USAToday.com: Planning key to award-winning 'Sing my Song' project
At the first Mid-Atlantic regional session of the Online News Association, representatives from USATODAY.com showed what can be done by two guys with a digital camera and a digital audio recorder.
As recounted by API's Chad Capellman:
"Sing My Song" was a project conceived, storyboarded and produced by Senior Designer Ron Coddington and Photo Editor Denny Gainer. The two spent 48 hours at West Virginia's New Song Festival near Charles Town, W.Va., talking to entrants and gathering all the audio and still pictures they could get their hands on.The project, which received a Special Distinction Award at the 2004 Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, became a multi-faceted documentary which included about 60 minutes of audio, song lyrics, an in-depth look into the creation of the music, and even an interactive "you pick the winner" feature which, according to Coddington and Gainer, did not exactly please the competition's official judges, when a different winner was frequently chosen online.
"They still link to us on their Web site, though," Coddington said. "So that's a good sign."
The project ended up in the print product as a full-page feature and was praised by the Batten judges as "an exciting template for interactive entertainment news."Coddington and Gainer showcased some other templates they have developed for covering breaking news and scheduled news events, including the Democratic and Republican conventions. The coverage featured numerous photo galleries and audio from inside and outside the convention halls. The templated nature of these packages is key, said Gainer.
"I can't emphasize enough the planning time that is required," Gainer said. "In the case of the conventions, we had maybe four or five get-togethers to look at PhotoShop mock-ups and then take that into a working flash model and then getting comments from all the people that were going to get involved in gathering information and producing it whether they were going to be out in the field or in the office. [It's important] to talk through all the pieces [and try] to ask the smart questions so we didn't have those surprises. The worst-case scenario is you have a deadline and you're scrambling to make major changes to your template."
Sep 29, 2004 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT
| PERMALINK
| DISCUSS(1)
Discussion
1 comments about 'USAToday.com: Planning key to award-winning 'Sing my Song' project'nappy headed hoes
happy nappy headed hoes
playing ball and on there toes
insulted by an ugly toad
now he plays in side there court
wonder how he likes the sport
happy nappy headed hoes
go downtown to see the man
lawyers charge for song and dance
happy nappy headed hoes
they take his cash and take his clothes
watch your words you ugly toad
happy nappy headed hoes
only heaven really knows
watch the nappy headed hoes stomp upon the ugly toad
right between there nappy toes
happy nappy headed hoes
Posted by john bonda at July 4, 2007 10:40 AM
Post a comment
Site Map
