Have a plan... but write it in pencil

Tonight gave me another example in my career about the danger of going into a story with an exact plan. Sure, you want to have a plan, or an idea about what you want to do with a story when you go to cover an event. But not too much of a plan.

As a journalist, you have to be able to adapt and take in everything going on around you. When you go into a situation with an outline of your story already in your head, then things have a funny way of ruining that outline.

Tonight I had to cover two high school basketball games and write a story for both web and for print. Most of what I do is web based, but this story was going in print also. An editor told me which two teams were expected to win, and let me know what he was looking for with the story.

So I went into the game with a framework of the story already in place. But like I said, those kinds of things never really seem to work out like your expect. In the first game the team that was expected to lose, ended up winning. Surprise, surprise. So much for that story I already had in my head.

That changed everything. Then in the second game, I wanted to do a piece about about the losing team and the good season they had. But they just lost a close game, so the coaches and players weren't too thrilled to talk about this wonderful season. Again, so much for that perfect outline.

In sports reporting, that always seems to be the case. If you want the outcome of the game to change suddenly, then start writing your story with a specific angle. Then something crazy will happen and your original story can get tossed out the window.

I remember a couple years ago covering a swim meet for the local newspaper, and I started to write up the story in my notebook. The meet looked to be pretty well in hand, and when you're sitting inside at a swim meet for several hours, all you can really think about is what is finding a way to get out of there ASAP.

So I started writing up the story, and as the meet went on, the story I had drafted ended up being a complete waste. One team came from nowhere to surprise everyone and win the meet championship. My original story was scrapped and it was back to the drawing board for me.

Just like that swim meet, the basketball games tonight once again provided me with another example of why it is dangerous to go into a situation being overly prepared to take a story in a certain direction. Another good lesson to learn from an internship.

Nobody's immune

Just like everybody else, I get tired of hearing and talking about the recession. It's not good, and everybody knows it. But it is a very real concern, especially for people in the media. Articles like this make it difficult to ignore.

If ESPN is even hurting, that can't be good.

Competition

In many ways Las Vegas is a very interesting town. It's a place built on tourism. A place where people come to spend money, party and basically behave badly. The motto for the town is "What happens in Vegas stay in Vegas," and that should tell you everything about the mentality of people visiting here.

Another characteristic that makes Vegas a unique place is that it is a major city still with two competing daily newspapers. The Las Vegas Sun and Las Vegas Review-Journal are published on a daily basis and compete to provide better print content and better online coverage. Most cities only have one major daily newspaper, so coming to a place with two papers is something new for me.

With two newspapers in town, one of the main things I've noticed is how competition pushes you to continually provide good stories and deliver them in innovative ways. Unlike cities with just one newspaper, the Las Vegas Sun doesn't have a monopoly on the news here in Vegas, and we're in constant competition with the RJ. If people don't feel like we provide accurate content or don't have enough information, then they can just go to the RJ.

We have to provide the best, most complete coverage of people won't read our newspaper or visit our website. It's that simple.

I'll speak from a sports coverage perspective, because that's what I do. From the start, the RJ has a leg up on us because it has an agreement with Nevada High School Athletics that requires coaches of every sport to call in their scores to the RJ every night. We don't have that kind of agreement, so we have to take a slightly different approach.

With the way things are right now, we're not going to have every single score each night from boy's basketball, girl's basketball, soccer, volleyball, golf, etc. However, we can cover as many games as possible, and give those games great coverage.

For example, the high school basketball playoffs are going on right now, and we covered a big game the other day. Like many of our sports stories, we had an article, a video and a photo gallery. One of our reporters also had an awesome story about on of the kids getting a scholarship offer from UNLV...as a freshman. So that's two stories, a video and photo gallery. The coverage we had was great and I had a good time putting together the video.

Now we don't just cover events this way because we have a competitor here in Vegas. Knowing the people at the Sun, I think the Sun would cover events this way regardless, because that's part of what we're supposed to do as journalists. But having a competitor right there, trying to beat you on every story, can always give you a little extra incentive :)

The Lead Image

One of my favorite parts of the design of www.lasvegassun.com is that the main "image" on the site is often a video. This lead image sometimes is a stand-alone video, without much of a print component. Other times, the image is attached to an article, and the video is used as supplement to the article, or vice-versa.

Either way, I like how we can make the video the lead image for a story. With the video as a top image, you can view the video right from the homepage, in small screen or full screen view. Also, you can click on the headline of the article, read that, and then watch the video on the screen with the article. This gives the reader/viewer several options, and hopefully keeps them clicking around on the site for a while.

The other day, a video I did about a local basketball team living together was the lead image on the website. This story was a supplement to an article one of our writers did about the basketball team. The video and article worked well together. They also were fine one their own. You didn't have to see one to understand the other.

Making the video the lead image is a fascinating way to attract some more viewers and liven up the homepage. When I see a video as the main image on a newspaper website, it seems a little more attractive and well done. ESPN.com uses the video as the main image all the time now. ESPN recently rolled out it's new redesigned website, and it made a larger space for the lead image, also making it a video player. Before, the video player was a smaller screen on the right side of the page.

Rarely is the Sun's lead image only a single photo. It is almost always a video or photo gallery, giving people a little more than they anticipate.

Interesting Times

Most people wouldn't say this is the most appealing time to go into journalism. Actually, very few people would probably say that. It's no secret ad revenues are declining, circulation numbers are declining, the economy is in a recession, the sky is falling.....

It seems like most conversations about journalism start with something like, "How can we save newspapers? Is journalism dead? Is local TV over? Will we have newspapers is 10 years?" And the list goes on, and on and on...

Here's an article from the Wall Street Journal about the fate of local TV.

Here's one from Time Magazine about how to save newspapers.

I'm not arguing that it's tough. Everybody knows that. My nine-year brother knows that. Prospects for the news industry look bleak.

However, it's pretty darn exciting. Times are tough, but that forces us to work harder. We're forced to find better ways to deliver the news, to see what works and what doesn't, and to figure what people want to see and read.

Maybe I'm just naive, or looking at the glass half-full, but I think this is one of the most exciting times to go into journalism. Maybe not the most promising for everybody in the business, but it is exciting. I'm tired of people saying, "you sure?," when I tell them I'm going into journalism.

The media has never been more aware of viewer's habits and interests, and we're having conversations that would never take place if everything were golden. But since money is an issue, we (the media) are trying to innovate. We don't have the luxury of just sticking with the same old system.

We have to go a completely new direction, and that is part of the reason I like interning at the Las Vegas Sun. I'm surrounded by people who are trying innovative things, and looking for ways to make our website better. Stuff may not always work out perfectly, but we're taking a chance and trying to figure it out.

I like this aspect of being in the media today. Twenty years ago everything was more formulated. People wanted to become a newspaper writer, or a TV anchor, or a photographer. Today the lines have blurred. I just want to be a journalist. I want to tell stories, and I want to figure out cool ways to do so.

And with the ways things are today, I don't really have another choice. :)

Funny stuff..

I discovered this the other day when I went to view the HTML code for our website.

This a screen grab of what the programmers put in the code, which you can view by clicking "view source" on a web browser.

That is funny to me. The programmers at the Sun are unreal, and this is just one funny way of showing it.

9-5 Job....Nope

I never expected this internship to be a 9-5 job. I never really wanted it to be, either. Part of the reason for that is because I hate waking up at 7:30 every morning. I would much rather work until one or two in the morning than be at work at 9 everyday.

Luckily I'm in the right spot. Also covering sports, I'll be working a lot of nights anyways. I bring this up because yesterday was a day that sums up the 24 hour coverage journalists have to provide in this time.

For college football fanatics, yesterday was National Signing Day, and all the high school studs officially stated where they will go on to play college ball. Here in Vegas a number of kids signed to play some big time college football, and we wanted to capture the excitement of the day.

To do so, we blew up our coverage. We had several reporters on signing day assignments, and we covered it from the angle of local kids signing scholarships and also the players from across the country coming to play at UNLV.

Like a lot of the things done at the Sun, we blew up our coverage of signing day. We had an individual page for the event, which included all of the recruiting articles we have written. All of them. Not just the ones from yesterday, but the entire year.

We also had team pages, with school records and statistics. With the stats page you can compare the individual leaders around the area, and also break down team numbers. That's some good background info.

Then I went out to three high schools yesterday for their signing day festivities. I put together three videos to compliment the articles and also a video to run on the TV show All-In. This made for a long day; one that started at 6:30 and ended around 1:30 when I finally finished the last video.

Even though the hours were long, the coverage was awesome. We have a great product to show, and people in Vegas are starting to realize the kind of coverage we are giving these high school athletes. It's fun to have a part in that effort.

Bro, it's the Internet...

Yesterday I covered the Super Bowl for the Sun. But like most of what we do, I covered it with a local twist. The Super Bowl is a HUGE weekend for Vegas, and we wanted to capture some of that interest.

Outside of actually being at the Super Bowl, Vegas is probably the next most popular city to watch the game. The reason for that is simple--money. In recent years about $90 million is bet on the Super Bowl and all of the ridiculous prop bets, so people have an invested interest in the game.

To cover the Super Bowl, I went to a local bar that is known as a place where Steelers fans watch games. Another reporter went to a sportsbook and the ESPN Zone with a photographer, and one of our bloggers and another videographer watched the game from the Hilton Sportsbook (the biggest sportsbook in town). That's some good local coverage of a Super Bowl!

So I'm at this bar with a bunch of Steelers fans, and I had the privilege of being "that creepy guy with a video camera." I would film people watching the game, getting reactions and trying to keep them from noticing me so that I wouldn't lose the real emotion of the moments. After getting some video of them, I would explain I'm with the Las Vegas Sun.

After explaining to one guy that I worked with the Sun, I got the question of the day... maybe even the year. He looks at me and says, "Now I have to ask this stupid question. How do you take video for a newspaper?"

I looked at him, and just thought, "Bro, it's called the Internet."

A little later a man came up and asked me what network I'm filming for. Again, I explained I'm with the Sun and it's for the Internet. As I was leaving he told me he was going to watch the news on TV to see the video. Ohh boy.

That's part of the challenge for newspapers. Even though everyone knows the Internet is there, people don't necessarily think of a newspaper doing video, or having interactive guides, or texting you with updates from the game. People still think of it as... the newspaper.

I think that is changing, but encounters like yesterday make me wonder.

How do you make people aware of all a website has to offer? I'm not sure I know the answer. But I'd sure that to figure that out :)