Without
realizing it, time has flown. I felt like we were asked to learning blogging
and multimedia journalism a week ago and now this will serve as the last post
for the class.
I have been
involving in more news story journalism during the past two quarters, so I got
a bit of overview about what journalism is about. It is about gathering facts (information) and presenting
them in a good flow of story to the public. It was more about writing a news
story or brief. However, Multimedia Journalism class has brought me to another
level of reporting news. Journalism is not only about written stories. There
are a lot of ways to present an idea.
Let’s start
with slideshows. I mean, just a couple of pictures and cutlines arranged in a
comprehensive flow of story can be a powerful reporting media. Even though I
was a bit confused with the regular cutlines in my slideshow, I think creating
a slideshow is a doable task. People say, a picture can say 1000 words. Forget
the hustle bustle of text, here are the pictures of what is happening.
Pictures also
serve as descriptive tools on a narrative. I remembered a friend of mine using
pictures of closed-down buildings to describe his editorial about the impact of
financial crisis on small business. Should that editorial go plain narrative, I
wouldn’t have felt touched. As I might going on a career as a photojournalist,
this class (along with my internship and college newspaper assignments) has
taught me the importance of pictures and how to produce a storytelling picture.
I have been
blogging (mostly for my own life journal) for about seven years now but only recently did I learn about using
blog for journalistic purpose. I read some journalistic blogs before but never
really thought of using mine to serve that purpose. Hence, another new idea on
developing my blog.
The last thing
that I don’t really think I would go on is video reporting. It is nice to see
the final product but the works do not worth the outcome. It takes too many
working hours but will attract less viewership compared to the written article
or slideshow. However, the class has pushed me to work with storyboard and
recording video interview, which I would reluctant to do. I have had this kind
of anxious talking with or interview people for my story, and plus asking
permission for video recording? Too much. Nevertheless, I kind of broke through
my own boundaries. To be honest, I started to enjoy interviewing people and
writing stories.
Too bad that
the class is about to end. But no matter what, I will carry on with the skills
I learned. As I said before, I’m planning on being a photojournalist, for real!
Keep the
fingers crossed.
