It′s a multimedia world, and today′s journalists must develop a multimedia mindset. How does this way of thinking change the newsgathering and news production processes? Having conceived of and written their book in this changed media landscape, broadcast veterans Wenger and Potter seamlessly build on the fundamentals of good television reporting while teaching students to use depth, interactivity and immediacy as they maximize the advantages of each platform.
While retaining the book′s clear instruction and advice from those in the trenches, the authors focus on updating to reflect the latest issues and trends with:
• greater emphasis on the importance of understanding the audience;
• a new focus on the use of social media to gather, promote and disseminate news content;
• expanded information on "the three screen strategy" to deliver content to mobile devices, the web and television;
• new opportunities created by entrepreneurial, niche and hyper-local news sites;
• suggestions for how readers can develop their own "brands," including updated multimedia portfolios; and
• interviews with dozens of additional journalists at the forefront of industry changes.
To show how the book′s lessons work in the field, every chapter includes:
• Know and Tell―professional journalists share insights on multiplatform approaches and industry changes.
• Trade Tools―the authors′ training materials, such as handy checklists with tips and best practices.
• Taking It Home―brief chapter wrap-ups.
• Talking Points―questions and scenarios for in-class discussion.
• Online Learning Modules― interactive chapter exercises, skill-building tutorials and analysis from journalism experts.
Be sure to visit the authors on twitter and their author blog!
Twitter: @TVNewsLab
Blog: advancingthestory.wordpress.com
Debora Halpern Wenger, a veteran journalist and educator, is associate professor and director of undergraduate journalism at the University of Mississippi. She is also a former associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. Prior to her academic appointment, she served as assistant news director at WFLA-TV in Tampa, Fla. She started her career as a reporter/anchor at KXJB in Fargo, N.D., moved on to producing at WBBH in Ft. Myers, Fla., and WMUR in Manchester, N.H., then became executive producer at WSOC in Charlotte, N.C. Wenger conducts multimedia training in newsrooms across the country and is co-author of the broadcast, online and mobile journalism curricula for the Society of Professional Journalists’ Journalism Training Program. She has been invited to work as visiting faculty for the Poynter Institute. She has a BA from what is now known as Minnesota State University and an MA from University of North Carolina–Charlotte.
Deborah Potter is a veteran reporter and journalism trainer who spent 16 years as a network correspondent for CBS News and CNN. She founded NewsLab (www.newslab.org), a non-profit resource for journalists, in 1998. Before joining CBS, Potter was a radio news anchor at KYW in Philadelphia and a local TV news producer in Washington, D.C. For more than a decade, she was a contributing correspondent to the PBS program “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly.” Potter leads workshops for journalists in newsrooms across the United States and around the world on writing, social media, digital journalism and ethics. She has served as visiting faculty at the University of Montana and the University of Arkansas. Potter is a former faculty associate at the Poynter Institute and is the author of the “Handbook of Independent Journalism.” She has a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MA from American University.
