Coding in Paradise

Digital Storytelling Conference 2014

On Wednesday last week a bunch of us at Inkling jumped in a van in San Francisco and drove eight hours to U.C. Irvine for the Digital Storytelling conference. It was a great road trip and a fabulous one-day conference.

I took copious notes at the conference that I’ve cleaned up and placed below. The talks were panels run by a moderator. I've placed each of the questions from the moderators and the answers from panelists behind Stretchtext to make it easier to go deeper into the questions you might be interested in while still skimming over questions.

Snowfalling: How can we merge digital projects with great writing?

What are examples of great digital projects like Snowfall?

Megan Garvey:

The Manhunt

Used illustrations to give story

Focus is on making writing effective

Tripled readership to long form stories by adding more online-native elements

Christopher Goffard:

Beyond Seven Billion

Multipart series

Ran with video from Kenya to China

Amazing marriage of visuals and text

Would hold up as an example of the top of the form

Last night was reading on Epic on Deepsea Cowboys, about this group of guys who roam the oceans and salvage gigantic freighters that run aground and sink, the writing was gorgeous, the presentation was terrific, there are so many now that its hard to single one out.

Gray Beltran:

Excited by Snowfall but thought story was a bit flat, made it all the way through and liked the presentation

The first thing that really made him take notice

Atavist makes trailers for their stories, like some books do

Atavist did collaboration with WBUR, Whitey Bulger story

Case was so complicated that they did an incredible interactive to see all the victims, see his basic story over several chapters, all the informants on a grid, by virtue of the mechanic, all these extra digital things used to feel like bells and whistles, now though the thought and the technology is allowing the multimedia part to be really integrated into the story, it’s like when someone tries to make a videogame without a game mechanic, the Whity Bulger has a game mechanic, it represents the scope of this enormous crime empire by virtue of its different components.

Sam Freedman:

Josh Berman’s Coronado High great example of Snowfall like piece

Combines great design with cool animations

Really takes you to the 70s, has a really groovy feel. Josh’s friend did this T-Rex cover, trippy music the whole time you are reading it. Did cool things with old photos. Beautiful writing and designers can come together and create something that can only exist in the modern age.

Self-selecting person of writing long form is a control freak. Do we as writers have to become different kinds of people, more collaborative and open to sharing with designers all through the process in order to create this new kind of work?

Christopher Goffard:

Look for details, build scenes and characters, suspense and drama, it lives or dies with the words. It’s terrific that we are able to put these stories into elegant new packages, the frames have changed, its amazing to see what the coders and designers can do. You hope everyone respects everyones input. It looks like an online novel.

It’s both exhilerating and unnverving since there’s so many components.

Megan Garvey:

Being a control freak is ok :)

In alot of newsrooms there are alot of literal folks. Some people have a hard time envisioning what you are talking about. Part of education process. Interested in digital for things you can’t do on a flat piece of paper.

Opening peoples eyes on why they should be excited about it.

The Accused piece, man who was falsy accused of rape, was found factually innocent. Didn’t have all the bells and whistles but had great story. Surprisingly found massive audience for it since it was really interesting, still gets read a few times a week.

When you think about reach and longevity, especially if you’ve done storytelling and presentation in an engaging way, its worth that extra investment.

How do you want an author to be involved in the process that would be different then in the past?

Megan Garvey:: You can have great idea, but don’t want it too late in the game. Having ideas early on and planning for them so you can achieve them. NPR’s Tracing the T-Shirt. Sent photographers and videographers out into the world with a visualization in mind so they could create that cohesive experience. You can’t come back later and take these myriad elements without having an idea to start.

Joshua Bearman:

Puts titles on stories and hopes that they stick

Made his own cover for Coronado High in draft manuscript since he was thinking about the imagery

When writing though just words on a page

Sam Freedman:

Wants to solicit lots of feedback from writers, not doing the same print issue over and over again

Any time writer has ideas always willing to sit with them, developing new ideas. Doesn’t think as issue but rather mini-movie that lives inside of iPad. Have to trust that you aren’t going to make their story look terrible.

CGI made big budget movies stupid by crowding out dramatic tension and deep portraiture. Are we in a moment in digital storytelling where there is a similar risk? Tech becomes ends in themselves?

Megan Garvey:: Snowfall exhaustion? :)

Joshua Bearman:: Orson Welles said freedom is the enemy of art. Now that you have this freedom you have to be careful with it. WBUR, the Whitey Bulger one, there’s inline graphics and surveillance video, its not too much, its in the background, these are real people, it gives you enough and not too much and is part of the experience.

Megan Garvey:

It’s about restraint in terms of telling the story. People have been grabbing Snowfall source and using that. Custom fonts and animation between the chapters and photos that move for no reason; you have to show restraint.

There’s an impulse to re-use across stories, but readers will see when re-use is inappropriate.

Christopher Goffard:

No amount of razmitaz will cause me to read something with bad writing

A Soldiers Wife - a chronicle of the homecoming of a soldier with PTSD. 10 or 12 minute embedded in story, incredibly raw visceral powerful material, enhances the story a great deal. Like special effects, when the digital bells and whistles are used as a prop or a crutch then you’re in trouble, you can’t animate a corpse and make it dance.

Sam Freedman:: There are more good looking stories then great stories I want to read. Even the NY Times is guilty of tricking out stories that don’t necessitate it. How to find meaningful interaction. It’s about restraint.

When thinking about digital candy, keeping in mind whether its vital to the story or extra stuff on the side if the reader doesn’t consume it its not the end of the world?

Megan Garvey:: Words have to stand on their own. Extra bit should add to story. As editor asking for things to be relevant. Two things: 1) Do something cool or interesting in order to get people to read things they might not have done otherwise, Saving Private Warren, a man who had survived a terrible bombing, most people don’t want to read about Iraq war veterans, but its important story, how can you use digital toolbox to entice them to read it, they were trying to retrain his brain using VR, were able to get clip what that was like when the bomb went off, were using VR to rewrite trauma of experience, added that in hopes that it was visual to find an audience, 2) Did series on earthquake safety, lots of street level reporting looking at buildings, dull stuff, at end of day was able to force release of thousands of buildings in LA at risk of collapse, in that story were able to use parallax scrolling to show what happens in earthquake reinforced vs. non buildings, helped illustrate what happens. When trying to instruct people.

Sam Freedman:: Worries if folks are just saving things to Instapaper and not reading it. The more attractive story can get more readers sometimes. Like a fancy book cover. Not worst thing, but something thinks about.

Situation where you’ve found yourself writing about the same story as others that might be getting more attention than yours?

How does someone with the opportunity to make a difference, what kind of individual skillsets would you look for for someone on a college campus newspaper to do this?

Megan Garvey:: Pretty decent HTML skills, JavaScript is required for most of the storytelling, can do alot with just open source code and a bit of logic and discipline. Looking to other examples to start. The folks on data team are journalists so can tell stories but have learned enough coding to enhance the kinds of stories they can tell, in order to help themselves present more engaging things. The more you can do for yourself the better your stories will be. Growing tradition of folks with CS backgrounds who don’t want to make widgets, finds it boring, came into journalism and applied much higher CS skills for stories or database reporting. The earthquake story: no one else was even looking at that. Piece on LA fire department, errors they were making, started as data story, but then became people walking and knocking on doors to find answers, start with curiosity and traditional storytelling, can point in new directions.

Gray Beltran:: Can do very nice storytelling on things like Medium and Creativist, think visually, have the artwork and stuff to use that way, fundamentally have to know how to tell a kick ass story.

Sam Freedman:: Doing your own thing from scratch is powerful rather than using Creativist, being the only person who has to Photoshop, code, write, being forced to not work with other people existing.

What do we call this thing we are doing, rather than just calling it Snowfalling?

What are biggest gaps as a writer in digital media vs. paper that need to be solved?

Megan Garvey:: How do you bookmark things? If reading LA Times on a Sunday and see fascinating story but no time, just set that paper aside and come back to it. With long story explored releasing it a day at a time, so that each chapter could find an audience and have a newness. Broke the story up into digestible forms. Later on someone could release from the start. Saw people reading the whole story and building excitement for it. Hard to put up giant stories all at once, herculean, wonder if its overwhelming to do it all at once. Close to re-launching LA Times website with more integrated experience with media, haven’t addressed how you create that specialized reading experience, pause a story and come back to it.

Joshua Bearman:: Likes Instapaper but doesn’t want it to strip everything else around the story, just save a page exactly how it is, has the graphics, ads, who cares.

What makes a great story, larger story?

Digital Publishers: The Business of Beautiful Storytelling

How are you going to make money?

Noah Rosenberg:: Golden age of publishing. Most of revenue coming through Narratively creative group, 800+ freelancers, GQ comes to them and wants to hire someone for an animated video, Chevy asks to produce a series of blog posts, interesting creative work, first person narratives, generating substantial revenue this way, some money from advertising, big trend in ads is native advertising, “advertorials”, continue working for interesting like minded brands and running some of them on site as clearly marked ads. Has insanely engaged audience who sends love letters to them, turn into a club or premium membership, 5/6/7/8 dollars a month, audio versions of stories, monthly eBooks, early event access. Now represented by same agency shown in Entourage, “you guys are finding interesting characters, can we turn these into films, tv, etc.?”

Michael Shapiro:: A startup is business in search of a business plan. Business is business of discovering undiscovered stories. Now that can frame every decision you make. Does this get us there. Raised enough money on Kickstarter to start. Send us completed stories not proposals. Been market testing beginning of a story on whether to get whole story. Stories are given away, but donations can be given. Working pretty well, not enormously well but ok. Writers on low end are getting more than what you would get for Atlantic or Wired, thousand or fifteen-hundred just from donations, writers get 90% after Paypal gets its cut, The Big Roundtable gets 10%. Average donation is about 11 dollars as opposed to saying you have to pay 1.99 on Kindle Singles. Partnerships with Medium, Buzz Feed, TheWeek.com, give far more distribution then could do on their own. Ending MVP part of the operation: Wordpress site that is very simple, now how to make into real business, turning into a newsletter?

McKenzie Funk:: On way to 10K so far, still baking, planning Kickstarter campaign. DECA will be a cooperative. Shares profits, other members edit stories. Will have subscriptions from the onset, common to have big burst at the start then falling interest, subscriptions given away as part of a Kickstarter level can help sustain interest. Kindle Singles as well. Stories are strange space between book and magazine article. You do an excerpt of a book, QAs with the author, get on the radio, push it as an event in of itself, push them like books, send review copies to people. Will have dividends at the end of the year with a bit of operating capital to continue, most money will go towards travel and reporting, these stories are expensive to produce. Hope to do big stories that used to be paid by magazines.

Evan Hansen:

Still figuring out how Medium will make money. Future: sponsorships, brand advertisers, revenue tools for authors that can monetize directly from content in Medium. Currently have no ads or display ads, probably not ever going to go there. Brand identity is awesome visual design and don’t want to clutter it up. Some form of native advertising play. Economics of online publishing are dismal but not impossible. Worked at Wired for 8 years, matched print magazine for overall revenue in digital division, at end was 50/50 print and digital, Atlantic has also famously gotten there. Huge gap between how much money is spent online vs. how many people are there, vs. physical media. Internet audience hard to gauge though. Wired.com had well over a million visitors, only 20% would come back repeatedly three times a week, huge tourist audience coming in through Facebook and audience, dispersed sources. Stark contrast to the print magazine: you subscribe to it, shows up on your door, advertisers have much better engagement proposition. Interest in apps was to make engagement model more like print, turn back the clock, people would stay in app vs. leaving with links, kinda worked out ok but not silver bullet. Clicks have become coin of the realm, publishers are trying to flood market with more clicks but its not necessarily engagement, because not rewarded for engagement, 20K to create long form content that someone entirely reads has same value as clicking on cat video, at Medium trying to fight that and come back with a new proposition for advertisers, new metric on importance of the audience is not a click, called Total Time Reading, a measure of how much time people actually spend time reading an article, has crazy cursor tracking technology to make sure that folks are actually reading. In process of trying to create ad model around selling time rather than selling clicks. Paid writers are being paid on amount of time people spend on stories rather than clicks.

Advertisers want to directly reach audiences. Andreesen hired professional long form writers to write about entrepreneurialism like a magazine. Sponsors can build their own brands and talk directly to their audiences. Brands can galvanize and create audiences for their own brands, authentic and interesting relationship on Medium.

Narrative arc of your business model?

Noah Rosenberg:: Have to be open to new possibilities. Content marketing, native ads, all the rage. Coca Cola doesn’t need NY Times, can create content directly on website, still verdict on how effective this content is.

Michael Shapiro:: Small community that knows each other. First panel was talking about the work, the journalism. How can I do the journalism I want to do and get people to pay for it? That’s a mistake to ask, because people don’t have to do anything you want them to. Engagement defined as alignment between what you want to do and what they want to do. Now thinks about what do they want rather than what do I want? Not clear what that is right now though. Most of us read something because someone tells us we have to read it. How does that translate into a business?

Noah Rosenberg:: Are you building something that people actually want? Is there a market for it, what is the problem you are solving that in turn people will want to benefit from? Know your narrative, what makes you different then someone else that makes it worth someone elses attention and money?

McKenzie Funk:

Realized how great it is to have someone else edit your work before uploading to Kindle Singles. Also great to have a network effect with other folks rather than just being alone. By being group cooperative can take away some of the risk. Since things can be hit driven helps to spread risks and rewards amongst members.

Internally elected a few folks to be admins so there is clearer authority rather than anarchism from everyone. Collective gives risk sharing and admin panel allows decision making to be more effective.

Are you assuming that young people don’t pay for written content, meaning ad and sponsored content is the future?

Evan Hansen:: His 14 year old daughter is reading tons of digital stuff on Amazon and paying for it using Dad’s credit card.

Michael Shapiro:: Everybody assumes that most important decision before making a purchase is price, but its not, its less important than conveniance and other things. Why do people not choose cheapest wine in restaurant? If too cheap how good can it be? If charge more people will value it. Price is a vague thing. If you say this is a $1000 dollar stone, whoa! If price something too low or give it away, how good can it be. What about imposing friction though if someone has to pay? Not sure. How do you convince people that there is value? Why do people pay hundreds of dollars for old books they’ve already read? We want people to do dumb stuff with their money with us.

Evan Hansen:: Vice is doing well. Room for other non-Vice like publishers though. Has to be really easy way for people to buy. Whenever you encounter one-click billing is people start spending money. Web is not like that. As soon as you ask folks to put credit cards in they don’t. Amazon has micropayment platform now, one-click payments on any website using Amazon credentials, might be solution, we need common solution. On your phone if see content you want to reward creator, one-click away, simple, painless, then people will start spending money, its the inconvenience factor. Saw this in music industry, MP3 wrapped in DRM, had to rip, clunky, when became simple to buy music that people decided to pay for it, its all about convenience. People don’t have resistance to paying they have resistance to shitty interfaces and bad payment systems.

Noah Rosenberg:: No one size fits all solution here. Even publishers today depend on multiple revenues: like Atlantic Monthly, ads, subscriptions, live conferences (20% of their revenue!) Domino magazine’s online site lets you buy things mentioned in articles, has generated alot of their revenue. Have some action on story for users to do, sign up for newsletter, subscribe, etc.

Michael Shapiro:: Have to be attuned to readers, have to have quality, can’t miss stories. Described example sports site for UT Longhorn fans that nets 800K a year.

Noah Rosenberg:: Creates feel good way to join something, like being in a club, tapping into hunger for sense of belonging.

What happens to print? Does it become a novelty?

Evan Hansen:: Bullish on print. Mass market printing market may go away, cheap stuff at low rates. The print process is amazing, there’s a high end of it that will become even more important, market for very bespoke magazines that you might pay $100 a year for subscription for very good paper and typography, people bringing back linotype machines, hobbyist community bringing back old-school printing techniques. At same time, as a culture we are shifting completely. Kevin Kelly: the last three thousand years culture of book but not becoming culture of screen. Pixels on screen different ontological order then print on a page. Page is wrong metaphor, its a screen. Words being rendered have different physics, different then alphabet on piece of paper. Can’t link on paper. First panel talked about focus on word, but barely focused on creativity of focusing on screen, will be different like scripwriters for movies but you don’t read the script. Prints going to be around but culture shifting.

Michael Shapiro:: Can’t give a link as a gift, but can give a book as a gift. Asks students when reading long what medium do prefer: print, can’t be distracted. New technology does not erase old technology it just goes along side, may squeeze it out but it doesn’t go away.

Evan Hansen:: Kevin Kelly has standing bet that any piece of technology once invented never dies.

Noah Rosenberg:: Benefits of print: 1) Revenue stream, can sell it, 2) Great marketing branding device, any boutique in Brooklyn will see stack of Monocle magazine, 3) If engaged audience can create print version for them

What cities do you work out of, how do you get through such wide author and user base?

Breaking into Digital: Op-eds, Narratives, and Reported Essays in the Digital Age

Jim tell us about start of your digital writing experience.

Elizabeth, how did you morph into the digital world?

Elizabeth Kaye:: Part of challenge in working digital is to revisit work ’one more time’ before publishing. Started in Esquire. Colleague from Esquire told Byliner about piece about her sleeping with powerful men, called ’Sleeping with Famous Men.’ Wrote second digital book for Byliner on Titanic in 6 weeks on single lifeboat, Lifeboat #8. Posted just a few months after writing. Amazing experience, what she likes about digital: you can have an idea and then publish immediately, and if a book catches online like that you can stay in the top book lists for months, still goes into top 20. You would never have that with a published book, published 4 print books before, something about immediacy if you have a good venue and good editor.

Brian tell us about your experience.

Tess tell us about your experience.

Jim Giles:: His online site Matter is like a magazine, so has freedom, can’t do lots of obscure things all the time, has to appeal to larger audiences sometimes. Had a paywall initially, was aquired by Medium, now how Matter pays for itself is how Medium pays for itself. Thinks about traffic everyday and how to bring in as many people as possible. Always hoping for massive hit, if could get millions would be great. However, also knows that they can make niche stories successful. Talked about story how deaf culture is threatened by cochlear implants. Slashdot and Reddit are key traffic drivers for them. Have to think really hard about promotion, where does the deaf community hang out online, what are the blogs, what are the organizations, who are the influencers. Someone reached out to all these people. Biggest success was story on autism, reached out to autism community. The thing that drove that story was activity by the community, got it out to them, they started talking abut it.

Elizabeth Kaye:: Measures value of popularity by pointing to 50 Shades of Grey, one of biggest most popular books. Done alot of ghostwriting lately which pays but its not her work. Wants to write about more obscure figures. Doesn’t want to get into the current age, wants to write about figures from history.

Brian Mockenhaupt:: Traditional magazines are his gatekeepers generally. They think now though whether a given story will play well on the website as well as the magazine.

Elizabeth Kaye:: It used to be you were supposed to write what you were passionate about, still thinks you should do that, write what you care about, this is your life.

Tess Lynch:: Editors have to step in and say ’think about that’ but its balanced against page views. Something can get alot of page views but be detrimental. Things that are personal will probably be a popular piece but have to think about downsides.

What relation does blogging have to all of this?

Tess Lynch:: Most people get their jobs from initial LiveJournal/blogging community. When first start blogging get really personal, then learn how to consider who is reading in your audience. How do you want to protect yourself.

Jim Giles:: Problem is talking about clicks/hits. These are going to be less important. Medium’s metric of total time reading, Upworthy has an engagement metric, advertisers get that hits are not the most important thing. If the main metric is quantification of engagement with a piece that will change things, it will reward longer more thoughtful journalism. Chunky piece of long form can be 30 minutes or an hour, radically different engagement.

How is sitting on site for 30 minutes monitizable?

How would you suggest digital age writers start, pitch narratives, blogs, Tumblr?

Tess Lynch:: Good way to start to have a blog. Most places she’s pitched want to see a larger body of work, scope of what you can do. Salon and N+1 are two great places to approach with a story if you have a theme in your mind. Being upfront about taking an adventure and recording it. Will give you a relationship with an editor.

Brian Mockenhaupt:: So many more outlets for narrative writing now, longer writing, the barrier to entry has been lowered. When starting out can take time in something that you can’t afford later on, immersion journalism, own a little piece of something. Have access, passion for it, counter against people they already know.

Elizabeth Kaye:: Talked about experience starting writing piece about the person who cradled RFK after he was assasinated, got published in Village Voice on front page. Write pieces, you’ll be better at the end, show it to people to get evaluations, read lots of non-fiction.

Jim Giles:

Reads every pitch that comes to Matter. Publishes authors that don’t have alot of long form experience if pitch is solid. Good pitch is really hard. Wants to know why the story matters and how you will tell it. The fact that something is important does not mean that story needs to be told, why does that matter to the audience of the publication you are pitching to. How will you tell the story. Who’s in this story, writers ability to construct a narrative around it. Why should this be 6000 words rather than 2000? Narrative arc of pitch itself.

Really nice when you get finished pitch, because you don’t have to do alot more. Big risk for writer though.

How do you balance writing something somewhere else, such as memoir bits on a blog, with keeping it for yourself for a memoir book?

How do you deal with not having editorial filter for online writing? Gave example of writing about police brutality and Aryan Brotherhood.

Do you adjust your style when writing online, exploring way of telling stories beyond just words, video, audio.

How did you approach picking characters, finding a long form non-fiction story with an arc that would sustain ten thousand words?

Brian Mockenhaupt:: Wanted to write story about what happens when leaders die in battle, different then civilian world. Took lots of logistics to get embedded into Afghanistan, hard to find right unit, pretty macabre, stepping into difficult emotional situations. So hard to get to actual point that story of getting to that point was part of story. Was natural to just tell it beginning to end, chronilogically.

Elizabeth Kaye:: For lifeboat story, question was where to start it. Started it right from moment of impact of iceberg, in the mens smoking room. They keep playing, smoking cigars, when bump happened they didn’t get it. Twelve characters focused on, focused on Countess. Ended up in lifeboat in ermine and pearls doing rowing, woman who had just been married. Interwove tick tock and stories, once lifeboat goes down into water (section 1), then section 2 was once it was in the water, didn’t think they would be saved, no water, bread was soggy. Section 3 is once they are saved and go onto rescue ship. In screenwriting every 30 pages supposed to take a turn. Flow into sidebars without getting impatient then back into main flow of story. Trajectory going forward, then dropping other things in soon enough. At some point have to start exposition, has to start tending towards end, people get impatient.

Jim Giles:: Comes from editors generally. Find theme: us against them, triumph against adversity, overall shape. Where’s the tension, after a thousand words why would anyone care. Tension and resolution. Create an outline that has scenes, tell me when the characters will be introduced. Often all of this doesn’t work.

How much detail should you be giving for each character?

Writing Across Platforms: From Digital to Print and Beyond

What are you up to?

Jia-Rui Chong:: Works for Zocalo Public Square. Not a media company, a small non-profit with a mission, to connect people with ideas and each other. Started as events driven organization to increase discussion of ideas in L.A. Successful non-profit base then publish stories above that, two stories every week day, syndicate stories to about 130 news organizations across country, USA Today, public radio stations, 30 newspapers in California. Most widely read California columnist based on syndication, mentioned by Jerry Brown, influence disproportionate with size. Find story ideas, find people to write them, edit them, then put them online, then push them out to syndicate. Functioning in vacuum of retraction of mainstream news publications. Cut to fit some of their stories, such as for Time, give it to them for free. Aim is for personal essays and nontraditional opeds, news analysis. Want ideas out there and talked about.

Eric Neel:

Reaching point where thinking across platforms is less useful. ESPN is thinking about story first, quality and dramatic thrust of story. Twelve year old daughter doesn’t necessarily respect genre categories, quality matters but container doesn’t: video, short story, podcast, etc.

Meet the user where they are. They are going to be consuming in places unexpected.

Douglas McGray:

Used to tell people was magazine writer. Fell into radio world. Had idea of live magazine, popup magazine, a one time experiment, a hobby, documentary film makers, illustrators, writers, etc. Would unfold like a magazine. Did it once, then people liked it. Was like a piece of theater, became a way to bring different genres together. Things that were hard to categorize.

Make journalism for night time, for leisure time, something that someone would go to on a date. The weekend is like this. Different then day time journalism. Created California Sunday Magazine as a deeply digital general interest magazine similar to the popup live magazine, across tablets and mobile, including print edition inserted into many large print newspapers. Made platform that was designed to be universal from the start across platforms.

Patrick Lee:: Listenership to public radio dropping off precipitiously. Audience has migrated all over the place, tablets, phones, Facebook. KPCC decided to create a multiplatform newsroom, website, iPad app, mobile apps, social media presence which is part of journalism, anything else not on air. Second largest newsroom in southern California after L.A. Times. Digital audience is now on a par with broadcast audience. Mission is to inform, to play a watchdog role, to connect people in southern California together, to fulfil that need to be where the audience is. How do you manage cross-platform newsroom? Siloing digital operations off to the side doesn’t work. All reporters and editors think about what they do as cross-platform, think about best way to tell the story: is it a radio story, is it a web story, an iPad app, something on social media, live event? Sometimes all of those things. Journalists have to be writing copy, taking photos, doing digital video, radio, doing interactives, not just one thing.

What advice can you give to beginning journalist in this land where everything changing really rapidly?

Jia-Rui Chong:: You just have to do it, write for as many outlets as you can.

Patrick Lee:: Look for students with familiarity with industry even with all changes happening. Things we thought we knew 18 months ago have flipped on their head. Once you have an audience you have an enterprise.

Douglas McGray:: Be entrepreneurial. Started some of these enterprises with no money, but started pulling more money in, then became valuable. Hustling is really important, people who were successful were relentless, brush off rejection, keep making stuff.

Eric Neel:: You know when you’re sitting across someone with that hustle. Just write, don’t ask what the map is, there is no map. Have to have a certain appetite for hurt and foolishness. Comfort with ground shifting. People are drawn to seeing someone have love for what they do, the passion behind it.

Does the definition of what is good storytelling change as the platforms evolve?

Patrick Lee:: Have to understand how people use the content, its utility. If no one reads it you are screaming in an empty room.

Eric Neel:: People want to experience different tools in your kit, doesn’t have to be in just one way.

Patrick Lee:: Important to know what options and best practices are in that kit.

Eric Neel:: A story on TV would be shorter vs. the website. Thinking about things as a suite of resources, a video component that accompanies a written story, or an online place that will engage what was run on TV. Thinking less about one of these as the authorized version and others as secondary. How do I contribute to the possibility of immediacy, intimacy, hand held devices are an intimate relationship. When you look at an iPhone the part of your brain that fires is the one based on intimacy and love. Weaving these parts together as being organic, its an experiment. Some folks will find the story on TV, others in the magazine and print, others will see it on their desktops, and others on mobile, and some will do it on each of those.

Patrick Lee:

For radio you want rich sound, you want characters, you want scenes, you want to be taken through an experience. On digital exactly the opposite, want information, you want it right now, have it be short, scannable for basic news stuff, not longer form. NPR teaches reporters how to flip scripts for different mediums. On radio you don’t get beautiful picture galleries, videos, interactive maps plotting the story, sharing on Facebook.

Did piece on bilingual education. On website three long form written stories accompanied with videos and interactive pieces where people can share places to get bilingual education. Another part of it was sound-rich radio features talking to parents about bilingual education and how it affected them. Also did live event of people involved, then video taped that, then put that up, then had live chat conversation on Facebook and Twitter during live event to engage community.

Eric Neel:: How people want to read is changing. Habits and comfort zones and likes are evolving in dramatic way, he reads the story and also watches the video, old presumption would have been that wouldn’t have cared about both rather than just one. New experience that these can be exponential together.

Douglas McGray:: You don’t have to check every single box. Bad multimedia tries to do everything; one of the links in the chain might be weak, a bad interview for example. Only add whats necessary then leave everything else out.

Jia-Rui Chong:: Lots of readers online want somewhere to go afterwards, what do some of these terms mean, how can I learn some more information about this.

Surprised that Douglas McGray is starting a new print publication, how is this happening, whats the business model, how did you get into the newspapers, are you paying your writers?

When you consider pitches from writers, do you consider it more important that they have a blog or Twitter account with a ton of followers or that they were published in the LA Times?

What stands out when you get a pitch in your inbox?

How common for writer to produce content for TV, radio, print, and web?

Eric Neel:: Yes its important to do all, increasingly important, but there are lots of folks who don’t, people who specialize. Alot of experimentation happening. High tolerance for figuring this out together.

Patrick Lee:: Would like to find people that do everything really well, but don’t find those people. For a reporter look for solid news judgement, critical thinking skills, writing skills, demonstrable ethics. End of training people across mediums.

Douglas McGray:: Doing features not news, so operating on slower cycle. More interested in person who can do one thing really well but really works well with others. Have an eye for good film, have an eye for good photos, understand editing.

Patrick Lee:: Get some facility with data journalism, high demand for people that can work with large datasets.

How have you incorporated social media into journalism?

How reconcile differences between mediums? How do you justify adding or removing changing experience, what about core experience but due to differences in mediums?

How has user generated content changed environment of journalism?

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Coding in Paradise

Snowfalling: How can we merge digital projects with great writing?

Digital Publishers: The Business of Beautiful Storytelling

Breaking into Digital: Op-eds, Narratives, and Reported Essays in the Digital Age

Writing Across Platforms: From Digital to Print and Beyond

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