Interview with MediaStorm Producer Rick Gershon

Rick Gershon joined MediaStorm as a producer in 2010. He served as a multimedia photojournalist and staff photographer at Getty Images from 2007 to 2010. Some of his clients include the Discovery Channel, History Channel, A&E, The Travel Channel, AOL.com and MSNBC. His images of various news and political events have run in newspapers and news magazines around the world and he is a featured photographer with Reportage by Getty Images. Can you give us a general overview of your kit and the gear you’re using? As you can see I have a ton of gear. You certainly don't have to have all this gear to do it, but I use every single piece of it. A lot of this gear is honestly used to make the Canon 5D Mark II function like a professional video camera. It's a still camera. It's not built to be a video camera. To shoot rock…

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MediaStorm Welcomes Fall Interns Caitlyn Greene and Tucker Walsh

We are excited to welcome Caitlyn Greene and Tucker Walsh as our Fall 2011 Interns. Caitlyn is a recent graduate of UNC Chapel Hill where she studied visual communication, Spanish and Business Administration. She was most recently a videographer and lead video editor for Coal: A Love Story, an interactive film produced as part of News21. She is currently in post-production on her honors thesis project called Immortal, a non-traditional documentary about our obsession with not dying. During her time at UNC, Caitlyn worked on award-winning team projects in Mexico, India, Bangladesh and Argentina as a photographer, videographer and video editor. Her work has been recognized by the Hearst Foundation, College Photographer of the Year, National Press Photographer's Association and North Carolina Press Photographer’s Association. She is especially excited about the intersection of art, journalism, cinema and technology in storytelling. Tucker is a visual storyteller working in multiple mediums to tell visceral,…

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Powering a Nation

The University of Northern Carolina at Chapel Hill has launched this year’s Powering A Nation site, highlighting our country’s complicated relationship with coal. Throughout your experience on the site you’re introduced to miners who depend on the black rock for their livelihoods, local citizens who suffer from its adverse health effects, and everyday folks who flip on a light switch without thinking twice about what it takes to create that power. The stories in, “Coal: A Love Story” give you a new appreciation for the complexities surrounding the coal and energy industry. The piece represents an innovative form of journalism where the audience is given all sides of the story and allowed to explore the issues they care about through interactive graphics and source data. See for yourself at: http://poweringanation.org/

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MediaStorm Interview: John Temple

John Temple is the editor of Civil Beat in Honolulu. He was also the last editor, president, and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News in Colorado. While at Rocky Mountain News he worked with MediaStorm to produce a piece around the 2008 Democratic National Convention. He maintains an active blog called Temple Talk and was an attendee of MediaStorm's Methodology Workshop. Everyone in journalism seems to be talking about how much the industry is changing. What do you believe are the key trends in the industry and how do you believe journalism will adapt? I think the most important trend is probably an overall sense of disruption where there is no certainty that any approach that has been successful in the past will continue to be viable or support serious journalistic enterprises in the future. That's perhaps the largest trend, dramatic disruption of the traditional business model. And then related to that…

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Three MediaStorm Projects nominated for News and Documentary Emmy Awards

Three MediaStorm projects are among the Nominees announced today for the 32nd Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards. Undesired, By Walter Astrada for the Alexia Foundation, was nominated in the New Approaches to News & Documentary Programming: Documentaries Category. In India, all women must confront the cultural pressure to bear a son. The consequences of this preference is a disregard for the lives of women and girls. From birth until death they face a constant threat of violence. See the project here. Crisis Guide: Pakistan, produced for Council on Foreign Relations, was also nominated in the New Approaches to News & Documentary Programming: Documentaries Category. Pakistan's stability is of great consequence to regional and international security. Crisis Guide: Pakistan examines the roots of its challenges, what it means for the region and the world, and explores some plausible futures for the country. See the project here. Airsick by Toronto Star Photographer Lucas…

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