When I started at the Oregon Daily Emerald as a wide-eyed, green-as-grass freshman I knew little about the changing news media landscape. I wanted to be a movie critic. As I wrote (very bad) review after (even worse) review of movies and TV shows, I soon realized that I wasn’t going to be the next [...]
When I started at the Oregon Daily Emerald as a wide-eyed, green-as-grass freshman I knew little about the changing news media landscape. I wanted to be a movie critic. As I wrote (very bad) review after (even worse) review of movies and TV shows, I soon realized that I wasn’t going to be the next Roger Ebert.
I turned my attention to video journalism after that. How could I tell someone’s story without writing? I grew up on four hours of TV a day as a kid and I guess something stuck with me because I soon pitched the idea to my editor to start making videos for our Web site. Our operation was a pretty big joke at first. Using my aunt’s handycam, I started making reports. For the first several packages, I stuck to the broadcast format. TV has been doing it for years and was obviously more successful than newspapers — who was I to change the format? I now set my sights on becoming the next Brian Williams.
After six months of putting together these two-minute, cheesily narrated pieces, I actually started looking around. I checked out the big guys like the NYTimes and Washington Post and then some regional leaders like the San Jose Mercury News and The Spokesman-Review. Most all of the multimedia projects I found were shot documentary-style, were intensely emotional and were amazingly gripping. I then decided to change the mindset at the Emerald. And as our operation grew in size (both in reporters and an upgrade from my aunt’s camera) I guided the direction of my desk not to be breaking the hard news stories — as our news desk can do so much more effectively in print — but to tell the visual stories of the world around us; stories that can explain visual situations many times better than a print article or photo ever could. I’m happy to say I think I’ve figured most things out. While I may not want to be the next Brian Williams, I think when I enter the workforce in a few years, it really won’t matter.
As I close my first post, I want to give a brief mission statement of my goals here. I want to try and help others in the growing newspaper multimedia field. I know I’m just a student and probably don’t know half of what some of those pros out there do, but as a student on the front lines of the changing journalism landscape, I think I’m pretty in tune with what newspapers should be doing and thinking about the future. By explaining my situation here at the Emerald, posting outstanding examples of multimedia work from other newspapers around the country and answering your questions, I think we can all gain a little bit of insight into how best to be in the industry, how best to be a journalist and how best to tell stories.
Michael Calcagno is currently a journalism student at the University of Oregon. He serves as online editor for the Oregon Daily Emerald. He oversees the structure and design of dailyemerald.com and also oversees the multimedia staff to provide original content for the Web.
