Daniel Meadows on digital storytelling

You’ve probably seen it before, but not realised there is a name for it. Digital Storytelling involves using audio recordings along with pictures and the occasional video clip to tell basic stories.

JOMEC lecturer Daniel Meadows explained how the medium’s low barriers for entry can allow people who would not normally have a place to record their stories a chance to write their own histories. Compared to the expensive process of professional video editing, it’s a remarkably empowering and effective way to let people tell stories on their own terms.

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You see, er, low-cost media such as digital storytelling can…

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Right, ah, think that’s it sorted out now. Worth checking out is Daniel’s website, which has plenty of great examples of digital storytelling. His digital storytelling workshops allowed people who would normally never have a shot at a recording studio to produce memorable and engaging clips.

I was also interested to learn just how old digital storytelling is as a medium. Like many in my generation I’d assumed that online video clips pretty much started with YouTube. But since its so simple to put together, I suppose there’s no reason why it couldn’t pre-date Web 2.0 by several years.

I’ve had a few ideas for my own digital storytelling projects, though which one will be the most feasible I’ll have to wait and see.

#tjcardiff

So you’re a major player in the UK media, are you? Hope you received an invite to Cardiff University’s Tomorrow’s Journalists conference then.

Bringing together successful graduates from the School of Journalism, current students and assorted movers and shakers, it was a fascinating day of lectures and talks.

Pete Clifton (BBC), Peter Barron (Google), Nick Brett (BBC Magazines)

Starting off the day, and chaired by graduate Alex Thomson, these three new media lads discussed the ‘challenge of convergence.’ Pete Clifton said that most multimedia newsrooms had a long way to go before they could truly describe themselves as such, but the BBC was yards ahead of the game. He showed us pictures of W1, the BBC’s planned ultra-modern newsroom which brings all the news-gathering arms of the organisation under one roof.

Peter Barron and Nick Brett both raved about the advent of tablet computers, with Brett calling the iPad ‘the magazine’s messiah.’ Barron, a man who has all of Benelux under his remit, also elaborated on the concepts of cloud computing and monetising traditional media’s online content.

Simon Lewis

Lewis was Director of Communications at 10 Downing Street during Gordon Brown’s most turbulent period at the end of the last government. Despite dealing with the press at their most ferocious, he’s keen to see a more conciliatory atmosphere between the press and their sworn enemies the political spinners.

Malcolm Tucker he was not. His cool, unflappable style and fresh ideas for reforming the lobby seemed to win over the audience.

Alan Edmunds (Western Mail), Ron Jones (Tinnopolis), Arwel Ellis Owen (S4C), Clive Jones (S4C)

What is the future of regional news? Bleak. I think that’s the one word I’ll take away from this especially gloomy session of the conference. That’s mainly down to the S4C guys’ complaints about a forthcoming cut in public funding, which could see the Welsh channel’s future in jeopardy.

Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt therefore emerged as the villain of the conference, but fellow student Peter Smith did ask if regional language funding was perhaps a valid target for austerity measures.

Tomorrow’s Journalists- Today

The last batch of speakers included Hannah Waldram, Harriet Brett, and Sally Rourke. All recent graduates, they’ve used their new media skills picked up at Cardiff University to help them get ahead in their varied mediums. Sally’s fun-looking VJ clips got me excited for video training later in the course.

Post conference fitba

They day after the conference was marked by Jomec’s annual football showdown between staff, students and graduate ‘Oldboys,’ captained by Guardian blogging supremo Steve Busfield.

I managed to set my prejudices aside for long enough to cover the event by live-tweeting it under the hashtag #jomecderby. Fortunately we were able to integrate this with Adam Smith’s live-tweeting event on Scribble Live, which I’ll be sure to use in the future.

First Lecture: Claire Wardle of BBC College of Journalism

Claire Wardle‘s talk on journalism in the age of new media was an interesting prelude to the Tomorrow’s Journalists conference at Cardiff University.

The word ‘convergence’ is often used (perhaps over-used) in relation to journalism, but Claire, a teacher at the BBC’s journalism college, was able to spell out what it really means. Journalists will have to pick up lots of new skills as consumers’ tastes change; video reporting, podcasting, and managing social media. Yet this is offset to some extent by the massive array of tools the internet provides us to help us research.

At the very least, with my new-found knowledge of personal information search aggregators like 123people.com and 192.com I can get started in the privated detective industry if journalism doesn’t work out. Using Google to sneak past certain firewalls is another useful trick I picked up.

Though Claire sang the praises of Netvibes, I think I’ll probably stick with my humble Google Reader account for RSS feeds. This is down to a combination of being stuck in my ways and not being sure that tabbed RSS feeds can bring me a huge amount more than Twitter lists.

Another interesting fact was that the New York Times now posts videos of its editorial meetings online. As far as I know, the closest any major British media have come to this is Krishnan Guru-Murthy and the some of Channel 4 news teams’ tweets around their meetings. Wouldn’t be a bad idea at all if a few British papers opened up their editorial process in this way.