“Too many shoes are missing their targets.”

In an article on the online magazine The Hoot, Mayank Chhaya writes:

This may not be a trend yet but journalism schools around the world, if there are still any left, should introduce a specific course in shoe throwing. These journalism schools will have to invest in shoes of all varieties and develop a precise science based on their weight, shape and material. Trajectories will have to be studied based on the distance between the shoe-throwing journalist and his or her target. There is a whole science of aerodynamics waiting to be tapped on what material to be used in shoes so that they do the job efficiently. Schools will need NASA engineers who are able to calculate to the last inch where a probe would land.

Seriously though, what’s with all the journalistic shoe throwing? Chhaya sees it as an extreme form of editorializing.

The whole issue of journalists as activists comes up fairly often in my life. While I will never participate in any protests or sign allegiance to any party out of principle, I have several friends who don’t have that luxury. Some have escaped from repressive regimes, have fought for their lives, been imprisoned and tortured. They were activists first and became journalists later. I suspect they wouldn’t mind throwing a shoe or two of their own.

But their work often does end up in opinion pages and in the first-person. It does, they admit, limit the potential of their work as journalists. There is a clear bias.

I don’t believe in the so-called “objective reporting.” There’s always an inherent bias, no matter how hard a reporter may try to get rid of it. And you choose that bias as soon as you try to come up with an angle for a story.

But there’s a difference between having a bias, being aware of it so that you can make sure to provide an alternative viewpoint, and throwing a shoe at a politician you don’t like or agree with.

That’s when you’ve definitely crossed over from journalism into activism.

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P.S. Even bloggers need a rest. I’ll only be blogging Monday to Friday from now on. (I know today is Saturday. From next week, I mean.)

Audio Reporting: Now’s a Good Time as Any

The first time I heard of NPR was in 2007 when a producer from one of their segments read something I’d written, logged on to my website, found this entry on my blog, and left a comment for me asking to talk.

She called me a little while later, quizzing me on the article I’d written, my blog, and my life as a female Indian journalist. She particularly wanted to know details of the newspaper I’d written about– a publication by formerly illiterate women in rural India who learned how to read and write while they reported for the newspaper. I gave her all the information I had, assuming she wanted to interview the editor. At the end of our conversation, however, as she was scheduling the time, she realized what I was thinking. “You may have misunderstood,” she said. “We want to interview you.”

Oh.

“Fine,” I said, “let me get back to you.”

Then, I quickly e-mailed an American friend of mine asking him what the heck NPR was. I don’t want to give an interview to any gay-hating, racist stations, I told him. He laughed. You’re fine, he said. You definitely want to be talking to NPR. Right up your alley.

Hmm. A few quick online searches later, I realized what a wonderful, wonderful thing this NPR was. I e-mailed back and said I’d love to do the interview.

When I was in ninth grade, our English teacher divided the class up into groups of seven, and told us to produce a radio show. I was the team leader of my group. Because my teammates were useless, as most ninth graders are, and because I was as much a perfectionist then as I am now, I wrote up each person’s script, assigned everyone a role, told them to get their shit together, and produced the best radio show in the school’s history. (The teacher said so!)

All we’d really done was be inspired by Roshan Abbas and Paran Thakur (remember Livewire?) and put together a show like theirs. We were all big fans.

I had no aspirations to ever get into radio, and if you’ve ever heard the news on Indian radio you’ll know why.

But then NPR called.

Months later, I would have the chance to work for them (NPR), but I would be battling depression at the time and would let my career go to hell. By the time I would dig myself out of my cave and start rebuilding my life, the opportunity would be lost. (Live and learn, people.)

Since then, I’ve been taking tiny steps towards audio reporting. I asked a friend to teach me sound editing, and he graciously did. I’ve bought equipment, read books, and started listening to lots of radio.

I practiced some recording with a stand-up comedian and instructor here at Berkeley, and she told me I was “too BBC.” You’d be a good fit for those NPR people who whisper their stories instead of opening up their mouth once in a while, she told me. I smiled and thanked her and she replied, “That’s not a compliment, you moron.” (I LOVE her.)

So far, I have no idea what radio markets exist or how one gets into them. BBC and NPR would be my choice markets, much to the chagrin of my instructor, but I have no clue where to even begin.

Have you ever worked as a freelance audio journalist? Have any tips for me and others reading this blog?

Statistics

The stats of my website always surprise me. I haven’t done this in a while, so here’s where the readers of the blog are coming from:

1. United States
2. Russian Federation
3. India
4. Great Britain (UK)
5. China
6. Canada
7. Finland
8. Taiwan
9. United Arab Emirates
10. Poland

The search terms that lead people to me? Some of the many:

1. college failure
2. how to cope with failing a class in college
3. how to deal with college failure (see a trend here?)
4. how to freelance for Marie Claire
5. hymen (?!)
6. teen magazines earn how much
7. time from delhi to new jersey
8. to do list before 30
9. writing nice about people

Predictable? I think so.

Multimedia: To Do or Not To Do is the Question

There are a number of ways to get distracted. Trust me, I know.

One such way is thinking, “I should make an audio slideshow,” writing a script, pulling out all the images from the November U.S. Presidential Election, editing them heavily, recording the damn thing, thinking “who the hell is going to hire me to do this?” and deleting it.

Another one? Making a video of myself making tea, putting it together complete with background music and credits, and showing it to a friend, calling it “Baby’s first video.” (She laughed and made fun of me.)

And another one? Editing every picture I’ve taken in the last two years. Seriously.

There’s a very good and highly successful multimedia program here at Berkeley, and in fact, I get the feeling most students are getting more multimedia training than they are journalism training. I thought I’d left IT behind once I graduated, but several of my peers are learning coding. Coding! (I exit the room very quickly.)

I’d become very conflicted lately. Everyone around me, especially in the J-school, keeps stressing the importance of knowing these technologies. The idea is to be a jack of all media. Know a little bit of everything. But if news websites are anything to go by, that leads to horrendous audio, video, photography, and sub-par reporting. (There are some very good multimedia examples, but they are almost always a team effort with everyone doing what they’re best at.)

Plus, I’m not a jack-of-all-trades kind of person. I’m obsessive to a fault. I’d rather be a writer and have a photographer and videographer with me. I’d rather argue over misplaced commas (even if I’m the one misplacing them) than arguing about how (or if) a photo should be cropped.

But in the absence of big budgets, even large publications are seeing a reporter as the writer, photographer, and videographer. As a freelancer, this is a problem. As an industry, it’s an even bigger problem.

There’s a lot of you-can’t-survive-if -you-don’t-know-multimedia in the air lately. I’m happily going to defy popular notions once again (I hope) and once and for all quit thinking about mediums I have little interest in (audio is the exception; I like audio).

I tell my stories best in words. For now, I’m keeping it that way.

If you’re interested in multimedia, though, here are some resources:

http://www.10000words.net/

http://www.multimediashooter.com/

http://mindymcadams.com/tojou/

http://masteringmultimedia.wordpress.com/

http://newsvideographer.com/

http://multimediaevangelist.com/

Short Sentences

In his book Writing Tools, Roy Peter Clark says journalists should avoid using long rambling sentences when smaller ones will do.

“Jesus wept,” is an example of a powerful short sentence, he writes.

I’ve been taking a few days off to give my brain time to recharge. I’m tempted to tell you about the three books I read in two days, the big pile of magazines that’s now a smaller one, the movies that are no longer on my to-see list, and friends who aren’t wondering if I’m dead or alive.

But, in keeping with Clark’s advice, I’ll leave you with a small sentence instead:

Mridu slept.

How Does it All Fit Together?

In Dharamsala, India, almost three years ago, I was working with an American photographer on assignment for Elle magazine. We were doing a story on Tibetan refugees and that required us to visit refugee centers, homes of people we were interviewing, and temples.

Our last stop, though, was a Tibetan school, something we thought at the time would be integral to our story. We spent several hours at the school, interviewing and shooting, but it was toward the end of the day when walking by the window of a classroom, we heard sounds of children singing a Tibetan song.

Immediately, my photographer whipped out an audio recorder, held up a finger to her lips, and moved closer to the window.

“What was that about?” I asked her later. “Collecting audio,” she replied. That should have been a sign of what was coming, but I missed it.

Now, of course, journalists– no matter photo or text– are learning to add audio or video to their work, and are doing what my friend was practicing all those years ago.

I’m very appreciative of photographers, and I’ll almost never travel for a feature assignment unless the publication assigns a dedicated photographer to me. A great story can be absolutely worthless, sometimes, without good photographs.

I’ve always been a big believer in presenting a story in the best way possible. Until recently, that meant accompanying photography. But today, that can mean any number of things– it can mean audio slideshows, it can mean simple audio interviews, it can mean video, it can mean entire multimedia packages.

This doesn’t mean you have to be proficient in all those things. It simply means you have to think about them. I’ve been pitching my editors photography for years, even though I have little interest in professional photography. These days, I’ve started asking about multimedia elements too. If they need it, even if I can’t do it, I can always find someone who can.

Right now, no one really knows how much or even if freelancers are going to be called upon to brainstorm on these projects, but it’s a good time to start thinking about your work in terms of the bigger picture and how it fits in.