Learning how to create podcasts

Reporter Gerald LaVaute edits audio for a podcast.

My ideaLab report for October is dedicated to podcasting, which I and my staff have learned to do with instruction from Eastern Michigan University College of Education assistant professor Michael McVey. The Saline resident joined me Oct. 20 at Marble Park Cemetery in Milan, where we gathered audio clips at a Trick-or-Treat Tour put on by the historical society. Members of the group, dressed in period clothing, shared first-person stories of some of the local leaders and people of significance buried there.

While we used McVey’s fancy audio recorder to gather the audio, it can be done with the iPhone, as well, using “utilities” and “voice memos.” The sound quality won’t be as clear, but it will work. The phone is actually quite functional because you can also shoot photos for a slide show to accompany the podcast, as well as video to complement your written piece.

On Oct. 28, I invited my staff over to my home for podcast training. Everyone either brought a laptop or used a couple that I provided. First they had to download free software at audacity.sourceforge.net. Each reporter was given a clip, such as local historian Martha Churchill playing the role of the wife of Milan’s first village president, Nathan C. Putnam, and Lance Smith portraying the town’s late police chief and historian, Warren Hale.

The training went well, as McVey gave individual attention to each reporter, helping them eliminate ambient noise and edit the clips down to under three minutes. They were then converted from .wav files to mp3 using audacity editing software. I will finish the project by embedding the mp3 files and photos in a story and uploading it to our website using our content management system, which allows one to embed mp3s under the “media” section, where photos are uploaded.

Eastern Michigan University professor Michael McVey helps reporter Jodie Mason edit audio for a podcast.

With that training under our belts, November will see us move on to a more complicated but socially and historically significant project as McVey and I work with the Saline Area Historical Society to record the histories of 10 local historic sites and share the stories behind them. I will shoot current-day photos and the historical society will give us older photos to use as part of a slide show to accompany the audio. My goal is to have this project completed no later than spring. I’d like to have a drop-down menu on our website or a button that can be clicked on, where the podcasts can live forever. After Saline, I’d like to add 10 historically significant sites in Milan, Chelsea, Dexter, Manchester, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Belleville, which are all part of our coverage area, collected by the reporters covering each community.

Here’s my official ideaLab report for October:

Goal: The goal of this month’s project was to explore podcasting and incorporate it into our news gathering tool belt. I’d like to see our reporters either use audio recording equipment or the ideaLab iPhone to gather audio to incorporate with their news stories online, just as they would gather video or photos to accompany their articles. Podcasting can also stand on its own or may be incorporated in a photo slide show.

Allies: My ally on this project, hands down, was professor Michael McVey. He has been very generous with his time, meeting me several times at a coffee shop to go over the details and logistics, and helping to brainstorm the entire project. To learn more about podcasting, check out his podcast on podcasting called “The Considerate Podcast,” which can be downloaded from iTunesU. He also offers tips on the College of Education’s website.

Obstacles: Obstacles would be resources. We don’t have any audio recording equipment, but we do have the ideaLab iPhone until next summer. I plan to explore the possibility of purchasing at least one digital recorder for staff to use.

Training Needed: We had our initial training with McVey and can do some follow up with him, if necessary, but the audacity software appears to be easy to figure out and you can download a manual.

Resources Needed: Resources needed would be a quality audio recorder with a microphone and head set with microphone for editing.

Accomplishments: The accomplishment is the training we received and using viable audio that we can incorporate online. The podcasting project from the graveyard tour, once I get in posted online, will be a nice accomplishment, with the crown jewel being a historic walking tour podcast series that we create for each community.

What you’ve taught: With the help of professor Michael McVey, we’ve taught reporters how to edit audio and convert it into mp3 files for upload on our website to accompany articles or photo slide shows.

What you’ve learned: I’ve learned how to gather audio on a recorder and the iPhone, edit it using free software from audacity.sourceforge.net, and upload it to our website.

Metrics: We won’t have metrics until I get the audio online and see what the response is from readers. Of course, we will promote it on social networking sites and in print.

Narrative: My narrative is above.

Diverse and embedded media equals bigger website hits

Ann Arbor isn’t a huge high school sports town.

Sure, two of the biggest high schools in Michigan are located here, and multiple state champions have been crowned in the 13 or so months that I’ve worked for the A2 Journal. However, Ann Arbor isn’t like most other towns. People from the community don’t flock to high school sporting events. After all, this is the home of the mighty University of Michigan and the storied Wolverine football program. In other cities of comparable size, high school sports play a bigger role in the eyes of the community. They are a way for people to rally around  and take pride in something. But in Ann Arbor, for lack of a better way of explaining it, there are just too many other things going on. High school sports gets lost in the shuffle.

So it became a goal of mine to try to get people interested. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to fill the stands at the Pioneer football games, but I was at least going to try to get people to read about them.

I soon found that writing and posting stories to the web isn’t enough. Sports, especially at the high school level is a weird beat. Sure, your stories are going to get read, but they are only going to be read by the people who really, really care about them. The people who are going to search for your work. And in the prep sports business, that means parents of players. And that target audience isn’t big enough.

We can’t count on people to search for our stories, we have to make them accessible and make them interesting. All of us, not just the sports folks, are charged with the tough assignment of making people care about stuff they might not have much interest in.

And I’ve found that one step to doing that is with digital media.

Pictures, audio and video. That stuff draws people in.

And if it’s packaged with the story, the story gets hit on the website, and all the media is viewed in the same place. That’s why it is so important to embed the media in the story.

Here is a good example:

On Friday, Oct. 15 I went to a football game and covered it as I would normally. Taking stats and occasionally shooting some video with my Flip. At the conclusion of the game, I used my phone (a Motorola Droid) to record some audio using the Ipadio application. I recorded about four minutes of the winning coach’s postgame interview. Then I used the Flip again to record a few minutes of the coach addressing his team, kind of an after-game pep talk. Finally, I pulled the winning quarterback away and did a short Flip interview with him.

Then I went home, wrote my story, edited the video and uploaded the audio to the Ipadio site. Then I embedded everything into the story. Ipadio offers an embed code, as do all the videos.

So in the end, I have a story, with a media player built into it with some audio and then three videos stacked upon one another. I made sure to put “(with audio and video)” into my web headline, and then I published our site and added links on facebook and twitter.

On Monday I noticed something pretty spectacular. My football story was the No. 2 most viewed story on the Heritage.com website. That might not sound like a big deal, but since I’ve worked here, there has never been a prep sports story in the top three of the “Most Viewed” section.

It had over 100 views, and the videos all had significantly more views than other, similar videos not embedded into stories. I’m not tooting my own horn here. The story didn’t get viewed that much because it was written any better than the others. It was seen because it had more to offer a reader than just words to read.

Ann Arbor is still not a huge high school sports town. But I see now that that doesn’t matter.  People can be interested in anything that is easily accessible, anything that screams out to them to sacrifice a second to take a look. Besides, it doesn’t make any sense to go through the effort of filming and editing video if we are going to bury it in a video section somewhere where people can’t find it.

If we want to start getting bigger website hits, we need to not only embrace the gathering of digital media, but also the way we bring it to our readers. And embedding into stories is the first step.

iPad at a City Council meeting

On Tuesday The News-Herald’s online coordinator Jason Alley passed along the much anticipated iPad to me, which I planned to use at a City Council meeting that night.

I couldn’t even listen to him give me simple instructions, like how to turn it on, because I was so excited to play with it. Push hear, blah blah, it was like a Charlie Brown interaction with his teacher (sorry Jason, but it’s true).

Once left alone, I began flipping through the apps and checking it out. I just really could not wait to play with the cool technology.

I came across the notepad and a dictation app, and decided I would test them out at my meeting that night.

Before that, though, I had a lot more practicing and playing to do.

I spent time in the notepad app practicing how to type, which is difficult. The keys are really close together so I had to be extra careful on key strokes.

I wouldn’t consider myself a record breaking typist, but I can pound the keys decently fast, and I found that the iPad had no problem keeping up with me.

I practiced by typing headlines and articles from the newspaper on my desk, and thought I was getting pretty good.

My co-worker Jackie Martin and I were also testing with the dictation app. Even close up in the office, we didn’t find it completely accurate at all times, but it certainly was impressive.

After dinner I headed up to my meeting, with iPad in tow. I was super pumped, and got some impressed looks from people I was sitting near.

The council chamber has a speaker system, so I figured while the meeting was getting started I would give the dictation app a go.

This is the time when they read the city mission statement and other non-newsworthy items, so I figured it would be a good time to try something new.

At first I couldn’t get the dictation app to work, but once it got going it was not able to pick much up. It also could not process clips more than a few seconds long.

It was fun to test in the office, but I wouldn’t trust it for newsgathering.

The rest of the meeting I went to the notepad. All my practice paid off – wow those keys are really small.

What I did find challenging was the apps autocorrect. I often use shorthand while note taking – because becomes b/c, etc. The iPad did not like my shorthand. One time I misspelled dilemma, and it autocorrected to Selina? I thought my notes might be in trouble.

Luckily I caught most of the typos as they happened, and found out how to turn off the autocorrect.

I was able to connect to the city’s Wi-Fi, and while an issue was brought up about an editorial The News-Herald ran, I quickly read it off our site and was up to speed.

That was a capability I had never had before, since we don’t have laptops I’ve been a pen and paper reporter.

Overall the iPad was great to have, and with a little more practice and a wireless keyboard I think it would be wonderful to have at meetings.

I had all my notes electronically, which became a major time saver and improved my accuracy, since I type faster than I write.

The keys also allowed me to type away without bothering anyone, unlike a laptop.

Thanks for letting me test it out!

With some more apps and practice, I think we could do some really great things with the iPad.