Final Presentation

Elle MoxleyTanya Sneddon

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Project Summary

Business Week wants us to create local content humanizing the impact of the ongoing financial crisis. You'll work directly with students in the school's Economics and Finance of the Media course taught by Marty Steffens to report and edit stories for the web site of this prominent national publication.

Initial Project Overview

• Collaborate with BusinessWeek.com to create localized content covering economic recession

• Partner with Marty Steffens’ business journalism class to produce video pods

• Serve as reporters, editors and liaisons for BusinessWeek.com

• Establish an ongoing relationship with an external, professional media outlet

Expectations

• Fully-formed relationship with Business Week• Regular feedback from our contact at

BusinessWeek.com• Arrangements for equipment check-out

already made• Variety of skill levels in Business Journalism• A different kind of editing experience

Reality

• New, untested partnership• Sporadic communication with contact at

Business Week• No prior arrangements made regarding

equipment checkout• Variety of skill levels in Business Journalism• A different kind of editing experience

Marty’s Expectations

• Capacity to serve as both reporters and editors

• Creation of “example” pod demonstrating incorporation of Business Week branding

Reality

• Necessary to build additional skill set as part of an upper level class

• BusinessWeek.com in process of developing new branding

Initial Plan

• Turn BusinessWeek.com partnership into legitimate capstone project– Create a different reporting/editing experience

unavailable in traditional newsrooms

• Take an active role in student learning– Establish office hours– Compile resource guide

• Communicate regularly with Business Week about needs, wants and expectations

Timeline

• Ambitious six-phase program of internal deadlines

• Early conversations with BusinessWeek.com– Redesign of web branding meant we would have

to wait to incorporate Business Week logos– BusinessWeek.com’s “wait and see” attitude

meant we would be defining the project ourselves

• Presentation of available resources to Business Journalism class

Business Journalism

• Class included students in every different sequence at every stage of their education

• Students had very little knowledge of the project prior to our presentation

• Students self-selected groups within their sequences, putting print at a disadvantage

• Many groups waited until the last week to check out equipment or to use office hours

Problems with Equipment

• Saving video projects– School servers (especially Bengal) ill-equipped to

handle large video projects– Students who shared external hard drives couldn’t

edit at the same time

• Incorporating BusinessWeek.com branding– Couldn’t add necessary font to lab computers– Few students had Photoshop on notebooks– Lack of experience using supers

Other Concerns

• Students without a multimedia background discouraged easily, impacting overall quality

• Few groups checked in with us prior to submission, despite being a requirement

• Many groups were reluctant to make edits after submitting projects to Marty

• Though internally we can judge projects by ability, BusinessWeek.com has no way of accessing level of experience

Notes about Projects

• Inconsistent application of BusinessWeek.com branding, even within same project

• Noticeable fluctuations in audio levels/quality• Solid reporting but lack of narrative• Most pods were too short (less than three

minutes) or too long (more than four minutes)• Surprisingly, just two of ten groups used

SoundSlides instead of shooting video

Student Work

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

PEORIA, Il. - Layoffs at the local Caterpillar plant have residents wondering if there’s hope for Peoria’s future (3:13).

Student Work

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Centralia, Mo. - The declining value of commodities will hurt local farmers, many of whom borrowed against last year’s high prices (2:47).

Initial Research Strategy

• Primary Research Question: How can we tell compelling business stories with multimedia?– Qualitative analysis of multimedia– Quantitative analysis of web traffic

• Secondary Research Question: How can we maintain our partnership with Business Week and explore untapped external partnerships?

Preliminary Research

• Content analysis of BusinessWeek.com– Video commentary, traditional feature packages,

taped Q&As, anchor reports, pods– Heavy reliance on “talking head” journalism– Poor shooting techniques

• By targeting web video weaknesses in our own pods, we hoped to subtly suggest improvements to Business Week’s in-house multimedia staff

Problems

• Site analytics unavailable– Business Week considers this information

proprietary

• Underestimation of production component– Time spent negotiating logistics with

BusinessWeek.com– Time spent assisting students

Revised Research Strategy

• Primary Research Question: How can the journalism school establish and maintain mutually beneficial external partnerships?– Interviews with collaborators– Online “best practices” guide

• Secondary Research Question: How should the journalism school incorporate external partnerships into curriculum?

External Partnerships Research

• Convergence Partnerships– Current TV– Newsy.com

• KMOV• The Economy Project

Convergence Partnerships

• Discussion with professors Mike McKean, Lynda Kraxberger and Karen Mitchell about the convergence department’s external collaborations – Students produced pods for Current TV, a news

channel that relies on user-generated content– Students examine global news bias in video

reports for Newsy.com

KMOV

• Discussion with senior convergence students JJ Bailey and Steve Weinman about their capstone project – Convergence students generate Tiger sports

coverage for KMOV, the CBS station in St. Louis– Capstone students explore other local outlets for

sports coverage generated by journalism students

The Economy Project

• Discussion with KBIA staff members about their attempts to launch an interactive Missouri newsroom for NPR coverage of the economic recession– John Bailey, web editor– Janet Saidi, news director– Maria Totoraitis, capstone student

Best Practices for Partnerships

• Web guide for journalism students, faculty and partners interested in a different kind of newsroom experience

• Includes video clips of interviews, tips for establishing and maintaining partnerships and ideas for future collaborations

Missouri Method 2.0

• How can students benefit from working outside of traditional Missouri newsrooms?– Regional and national newsrooms demand a

higher quality of work– Provides experience in reporting, peer-editing and

producing outside of local newsrooms

• Is the solution a stable of partners we can work with on a rotating basis?

Possible Barriers

• Business Journalism not offered every semester

• Many students lack multimedia training• Additional workload for professor

Possible Solutions

• Offer “themed” Intermediate Writing and Advanced Reporting classes

• Incorporate opportunities for multimedia into every student’s newsroom experience– In a perfect world, 4802 would be a required class

for ALL journalism students

• Professors should commit to partnerships only if willing to see they succeed