The Student Service Committee at George Mason University celebrated Read Across America day Thursday.

Students were encouraged to step up to a microphone located in front of the Johnson Center and read short stories and talk about why literacy is important. The event was held to draw attention to the illiteracy rate in America and to provide GMU students a way to do something about it.

The Student Service Committee set up a book drive and donation can for students to donate and help lower the illiteracy rate.

In chapter 6, Briggs talked about photography and it’s importance to journalism through storytelling and providing the most possible information on an event. Photography has been around for awhile but with the advent of digital photography, the photography game has changed.

Now that digital photography has cut out the laborious dark room and other time consuming techniques once necessary for photography, anyone can be a photographer. Everyone cannot be a good photographer, however.

How to be a good photographer

Accoriding to Briggs, good photography is about catching the right moment and being patient. Anyone can take a photo of a concert, but the difference between getting a shot of the band performing normally on stage and a shot of the singer jumping into the crowd is imense. Also, in order to get a shot like this you need patience. The singer won’t start a show with a stage dive, but if you’re patient and wait, it could happen.

Another important aspect to being a good photographer is to get your subjects comfortable with you. If they’re comfortable they’re more likely to act naturally and give your photos the same feel. A photo that looks staged is obvious and takes away from it.

In chapter 5 of Journalism Next, Mark Briggs explained how journalism is going mobile.

It used to be difficult for major journalism outlets to incorporate themselves with mobile phones because they had to get permission from every cell phone provider. Now with the open format of smartphones, it is simple for any journalism outlet to release their media in a mobile format.

Everything you need

Many smartphones offer everything that a journalist needs including a high quality camera, video camera, internet connection and a full QWERTY keypad. with all of these things, journalists can record their story through a number of mediums and then publish them in a mobile format for the public to see instantly.

Advantages

Mobile journalism allows the journalist to release a story instantly. Mobile journalism is particularly beneficial for breaking news or any news where constant updating will benefit the reader. The journalist is able to post pictures, then write about the event, shoot video and constantly update as the story changes. Convenience is becoming increasingly important so the quicker you can get a story out, the better.

While mobile journalism will not entirely replace in depth, well written journalism, Briggs thinks it will become a good supplement. It gives the audience the ability to read short stories when they’re in a hurry and long stories when they have the time.

Brad Kalbfeld, chief operating officer at Pacard Media Group LLC, spoke to my journalism class Thursday about the progression and implications of technology in journalism.

Technological progression

Kalbfeld began his lecture by showing the class his hefty bag of journalism equipment he had to carry around in the 1980’s. The bag included a typewriter, an audio recorder that uses cassette tapes, and a more portable recorder. In addition to these, Kalbfeld also had to use a number of other devices to send out his stories.

A 1980's audio recorder

Eventually a new typewriter came out with a display screen that made it possible to edit stories and send them much easier. Now everything in Kalbfeld’s bag is available in the palm of your hand with smart phones.

Technological Implications

Kalbfeld also talked about the possible implications of such accessible technology that allows almost anyone to be a journalist. When anyone can be a journalist, they can skip most of the editing steps that many established journalism outlets use and post possibly false information. This means that credibility in journalism is becoming exponentially important as it gets harder to tell what is real and what is fabricated. Photoshop is making the truth increasingly hard to distinguish since people can make a picture show whatever they want.

Kalbfeld sees people growing tired of constantly having to distinguish truth from lies themselves and then returning to old-style newspaper. However, to gain back readers, newspapers will have to embrace new technology. Kaldfeld sees newspapers turning into large digital paper that is the same size and close to the same flexibility as a regular paper newspaper except it will be interactive. This will satisfy both the readers desire to get reliable information as well as their desire for technology.

Microblogging is an increasingly popular platform not only for social purposes, but for journalism as well. Microblogging is to regular blogging as text messaging is to email. It allows the user to send out the same information as a blog except in smaller doses. Twitter is the most popular example of a microblog. The implications of microblogging on the social and journalism world, however, are large.

Social implications

Microblogging allows people to connect and share every little piece of information about their life without it seeming boring or narcissistic. Users are able to do because they’re displaying their information to large audience where it is likely at least some will find their updates interesting and if not, they can ignore and forget about it.

While small pieces of information about someone’s life may seem unimportant, if you want to catch up with a person then researching their past updates is a simple way to find a conversation starter.

Journalism implications

For journalists, microblogging allows the most intimate connection with their audience. The ability to communicate with your audience and have them communicate back allows the public to help shape the news and become more a part of the news-making process than ever before.

Microblogging is also great not only for releasing breaking news, but finding breaking news. Instead of finding breaking news, interviewing people, typing the story, editing it and then posting it in paper or on a blog; microblogging allows instant distribution of the most important parts of the story.

For journalists in search of news, microblogging is useful because they can find breaking news from the public the instant it happens and possibly turn up a story faster than the other reporters. Without microblogging news would take longer to find and to release to the public. In cases of emergency, this time delay can mean the difference before life or death.

Jake McLernon taught Steven Klein’s online journalism class the basics of shooting and composing video packages at George Mason University Tuesday.

McLernon has been working with video for almost a year and is almost entirely self taught. A natural, McLernon quickly became the photo and video editor for GMU’s Connect2Mason website.

Journalistic importance

Video is an increasingly important skill for journalists to have on their tool belt. The switch from paper to online journalism put an increased demand for journalists with video skills. McLernon taught the class easy ways to shoot and assemble media packages for journalism stories and showed that everything you need is in an iPhone.

With the iPhone replacing bags of heavy equipment, it is easier than ever for journalists to capture crucial video, making knowledge of video essential for any up and coming journalist.

Gannet released a FAQ in the chains paper outlining how their journalists are to use their newly acquired iPhone 4s‘. Gannet decided to deploy iPhones to their front-line journalists so that they can deliver the news faster and more efficiently while using the latest technologies that consumers expect to see.

Why an iPhone?

Gannet decided on giving its employees iPhone 4s’ over other smart phones because of exclusive apps that offer functionality essential to journalists such as  the ability to upload video to a local sites Brightcove. In addition the iPhone is available among a variety of different platforms and is constantly changing to keep up with the latest technology.

Other features

The iPhone 4s also offers an 8 megapixel camera and a HD 1080p video camera. This ensures that the journalists will always have high quality materials on hand. Sure there are better cameras out there, but when you take in account the ease and convenience of having one on your phone, the specs more than enough.

Everything in one

Most of all the iPhone 4s contains practically everything a journalists in one compact device. Journalists no longer have to lug around large bags filled with heavy equipment and waste time setting it up. With the iPhone journalists can get all the news they need quickly without missing anything important. Best of all little quality is sacrificed through the advanced technology of the iPhone 4s.

In the second week of my online journalism class I learned how to write a story using the online platform Storify. Storify is a great step in the right direction for journalism because it incorporates the readers in the story more than any other medium.

What is Storify?

Storify not only allows you to publish articles on an intuitive platform, but also lets you insert media from popular social networking sites such as Twitter. You write the story just like you would a normal article, except instead you getting quotes from interviews, you can use peoples’ tweets. This adds even greater value to social networking sites and gives your article a unique edge over other articles.

The basic layout of Storify

Other media

In addition to importing tweets, you can also include posts on Facebook and videos from YouTube and Vimeo with built in search tools. You can also add media from other sites as simply as pasting a URL.

It’s easy

The intuitive layout allows you to search and find what you’re looking for in no time and adding it to your article is as simple as dragging and dropping.

Storify is currently in beta and George Mason University has been given the privilege to test it out. With large news outlets increasingly relying on social networks for news and to find out how to appeal to readers, Storify seems like a natural next step in the fast-evolving world of journalism.

In my first week on my Online Journalism I learned essential tips for writing for the web. It’s so easy for readers to stop reading something online because they are only one click away from reading something new. For this reason it’s essential that you keep their attention.

Breaking up your story

Using separate titles to break up your stories makes them easier to read and allows the reader to find exactly what they’re looking for.

Short sentences

Simple sentences are key. Short and powerful sentences have a bigger impact. They stand out. They keep the reader reading. It makes them want to know what will come next.

Incorporating media

Inserting something as simple as a picture will help draw readers in. With all the distractions out there using words just simply isn’t enough anymore.

Frank has hair? This is unusual and will attract readers who want to find out more.

[View the story “Sleepless in Washington” on Storify]