Interview with Spencer Platt

"In war, there’s often beauty. War isn’t just catastrophe, it just isn’t ugliness, people get married, put on beautiful clothes, people go out in their car, a Mini Cooper, whatever, that’s part of war. I think the juxtaposition there with the rubble and this youth- this youth that stands against death- is intriguing." ~Spencer Platt Spencer Platt was recently awarded the prestigious 2006 World Press Photo of the Year Award for his much-discussed image of a group of young Lebanese driving through a destroyed neighborhood in Beirut. In this podcast Jonathan Klein, CEO and Co-Founder of Getty Images, sits down with Platt and discusses the World Press picture, 9/11, and life as a photojournalist.

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Kingsley’s Crossing on MSNBC, plus Q&A on Multimedia Syndication

Starting in May 2004, award-winning photojournalist Olivier Jobard spent six months documenting the journey of Kingsley from Cameroon to France. The original award-winning piece was first published on MediaStorm in July of 2006, and was recently syndicated by MSNBC to be included as part of a story about The Changing Face of Europe. On the site, Kingsley’s story is presented in five sections and includes an interview with Jobard about the risks involved in documenting Kingsley’s epic journey. Many of the stories being produced for MediaStorm.org are also being licensed for publication in other places. I asked Brian Storm to give us a little insight into how that’s working and what they’re doing. Q: How do you syndicate a multimedia piece? What does that mean? Storm: Our goal is to get stories seen by as wide an audience as possible, so if we can take advantage of the of clients, those who…

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Never Stop Learning

Whether you’re currently a student or a seasoned professional looking for a few tips or something new, there are a lot of options out there, ranging from online courses to intensive training sessions. News University offers online journalism training. Courses cover a broad range of topics, including leadership and management; reporting, writing and editing; broadcast; online; ethics; visual journalism; and journalism education. Many of their courses are free and self-directed. News University is a joint project between the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Poynter Institute. Speaking of Poynter- if you’d rather attend a “live” course, the Poynter Institute has seminars in St. Petersburg, FL, throughout the year covering many of those same topics. Classes are kept small and focused, with both Poynter faculty and working journalists coming in to teach. If you’re free in September, they have a course coming up on Multimedia Reporting in Teams: New Tools…

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Taking a Stand- Stories that Connect

Storybridge.tv has a new episode up today- looking at the life of a man following his dream and working for himself. Po is a hot dog stand owner/operator in Madison, WI. He opened up his first roadside hot dog stand over a decade ago, and is still working hard. “I like doing it, I like working for myself. I used to work here for other people, I know how it is, sometimes I work here in America for other people. Sometimes they treat you ok, sometimes they don’t treat you too good. And they don’t pay you too good either,” Po says. If you haven't seen it yet, Storybridge.tv is the new online home for a couple of TV news vets, who decided they wanted to do things their way. We first heard of it via Lost Remote, who reports, "WISC news anchor Katy Sai and photographer Jay Olsen were tired of…

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Wild Sanctuary on Google Earth

You've probably seen Google Street View by now- the new addition to Google Maps that lets you search and zoom into street-level imagery at select locations throughout the world. Pretty cool. However- you might not have seen Wild Sanctuary's KML Layer addition to Google Earth and Google Maps- a layer of soundscape icons that let users click on locations and hear recordings of the area, with field notes describing the location, date, and sources of the sounds. Wild Sanctuary has over 3,500 hours of recordings, representing almost 15,000 species. Samples in this project range from New York City streets, to the sounds of humpback whales in the depths of the Pacific. You can read more about their Google Earth Soundscapes project in The Christian Science Monitor, or just check out the Google Map.

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