Skills and equipment

“Multimedia skills” is a sort of mantra these days for many journalism instructors, editors and other working journalists as they weigh what beginning professionals need to bring to the table to be most successful. These skills are also increasingly linked to foreign correspondence.

“I mean basically I was originally a writer, but there were just so many writers, and so few jobs for writers,” said Deborah Bonello, a freelance journalist who now contracts with the Los Angeles Times in Mexico City, doing primarily video work and some blogging. “So it’s really important I think for students to develop multimedia skills because, as the old generation of correspondents sort of gets played out, if you don’t have those skills, I’d be amazed if you were considered for a job.”

Bonello said there is a wealth of tutorials available on the Web, and journalists just need to commit the time to learning skills that will help them in new media. Poynter Institute’s News University offers several free online courses on multimedia reporting, as well as a course on what equipment to buy, which costs users $24.95 to take.

Sarah Stuteville, freelance journalist and co-founder of the Common Language Project (CLP), which features multimedia reporting, said she believes the most important skills remain the basic journalistic ones—knowing how to report, how to tell a good story, being able convince editors to give a story good play. But she and CLP’s other two co-founders decided early on that they also needed to offer reporting in multiple mediums since their chief outlet was their Web site, and they taught themselves how to do audio and video reporting while they were on the road for their first major overseas project for CLP.

Some news outlets require or strongly encourage reporting that includes multimedia elements. Among those are GlobalPost and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, two emerging backers of international reporting. The Pulitzer Center encourages applicants for its grants to team up with other journalists in order to produce projects that include writing, photography, audio and video, as well as blogging. “Our money is better spent possibly funding two people who can really produce a volume of material that’s complimentary in broadcast, radio and print instead of really overtaxing one person who won’t be able to do any of the things quite right,” said Pulitzer Center Associate Director Nathalie Applewhite.

Veteran multimedia journalist, foreign correspondent and American University Professor Bill Gentile is particularly an advocate of what he calls “backpack journalism,” a one-man-band approach to reporting that emphasizes visual communication. It’s not an approach he recommends to every journalist, but only to those who can “properly speak the visual language” (B. Gentile, personal communication, September 24, 2009). He said its best use is for stories for which the journalist can spend some time with the subjects so they can create character-driven pieces. The equipment needed is mainly a handheld video camera, a Macbook Pro laptop, and a couple of external hard drives, he said. Gentile offers more information on this approach at his blog, http://billgentilebackpackjournalism.blogspot.com/, and conducts workshops on the topic with PBS’s NOW program.

“We are right now at an extraordinary juncture in the history of mankind, technology and communication,” Gentile said. “Even more important than the Gutenberg press, the advances of digital cameras and the Internet provide us unprecedented opportunity.”

Language skills are also an issue to consider before heading off to report from a foreign land. Ideally, of course, a journalist will speak fluently the language of the people he or she will be interviewing, and understand the language being used around them on the street and in the media.

Many travel guides offer very basic language guides that can be helpful for a novice in the language, and an array of free language learning resources are available online. One of the most extensive is the language Web site operated by the BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/languages/. It presents material on an impressive array of languages, with the sophistication of the educational material depending on the popularity of the language. For widely used languages like Spanish, French, German and Chinese, the site offers video and audio programs, news translations and games for beginners and more advanced speakers. It also offers “quick fixes” in 36 languages.
Journalists who are not confident in their fluency in the local language(s) will need to find a way to hire a translator, an expense some find difficult to absorb.

“Although I studied it for years, I wouldn’t ever rely on my own Hindi in interviews,” said journalist Miranda Kennedy, who lived in and reported from India for five years (M. Kennedy, personal communication, October 26, 2009). She said when she was going to areas where English was not widely spoken, she took a translator with her, relying not only on the language translation but also on the additional cultural information the translator could provide. A fellow with the International Reporting Project, Kennedy said she had spoken with other fellows who regretted not making the expenditure to obtain higher quality translators.
Networking with other journalists is one way to find translators.