Ending Is Another Beginning

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.