed 3rd place. And in the other contest, they placed ahead of mercurynews.com, which came in 2nd place.
Since their computer illustrator/Flash expert recently left for the New York Times, Richard has become the self-taught Flash expert, designing the more complicated, interactive pieces and well as setting up and administering the site. They recently updated their website design using the Wordpress blogging software, which is popular with the general public. For audio slideshows they use a program called Soundslides, which is similar to the slide show system at MSNBC.com. (Richard said they were designed by the same person.) Richard is basically trying to set up the site so that photographers and editors can easily post the slideshows themselves, without having to learn complicated computer coding. Again, similar to MSNBC.com, where the templates were all preset, and the multimedia producers, concentrated mostly on content.
Though many slideshows are produced, video is still relatively new and sparsely used. All photographers are now issued a Sony HDR-HC1 HDV (High Definition) video camera, that has adopted the HDV1080i specification, utilizing 1080 effective scanning lines within the HDV standards, recording pictures at the image bit rate of about 25 Mbps. The HDV format has about two times the horizontal resolution of a standard TV resulting in about 4 times the amount of pixels providing high quality images. This format records HD on the DV tape format. Ironically, just prior to starting the internship I spoke to Jeff Kimes, the Director of Post-Production at Aardvark Post, who said they hate posting TV shows using the HDV format, which is firewire based, and not up to the same standards as other formats.
The Mercury News is using HD because they can also pull stills for printing in the newspaper, which they’ve done several times. Staff photographer Karen Borchers shot an assignment completely on video, from which stills were extracted and printed in the paper. She didn’t touch her still camera for the assignment: http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2006/05/19/28th-annual-kiwanis-special-games/
They had some issues in the beginning with video compression and streaming, but through trial and error -- and just asking around the multimedia industry – Richard learned that a program called Sorensen Squeeze is what everyone uses to process video for the web.
The photographers are still using consumer level post-production tools from Apple’s iLife suite. iMovie HD for video editing and Garageband for sound editing. That will probably change soon as Richard has begun ordering Final Cut Express HD for the photographers (aside -- Avid’s low end mac-based edit system still doesn’t work for HD yet.) The issue here is that Final Cut is a bit more complex to learn. People will reach varying levels of competency. Also, there have been conversations about trying to edit in camera as you shoot, because it’s just too hard to get pieces ready under deadlines.
I feel that even though photojournalists will develop their own standards for multimedia storytelling, they may consider borrowing some of the methods from tv and video – specialized duties. Some people might be able to do it all well, but many may not be able to surpass a certain level. For example, in this Sunday’s AIDS: A Look Back presentation, issues of music were discussed. On a documentary, there would be a composer and sound designer/editor working on these issues. Will most of our multimedia presentations rely on canned music that may not have the nuances needed for sophisticated shows?
There may still be a need for graphics/flash experts, video editors, sound recordists and editors -- though trained with the photojournalist’s ethics. On the other hand, Richard is now playing with Final Cut Studio, including Soundtrack Pro and hopes to throw in some Adobe Aftereffects.
At the moment, I’m interested in working with video – hoping to make an easy transition into Final Cut from the Avid, and using my video shooting and directing experience in multimedia journalism. It might be a good niche to fill at the Mercury News. Since it’s summer, they have a bit more time and are working on a multimedia community story project. I may be able to work on that project, or I have an idea for another project, centered around fertility issues and sperm donors, which has always had some amount of controversy attached to it. There’s a sperm donor in the Northern CA area that has been in contact with a child he’s fathered. They’re planning to meet over the summer and seem to be willing to have their story photographed. I just started pursuing this, so we’ll see what happens.
Other miscellaneous notes:
1) Worked on some interesting photo layouts for their weekly “In-Depth” Section. Pictures would be changed according to layout.
2) The photographers and editors have been very helpful and I think it’s going to be a rewarding experience. Unlike the Bay City Times, this makes much more sense in the context of what we learned at the Missourian.
3) Geri seems to be a film fan, and open to experimenting with storytelling forms, having studied documentaries at Stanford.
4) They mentioned that there would be another job opening in the editing department and asked if I might be interested. Nothing concrete – they were just throwing it out there.
This report comes after finishing my second week at the San Jose Mercury News. At this point, I’m still mostly trying to orient myself to the newsroom while being trained for the editing desk. As per the original intention, I’m working/training as a photographer and editor and I’ve had both a shooting assignment and one features editing shift. Since the Mercury News photo department is making a big foray into Multimedia, there’s also a bit of training/learning with audio and video shooting and editing. So we’re anticipating that it will take a little bit longer for me to get up to speed.
So far, people seem optimistic about the MediaNews/Dean Singleton takeover. In a meeting with Singleton and in a recent New York Times article, Singleton seems to indicate that the Mercury News will be his multimedia laboratory:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/business/media/22singleton.html
“Mr. Singleton intends to make a showcase of The San Jose Mercury News, in the heart of Silicon Valley, as a kind of laboratory for how to meld print with the Web. He is so excited about the prospects that he plans to buy a home in the Bay Area, while keeping his primary residence in Denver. ‘All the issues we're dealing with as an industry happened first in San Jose and are more dramatic in San Jose,’ he said in an interview. ‘And if you begin to find solutions to the dramatic changes that are going on there, you've found them for all newspapers.’”
Still, people seem to be leaving every day for other papers, though just as many people are being hired. In our department, they recently hired a photographer as well as fellow Mizzou grad, Elly Oxman, as a photo editor.
I also spent a bit of time talking with Richard Koci Hernandez, the Deputy Director of Photography/Multimedia, and learned a bit about how the Mercury News is approaching their multimedia. Right now, multimedia is being treated as a new frontier. In conversations with Richard and Geri Migielicz, the Director of Photography, there seems to be a willingness to try new things without worrying about success of failure. Basically learning as you go – this same sentiment was reiterated by Nancy Andrews, the D.P. at the Detroit Free Press in a conversation about 7 months ago. Both photo departments seem to be letting the photographers learn and develop their own style and methods of multimedia presentations, rather than following the models of film and television, though I’m sure they’ll adapt some of their methods and tools.
Some details and comments about their approach:
The photography website (mercurynewsphoto.com) is basically independent of the Newspapers online site (mercurynews.com). Richard and Dai Sugano, set up the site for the department from an independent web hosting service that was paid for through the department budget. In an interesting aside, in two recent regional photojournalism contests, mercurynewsphoto.com won 1st place awards for multimedia or online journalism. In the Best of the West, they also placed 3rd place. And in the other contest, they placed ahead of mercurynews.com, which came in 2nd place.
Since their computer illustrator/Flash expert recently left for the New York Times, Richard has become the self-taught Flash expert, designing the more complicated, interactive pieces and well as setting up and administering the site. They recently updated their website design using the Wordpress blogging software, which is popular with the general public. For audio slideshows they use a program called Soundslides, which is similar to the slide show system at MSNBC.com. (Richard said they were designed by the same person.) Richard is basically trying to set up the site so that photographers and editors can easily post the slideshows themselves, without having to learn complicated computer coding. Again, similar to MSNBC.com, where the templates were all preset, and the multimedia producers, concentrated mostly on content.
Though many slideshows are produced, video is still relatively new and sparsely used. All photographers are now issued a Sony HDR-HC1 HDV (High Definition) video camera, that has adopted the HDV1080i specification, utilizing 1080 effective scanning lines within the HDV standards, recording pictures at the image bit rate of about 25 Mbps. The HDV format has about two times the horizontal resolution of a standard TV resulting in about 4 times the amount of pixels providing high quality images. This format records HD on the DV tape format. Ironically, just prior to starting the internship I spoke to Jeff Kimes, the Director of Post-Production at Aardvark Post, who said they hate posting TV shows using the HDV format, which is firewire based, and not up to the same standards as other formats.
The Mercury News is using HD because they can also pull stills for printing in the newspaper, which they’ve done several times. Staff photographer Karen Borchers shot an assignment completely on video, from which stills were extracted and printed in the paper. She didn’t touch her still camera for the assignment: http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2006/05/19/28th-annual-kiwanis-special-games/
They had some issues in the beginning with video compression and streaming, but through trial and error -- and just asking around the multimedia industry – Richard learned that a program called Sorensen Squeeze is what everyone uses to process video for the web.
The photographers are still using consumer level post-production tools from Apple’s iLife suite. iMovie HD for video editing and Garageband for sound editing. That will probably change soon as Richard has begun ordering Final Cut Express HD for the photographers (aside -- Avid’s low end mac-based edit system still doesn’t work for HD yet.) The issue here is that Final Cut is a bit more complex to learn. People will reach varying levels of competency. Also, there have been conversations about trying to edit in camera as you shoot, because it’s just too hard to get pieces ready under deadlines.
I feel that even though photojournalists will develop their own standards for multimedia storytelling, they may consider borrowing some of the methods from tv and video – specialized duties. Some people might be able to do it all well, but many may not be able to surpass a certain level. For example, in this Sunday’s AIDS: A Look Back presentation, issues of music were discussed. On a documentary, there would be a composer and sound designer/editor working on these issues. Will most of our multimedia presentations rely on canned music that may not have the nuances needed for sophisticated shows?
There may still be a need for graphics/flash experts, video editors, sound recordists and editors -- though trained with the photojournalist’s ethics. On the other hand, Richard is now playing with Final Cut Studio, including Soundtrack Pro and hopes to throw in some Adobe Aftereffects.
At the moment, I’m interested in working with video – hoping to make an easy transition into Final Cut from the Avid, and using my video shooting and directing experience in multimedia journalism. It might be a good niche to fill at the Mercury News. Since it’s summer, they have a bit more time and are working on a multimedia community story project. I may be able to work on that project, or I have an idea for another project, centered around fertility issues and sperm donors, which has always had some amount of controversy attached to it. There’s a sperm donor in the Northern CA area that has been in contact with a child he’s fathered. They’re planning to meet over the summer and seem to be willing to have their story photographed. I just started pursuing this, so we’ll see what happens.
Other miscellaneous notes:
1) Worked on some interesting photo layouts for their weekly “In-Depth” Section. Pictures would be changed according to layout.
2) The photographers and editors have been very helpful and I think it’s going to be a rewarding experience. Unlike the Bay City Times, this makes much more sense in the context of what we learned at the Missourian.
3) Geri seems to be a film fan, and open to experimenting with storytelling forms, having studied documentaries at Stanford.
4) They mentioned that there would be another job opening in the editing department and asked if I might be interested. Nothing concrete – they were just throwing it out there.
posted by LiPo Ching at 10:59 PM
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