Yes, it’s been quiet around these parts.
I’ve been temporarily sidelined by local elections and pneumonia, neither of which I can seem to put behind me even though they should be done by now.
I have lots in store, though, so don’t wander off. Fun stuff to come on Google Wave, the role of a social media editor in today’s newsrooms and lots and lots of links.
Probably my favorite project, Seen and Heard was a popular blog on local people-watching on JSOnline from 2005 to 2007. In addition to my usual work duties, I wrote this first person narrative blog as a labor of love. Even though the JS site did not yet have blog technology that could support commenting, I got a tremendous amount of email every day in response to my posts.
It is no longer featured on the JS site following their redesign last year, but I have an archive link here that will need to do until I can archive it elsewhere for myself.
Although I was a regular producer for WKSU, my own voice very rarely actually appeared on the radio. Lucky for me, during the holidays I had more opportunity to get a piece of my own on the air. When the Inventor’s Hall of Fame in Akron, OH (in our coverage area) announced it would be inducting the inventor of the recipe for green bean casserole in November of 2003, I jumped at the chance to record a holiday feature.
I conducted the interviews, recorded the on-scene and studio audio and produced the entire piece in Cool Edit Pro.
This final product aired on Thanksgiving Day, 2003:
I spear-headed the start of the Journal Sentinel‘s daily news podcast in 2006. It started with me or another member of the online staff writing, voicing and producing the podcast in Sound Edit Pro each night, but eventually I trained several copy editors to join in a daily rotation for podcasting.
Here are a couple of podcasts I voiced and produced myself during that time. Once I get the stupid Flash player to actually work on this site, I’ll have a pretty audio player to play them here.
Here’s one from February 6, 2007 and one from March 1, 2007.
I was incredibly lucky to have spent a few years working at WKSU-FM, an excellent Northeast Ohio NPR station, for my graduate school fellowship. Each year WKU did a large-scale news series based around a topic in the news. During that time period, I got the chance to work with some of the best reporters I’ve ever met to help produce these story packages.
The following two projects were products of teamwork, I claim no individual glory. My duties on these pieces ranged from audio editing (we used Cool Edit Pro), in-studio recording, piece selection and transcriptions. I may not be the reporter in the pieces, but I’m very proud of the work I did there.
I encourage you to listen to the pieces or at least check out the transcripts – there’s some amazing stuff here:
The following video was created in conjunction with Anna Roberts in February of 2007 as part of a local newsroom package on global warming. We shot the man-on-the-street video interviews on a consumer-grade digital handheld camera and edited the video in Final Cut Pro.
And, by the way, this was one of the worst assignments ever. I don’t think I’ve ever been cursed at more than I was that day.
When four white, off-duty police officers were found not guilty of beating Frank Jude at a party in April of 2006, the city of Milwaukee was in an uproar. The following rally took place the day after the verdict in the streets of downtown Milwaukee.
The images were shot by MJS photographers Michael Sears and Kristyna Wentz-Graff. Wentz-Graff gathered the raw audio at the scene. I edited the audio file down in Sound Edit Pro and built the following slideshow in Soundslides on April 18, 2006.
(Jump)
I’ve been playing around with caching plugins and a few other tinkerings inside the site code. Let me know in the comments if you see anything out of the ordinary. First and foremost, this site is for me to play and learn without the risk of wrecking my employer’s server, so you’ll see weird stuff every now and again. Also, there will be a “for real” post soon, I swear.
In other news, the submitted posts experiment is now over. Thanks to all who participated (you can pick up your football phone at the front desk). It worked, which is cool. What isn’t cool is all of the spammers trying to post about penis pills. *Sigh*
I’ll be on vacation in San Francisco and Portland for the next ten days. So unless something pretty damn earth-shattering happens, I likely will not be blogging.
If you’d like to live vicariously through our travels, check me out on Twitter or keep an eye on our Flickr photo map. As a complete nerd, I plan to geotag most vacation photos so I can play with some Flickr map mashups when I get back. We’ll see if that actually comes to pass.
Feel free to continue submitting your own posts (on the right) in my absence. I’m still still testing out that app and will check in an approve stuff at some point over the week.
Eds Note: The experiment has concluded. For now, I’m taking this function down due to spammers ruining the fun for everyone.
I’m trying out a new plugin that allows unregistered users to submit posts to the blog. I don’t know if I’ll actually use it on this blog, but I’m testing it out as an option on another project I’m working on right now.
If you’d like to help me test it – or you actually want to submit a post to this blog – please try it out for me. It could just be a goofy test message (please, make it funny! I need it) – or, if you submit something real, I’ll publish it and see how it looks. Deal?
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