Poynter Online

Hartford Courant Reverses Redesign Based on Reader Feedback

By Sara Dickenson Quinn   
Taking cues from readers in a recent poll, The Hartford Courant has opted to return to a traditional, horizontal nameplate on their front page. The oldest continuously published paper in the U.S., The Courant is reversing its move to a vertical nameplate in a redesign launched last September.

Led by the paper's new Senior Vice President and Director of Content Jeff Levine and designed largely by Assistant Art Director Chris Moore, The Courant posted three designs earlier this month and polled for reader preferences.

Levine said the poll was launched in response to feedback, "We received a lot of negative feedback on the placement of the nameplate when we launched our redesign last year. And that criticism never subsided."

In the poll, readers favored a more classic position for the nameplate.

"It was a basic online poll," he said. "Not scientific, but almost 95 percent of the participants wanted Hartford Courant back on top."

Levine said calls about this week's change "have been almost universally positive."

"We are very focused on learning what our readers like and don't like about the paper and the Web site," said Levine. "We will regularly be engaging in formal and informal research."

The vertical nameplate (shown left) was part of a Hartford Courant redesign that launched last September. This week, the Courant returned to a more traditional horizontal nameplate (shown right).

"The horizontal nameplate really gives us more flexibility for story play and more variety from day to day," said Melanie Shaffer, design director at the Courant. "(The vertical nameplate) just started to seem a little limited -- not a lot of options for how to play the page."

The poll also gave editors an idea of how much color readers want.

"(One) prototype ... had a horizontal nameplate, but the page was very blue," said Shaffer. "People said 'too blue, too blue!' So we stepped back a hair from that while still trying to make elements pop on the page."

Another feature at the bottom of the front page for readers who like to scan is called "Quick Take." It resembles an earlier news digest format, but it's written with more substance and detail in 10 or so short blurbs on additional stories inside the paper. "This is intended to give more information so that you can really get what the story is about," said Shaffer.

Shaffer's advice to other papers that might be considering some radical change to a traditional format: "I don't think we can be afraid to take the chances. We just have to be nimble. Take the chance."

Live Chat Today: Dallas Morning News Captures Award-Winning Photos from the 'Edge of Life'

By Kenny Irby   
Dallas Morning News photographer Sonya Hebert and reporter Lee Hancock spent the past year documenting death -- how we experience it and how it changes the way we live -- for a five-part series called "At the Edge of Life." In their exploration of end-of-life medical care, Hebert and Hancock worked with Baylor University Medical Center's palliative-care team and gained unprecedented access to clinicians, patients and families.

Hebert's photos and video capture the stories of those they met -- the granddaughter who just lost her grandma, the woman who can't bear to leave her dying husband's bedside, the girl who struggles with an eating disorder as she wonders whether her ill mother will survive.

To find out more about these stories and what she learned from capturing them, I interviewed Hebert, who won the ASNE Community Service Photojournalism award for her work on the project and was nominated as a 2009 Pulitzer finalist. Here is our edited exchange.

Kenny Irby: How did the "At the Edge Of Life" project originate, and how long have you done this kind of work?

Hebert: The concept of the project was born before I started working at the Morning News. Our project began with personal loss. Reporter Lee Hancock's youngest brother spent five years in and out of ICUs before succumbing in 2005 to complications from a fungal infection. She saw how everyone around a hospital bed suffers when no one can talk openly about mortality.

Death is the last great taboo, a subject few volunteer to explore intimately. Our newsroom is no exception, as it routinely covers accidents, violence and freakish tragedies but rarely examines how death comes about for ordinary people. We felt compelled to look at our way of dying and how we might cover the subject better.

The Dallas Morning News is my first full-time job in journalism. And, this project is by far the most intensive and in-depth work I've done. I studied photojournalism at Ohio University from 2005-2007, during which time I worked on short-term projects.

How much time did you put into the coverage?

Sonya Hebert

Hebert: I spent the bulk of a year working on this project. We negotiated with Baylor University Medical Center's palliative care team to gain access and then spent months haggling with the hospital's administrators and lawyers. The palliative team director gave up at one point, saying we couldn't overcome legal obstacles and fears about having a reporter and photographer roaming Dallas' largest hospital. We kept pushing and ultimately gained unfettered access.

We spent months attending Baylor palliative care team meetings and meeting with doctors, nurses, public relations staff and others individually to explain our goals and build trust. We had planned to be with the Baylor palliative care team over an intensive period. Before doing so, we needed to ensure that the team members were on board with the project and we had to allow them to become comfortable with their role in initiating patient interactions for us.

We spent months observing clinician visits with patients and families. In late May and early June, we shadowed the team at Baylor intensively for three weeks and met 38 patients who agreed to be a part of the project. I shot stills and video. After the three-week period, we continued until late September to document the stories of some of the patients who left the hospital and families who lost loved ones.

Video and print production began in August. With over 50 hours of video footage, just scrubbing the video took many weeks of long hours. The production of the four videos in total took four months.

How did the collaboration between you and your writing colleague evolve?

Hebert: Writers and photographers have different processes for storytelling. This can pose a challenge when both the writer and the photographer must accomplish their storytelling under restrictions. Balancing our individual needs was challenging. It was Lee's intention to tell the story of end-of-life care at Baylor through the experiences and interactions of team members and patients. I found it more compelling to focus mostly on the patients. This posed a conflict, especially given the requirement to be accompanied by a public relations staff member at all times, which prohibited us from splitting up.

On a typical day rounding with the palliative care team, nurse Min Patel zipped from floor to floor, tracking down doctors, seeing patients, and putting out fires. It was vital for Lee to stick to Min and follow her every movement. On the other hand, there were times I needed to stay with the patients to build rapport and shoot freely. As the embed period progressed, we both learned how to accomplish what we needed while helping the other to do the same.

How did you interact with your online staff? Was the Web presentation very different from the newspaper's presentation?

Hebert: I had minimal contact with the online staff who produced the main page. The project coordinator, photo editor Chris Wilkins, conferred with the online department.

Were the goals different for online presentation from the print edition?

Hebert: The print presentation was a five-day series, including over 40 photos, that took readers on a journey into Baylor hospital rooms where palliative care practitioners helped dying patients and grieving families with the painful choices of life and death. It looked at the human side of medical care and the role of technology in an era when dying patients can be kept alive for months, even years, but never cured.

The goal of the online presentation was to expand on the print presentation through videos and additional resources for readers. "Patients at the Edge" is a compilation of vignettes of dying patients and their loved ones that brings viewers into the universal experience of dying. The video about Penni Bourque gave viewers an intimate look at how palliative care can help people live fully until death. Judy Jackson's video examined how difficult it can be to let go of loved ones and come to terms with loss. "The Palliative Mission" offered explanation and understanding about what palliative care is and how it helps dying patients and families.

Join Poynter Visual Journalism faculty member Kenny Irby, and ASNE winner Sonya Hebert Monday, April 27, at 1 p.m. for a live chat on telling stories about death with dignity. The interview continues below the chat box.

The end of life period is a very difficult subject to explore in the American culture. How did your focus come about?

Hebert: Initially, the project's focus was far-reaching and included three areas of end-of-life care: the Baylor model, an established team of doctors, nurses and practitioners; an out-patient palliative care clinic at the county hospital, Parkland Hospital; and a look at pediatric palliative care in the region as well. We chose to tackle Baylor first because we had made great headway in access, and Baylor had a well-established program.

After spending some time with the Baylor palliative care team members, I knew I could best tell the story of palliative care through the stories of individual dying patients. I wanted to show what dying is like, what people go through in this time of life that we will all face. Their stories became my focus.

While we were preparing to embed with the team, we were pursuing the other story leads as well. A pediatric hospice care nurse introduced us to a couple preparing to have a baby who was not expected to live long outside of his mother's womb. After meeting the soon-to-be parents ... I chose to document their son's journey from life to death as part of the pediatric portion of the project. Later in the year, after extensively reporting at Baylor, we decided to hold the pediatric story, quickly understanding that our initial scope was far too large.

In addition to doing a piece on the dying experience featuring multiple patients, I wanted to go deeper and document one or two individuals' journeys at the end. When I met Penni Bourque and Judy Jackson, I decided to focus on their stories. A fourth video would explain what palliative care is doing to help dying patients and families.

What were some of the challenges you faced? How did you overcome them? In particular, how did you overcome the technical lighting challenges?

Hebert: Working in a hospital is challenging. Despite the fact that we spent a lot of time with the palliative care team, there was really no way to help the rest of the Baylor staff to become comfortable with our presence. The team makes rounds throughout the entire hospital, a 1,002-bed hospital. Multiple doctors see each patient. A lot of staff got used to seeing us, but were still very protective of the space, especially in ICUs.

There were many hours spent simply standing out of the way trying not to push our luck. I was not allowed to shoot unless I had written consent from all individuals in the photos/video, which was difficult when following members of the team as they rush from one floor to the next, one patient to the next. Shooting the doctors and nurses while working was a challenge, even with the assistance of PR. Some didn't want to be a part of the project. This required constant explanation.

Juggling video and stills was more difficult than I had anticipated. Not knowing what we'd be doing each day, I had to bring both with me and make split second decisions about what tool to use. As anyone who has shot video will say, shooting too much is your worst nightmare. However not knowing which patients would be in our final project or whether they would be alive the next time we saw them, I tried to shoot as if I would never see these individuals again. I ended up with over 50 hours of footage.

As I mentioned earlier, the writer and I had very different needs to accomplish our storytelling. Meeting our needs together was a challenge given the restraints of the public relations team. Already extending themselves by accompanying us all day, every day for three weeks, and many times late into the night, they were not able to commit two staff members to the project.

Lee and I had to stick together, and often our needs would diverge. This required compromise and sometimes not getting the picture. Not being able to spend as much time as I needed with patients was difficult.

We relied on the palliative care team to gain access to patients. As we followed them on rounds, we would wait outside a patient's room while the team member requested on our behalf their participation. There were days we saw no patients at all. Some of the patients who were most interesting to us were off limits due to ethics consultations, i.e., familial disagreement over care decisions. This required a lot of faith in the process.

Meeting patients and families and building rapport as they are coming to terms with the idea of death was difficult. We observed nurse Min Patel's first consultation with cancer patient Beverly Freeman on June 2. Beverly had difficulty breathing. Her son and best friend were by her side and were caught off guard by the change in her condition. We spent a few minutes talking to Beverly and left feeling she could be a major part of our project. I took a handful of photos of Beverly during her interaction with nurse Min Patel.

Sonya Hebert/The Dallas Morning News Suffering from metastatic breast cancer, Beverly Freeman lies in her hospital bed at Baylor. The next morning, Beverly was found collapsed by her bed. Without a do-not-resuscitate order, the Baylor code team tried to revive her. After nearly an hour, she was pronounced dead. “She’s never been early to anything in her life, and now this. …God did what we couldn’t do. We couldn’t let her go,” said her best friend, Gladys Lowry.

The next morning we learned that Beverly passed away earlier that morning. As a photographer and videographer, it's difficult to recreate what has already happened. She could no longer be a major part of my storytelling. We were not there for her death. Her family in disbelief began to assemble at the hospital. Min Patel went into overdrive to comfort them. We had not met most of them. This was a very delicate situation. I didn't know how to approach Beverly's family as they learned that the worst had happened. Journalists do this work every day. But we don't do it in ICU waiting rooms with everyday folks.

Trying to explain to them our project and Beverly's participation the night before seemed inconsequential ... but at the same time a huge part of the story. Lee was able to capture the details of Beverly's death and the aftermath through medical records, interviews and observations. I was not able to. The family gave consent to be photographed but it still never felt right.

Technically, I tried to shoot with a shallow depth of field to clean up backgrounds in the hospital. I also tried to remember visual variety. One of the greatest challenges was shooting the same visual situation repeatedly -- a patient in a bed. I tried to shoot the patients' feelings of dying, rather than the literal experience.

Photographic essay projects of this depth are not commonplace in newspapers these days. What value do you think they have?

Hebert: Death is something that will affect all of us profoundly. Exploring the dying experience addressed a great taboo in our culture. The project helped to facilitate a conversation in our communities and with our loved ones. The value of this kind of work lies in its potential to touch people. It hopefully gets them feeling and thinking.

Sometimes the value of what we do is a matter of impacting those we document. One woman whose mother died after an unsuccessful "code-blue" resuscitation later thanked us for treating her loved one's last moments "as precious." Another wrote that our interactions with her husband helped "give his life meaning" in his last six months.

Readers responded as well. They thanked us for "courageous," "powerful" and even "monumental" work. One called the series "compassionate, informative and thought provoking ... on a topic that is really hush-hush."

Medical professionals also praised the work. National palliative care organizations recommended the series to their members as a powerful educational tool. A nursing and bioethics professor at Johns Hopkins University called it "incredible." The head of an Indianapolis hospital's palliative team said the series was "excellent ... insightful and heartfelt."

Stanford University Hospital's palliative program manager wrote that her team wanted to use it as a training tool. A local professor of law and medical ethics wrote that we brought readers and viewers "as close as most of us will get to the true in-hospital experience until it happens to one of us or someone we love."

How do you go about gaining access and building relationships with the people you document?

Hebert: Typically, I gain access and build relationships by spending time with people. I try to be very open about my intentions, how I plan to tell their story and why. I use every tool I can to build rapport -- verbal language, body language and time. In this situation, we were dependent on first, the palliative care team and second, the public relations staff to secure access to patients, many of whom didn't agree to participate.

If ideas are the currency of the newsroom and photojournalists are equal to reporters in the news gathering process, how did that attitude manifest itself during this project?

Hebert: Lee and I recognized that we could tell the story of death and dying in different but complementary ways using our mediums, aiming to provide readers with a well-rounded, comprehensive experience. All forms of our storytelling offered readers an intimate look at the dying experience and what palliative care is doing to help patients and families.

So why black and white? It is clear that many hard-hitting photographic projects are presented in black and white, when in fact they were documented in color and the world that we live in is color.

Hebert: We chose to change the images in print to black and white to avoid distractions of mixed lighting in the hospital setting and maintain consistency throughout the series. We contemplated using color on day five to emphasize the dominant concept of Penni's story -- living fully until you die. Most of the photos used on day five were outside of the hospital setting. We thought this made it different enough to change to color. However, in the end, we weren't able to use color due to press issues.

Why are chapters four and five documented in color in the Web presentation?

Hebert: Like the print version, "Patients at the Edge" and "The Palliative Mission" were changed to black and white to maintain consistency and avoid distractions of mixed lighting in the hospital setting. I thought that readers could get to the content faster if not disrupted by the color changes.

We chose to use color for Penni's and Judy's videos to emphasize their difference from the other stories in that they were intimate looks into individual's lives as they deal with death in and out of the hospital. Because Penni was such an inspiring story of living fully, we felt color was more appropriate than black and white. But keeping only one of the four stories in color seemed odd. Thus, we chose to keep the two videos about individuals in color, while the other two were changed to black and white.

Tell me about the editing and selection process that you followed. How many images did you choose from?

Hebert: I shot nearly 6,000 images for the project. After each shoot, the stills project editor, Brad Loper, and I reviewed each image and did a rough edit. It was difficult to finalize our edit for the print presentation until an outline of the written narrative had been finalized. Once we knew what characters were being presented on which days, we were able to select the best images that helped to move the print narrative along as well.

Video editor Ahna Hubnik, photo editor Brad Loper and I selected the stills for the videos. Editing for video was mostly on a scene-by-scene basis. Once the audio was nearly finalized for each video, we chose the visuals, picking from both the b-roll video and stills to help move the story along.

Who was included in your editing process and what role, if any, did a picture editor play?

Hebert: Brad Loper worked as the primary photo editor on the project and worked to select photos for the online presentation as well as the print presentation. Director of Photography Leslie White and Assistant Director of Photography Chris Wilkins weighed in on the final edit.

What are the more memorable lessons you learned during this assignment?

Hebert: Have patience and trust in the process. There were a lot of unknowns in this project. Would we get the access we needed? Would patients want be a part of the project or would we spend all of our time sitting in the hallways of the hospital? Which patients would be our primary characters? Who should we spend our time with? Who's going to die before we have a chance to document their story? These were scary questions but in the end it all worked out. I think trusting the process and yourself is vital to one's sanity while working on this kind of project.

If you don't get everything you think you need, that's OK. When shooting both video and stills, you will miss things. In this case, I opted to bring both with me each day because I never knew what would be happening each day. It worked out but was overwhelming nonetheless to constantly think in terms of both video and stills.

Edit video as well as stills as you go as much as possible. This would've helped me refine my video shooting techniques and made the editing process smoother. This would've helped me be more selective in shooting video.

Don't underestimate the emotional impact the story may have on you and take care of yourself.

Communicate your needs to the gatekeepers and writers beforehand. Make sure they understand your needs so there are few complications and misunderstandings while shooting.

Were there any major surprises for you while developing this project?

Hebert: The project impacted me personally and spiritually in ways I didn't expect. In retrospect, I don't know how you can contemplate death for a year and not be impacted in these ways. Pondering death and our impermanence is not an easy thing to do, but it is worthwhile. It allows one to appreciate life and live it fully. Penni was an inspiration in this way. I hope I can continue to take the hard lessons I learned and apply them in my life and relationships.

What outcome did you desire and/or expect when this project began?

Hebert: When the project began, the scope was so large that my main goal was to narrow my focus and find individuals who would share their stories and teach us something about the dying experience. It was my hope to find multiple patients who in total would illustrate the comprehensive human experience of dying.

What advice can you offer other photographers when it comes to being a visual reporter in such sensitive settings?

Hebert: Be mindful of the impact your presence will have on those you photograph. I traveled with Penni and her family to two states and spent countless hours and some nights with them at their home. Doing this kind of work, we become very close to the people we document. It's impossible not to. Michelle, age 8, began to look to me as a mother figure as she tried to negotiate in her mind the changes happening to Penni. I think it's important to remind yourself and the people you photograph of your role as documentarian.

Be grateful.   

How The Gray Lady Uses Color on the Web

Around Poynter, we often say that when it comes to using color, gray can be a designer's best friend. A neutral, balanced gray is an important tool in your larger color palette, because it can support the natural color that comes from photographs.

Khoi Vinh is Design Director for NYTimes.com. His blog, Subtraction.com, is one of the best sources of information anywhere for Web designers.

I wondered how color choices played out on the Web site of The Gray Lady itself, The New York Times. In a snippet from a longer interview, here's what NYTimes.com Design Director Khoi Vinh had to say.

Sara Quinn: What is your philosophy on color for the Times site?

Khoi Vinh: We don't use a lot of color on the site. We try to make everything that we do conform to a very strict color palette. We actually don't use 100 percent black. We use a very dark gray that we find is a little bit easier on the eye.

We also use a very consistent dark blue color for all of our links or clickable text. That's really important to us, in terms of the consistency. We want the behaviors on the site to be predictable. And, with a few notable exceptions, everything is blue.

		POYNTER/NEWSU WEBINAR
		Moving from Print to Web Design Find out more about what Khoi Vinh had to say and his advice on what it might take for traditional print designers to take their talents to the Web in a Poynter/NewsU Webinar on Wednesday. Also featured in the Webinar is the advice of design guru Roger Black and USA Today.com's senior Web designer Wes Lindamood.

On the Times Extra part of your site, you use green as a link color on items from outside of the Times. Is that right?

Vinh: We started introducing the green with Blogrunner earlier last year when we started putting Blogrunner-generated, third party links on our section fronts. I think our Technology section front was one of the first ones. (Blogrunner is a news aggregator from The New York Times that monitors articles and blog posts and tracks news stories as they develop across the Web.)

At that time, we made a decision to use the "Blogrunner" green as a way to signal that these were links that jump off site -– which we hadn't really done before.

So, our palette expanded from the gray and the blue to the gray, blue and green. And we have a couple of other subtle, pale tones that we use from time to time. But you know, the paper's called The Gray Lady for a reason. We try to respect that.

By Sara Dickinson Quinn   

Ball State Journalism Graphics Grads Ready to Work Across Platforms, Even if Newsrooms Aren't

By Sara Dickinson Quinn   
Jennifer George-Palilonis wants to help Ball State graphics students hit the ground running. She directs journalism graphics –- one of four main sequences in the school's newly revamped news curriculum –- and she sees versatility with multimedia skills as a major component of the students' success.

"It's a very challenging endeavor, considering that the industry is in such a state of flux right now," said George-Palilonis.

Led by News-Editorial Sequence Coordinator Mary Spillman, a committee has looked at Ball State's entire news curriculum: news-editorial, graphics, magazine and photojournalism, trying to anticipate how things might be 10 years from now –- not just how the industry is today.

In this edited interview, I've asked George-Palilonis to describe new ideas, specifically for the journalism graphics program.

Jennifer George-Palilonis is the journalism graphics sequence coordinator at Ball State University.

Sara Dickenson Quinn: What are some of the goals you have for Ball State's journalism graphics classes?

Jennifer George-Palilonis: The biggest, most important thing is learning to work across platforms.

Up to this point, was the idea that graduates would probably go on to do one thing or another? Print or online? Design or graphics?

George-Palilonis: Yes. But even in newspaper environments now, people are not relegated to only one area. They are designing across disciplines, across platforms.

So, instead of having separate classes for print and online graphics, for example, we have a class on information graphics reporting across platforms -– even bringing broadcast into this, with 3D-animation driven, audio voice-over graphics.

And news design now includes both print and online, taking a single story across platforms and looking at how print and online affect one another, creating conversations.

For this class, students gauge audience reaction to interactive news and advertising applications created for television and the iPhone.

What are some of the other goals?

George-Palilonis: In addition to the courses that are solidly built into the curriculum, we'll also offer some special topic classes.

In fact, we have already started doing this. For example, during the Fall 2008 semester, Mary Spillman and I combined my capstone graphics reporting course with an interactivity design course in her iCom minor. The students worked together for an entire semester on developing what we're calling Journalistic Games. Using Adobe Flash and multimedia storytelling, students use gaming strategies to develop serious games that can help people understand news topics.

One of the best games was called "A Day in the Life of a Soldier." It included a game that had the user search for improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in a rural area with a clock running. It helped show the stresses our soldiers face in Iraq.

I am also involved with another class called iMedia, in which students from broadcast news, journalism, computer science and advertising work together to develop interactive news and advertising applications for television and the iPhone.

These sound like projects with a great deal of collaboration and real outcomes where students get a sense of both technology and of content.

George-Palilonis: Yes, and a sense of audience.

Where do most of your graphics students go right now after they graduate?

George-Palilonis: It depends. Most go to newspapers. Interestingly enough, as tight as the news industry is right now, I'm still getting calls right and left from newspapers that want graphics majors. I take that as a good sign that graphics students, in particular, have a skill set that's more adaptable across platforms.

Even prior to our discussions about the overall curriculum, we've worked really hard on the graphics sequence to increase our focus on multimedia and make sure that students are graduating with knowledge of multimedia storytelling and Flash editing and a lot of the things that we know online producers are doing.

Are potential employers asking for those skills?

George-Palilonis: They're absolutely asking for it.

It's interesting, though, I do get feedback from students who have heard from employers that they're very impressed with their Flash knowledge and with their multimedia skills. Then, they get to the newspaper and they don't get to do any of that.

I think there are a select number of newspapers across the country that are truly putting the resources toward thinking multimedia. I think there are a lot of other news organizations that know that they should be, and want to be ... but given the current state of newsrooms, they may not be able to or know how to get that off the ground.

So, I do hear from students who may be a bit frustrated at times. They feel like they're ready and raring to go -– to get out in the field to do multimedia storytelling, and they end up doing more traditional newspaper design and graphics reporting jobs.

Do you think that means multimedia is still a secondary priority?

George-Palilonis: Yes. I think for most small to mid-sized newspapers, it's an issue of resources. I hear from editors that they're being told from the top down that they need to be doing more multimedia. They want it. But, when it comes to the actual resources they're given and the positions they have to fill, those are slim to none.

It's a constant fight between trying to move forward and do more multimedia and not really having the resources to get the paper out every day.

What's the vibe from students who have been out there for two or three years now?

George-Palilonis: It really depends on where they are. I do have former students who are out there at great papers, doing great work. It's a struggle, but they're getting to do great stuff and they're happy because they're doing what they thought they'd be doing. The multimedia skills that they have might make their jobs more secure.

But there are people I myself graduated with -- going on 13 years now -- who are getting out of the business. They're leaving not because of buyouts or being on the chopping block, but because they have concerns about the industry itself. And, of course, there are rounds and rounds of cuts.

How do you advise students?

George-Palilonis: I think I'm speaking mostly for the Graphics sequence, because that's where I'm most plugged in. But, while they're in school, I try to remind students that the skill sets that they're developing will translate to other industries and will also translate to other iterations of what the news might look like and become.

As long as they're able to maintain and hone those skills, they're going to be OK.

Though this program is geared toward journalism and newspapers, I can't tell these kids that that is their only option any more. It's not that newspapers aren't an option at all. But from my perspective, I'm really trying to broaden their horizons, while still concentrating on news and information –- with a journalistic storytelling emphasis. ...

A good example is a student from a few years ago who did an internship with the Indy Racing League. I was skeptical when she took this internship, I thought that this could be one of two things: they'll either recognize the skills that this kid has and really take advantage of it, or she'll be designing bumper stickers for the summer –- and where would the journalism be in that?

In fact, she ended up designing a ton of marketing and promotional materials, a ton of news-based, PR materials. She did some multimedia graphics for their Web site, and she got to design John Andretti's car for the Indianapolis 500.

Decals for the car?

George-Palilonis: Yes. And literally where the graphics were placed on the car. So, this was a very non-traditional internship for what we would consider to be a journalism graphics major. But she said she ended up using all of her skills and then some. She was able to really branch out and find a place that would benefit from her skills.

What other job options would there be for graduates? Maybe things that are less commercially based, like non-profits or museums? Those would be places that might need information-based multimedia storytelling.

George-Palilonis: Right. When I was an undergrad in this program in the late '80s-early '90s, it would not have happened. At the time, it would have been: "If you don't want to go to a newspaper, get out of the program."

This program is still the place to go if you're a newspaper journalist who has a visual emphasis. But everything is changing so much.

We have to make sure that we don't alienate students who could benefit from the concepts we teach. And we have to recognize that journalism is changing so much that we can't define everything we teach through the lens of the newspaper. Although ... I still strongly believe that the newspaper is at the heart of what we do.

Society for News Design Introduces News Tools, Searchable Portfolios

By Sara Dickinson Quinn
There are two important additions to the Society for News Design Web site.

Tools for News is an online database for journalists who want to learn as much as they can about tools, new developments and tips for working online, from audio and video to blogging, data visualization and more.

This database offers tips for online journalism.

It started as a personal project for Chris Amico, who recently moved to D.C. to work with the Online "NewsHour" at PBS. He needed it to help him keep track of everything he was using. A reporter and Web developer, Amico says he's recently taught himself to shoot video, build interactive maps, blog and put together audio slideshows. The folks at SND convinced him to share.

And SND has also adopted the fantastic, searchable site where visual journalists regularly post their work and exchange ideas.

You can view the work of hundreds of visual journalists at this site, now hosted by The Society for News Design.

Known for more than six years as NewsPageDesigner.com, the site is the brainchild of Tim Frank, deputy managing editor for visuals at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Formerly hosted by the Sun Journal in Lewiston, Maine, the database briefly went on hiatus before SND gave it a new home.

Copy Editing Pro Merrill Perlman Spots Story Problems

By Sara Dickinson Quinn
Merrill Perlman has doubts. So, she looks things up, does the math, figures things out, finds the focus.

Merrill Perelman recently left The New York Times to work as a journalism consultant and freelance editor. Reach her at [email protected]

After spending 25 years at The New York Times, working on and directing the copy desks, she has developed more than a few good editing tricks. She's also developed the careers of some of the world's finest copy editors.

If you're lucky, you'll hear her speak at the American Copy Editors Society's conference in Minneapolis at the end of April or at one of her other training engagements around the U.S. For now, here are a few of her thoughts about editing.

"You want to try to get people to stop reading and start seeing," Perlman said. "If you're reading, you might be looking at the words and not getting a picture. You really want the images to form in your head and you want to watch the movie that's unfolding."

Sara Dickenson Quinn: You've chosen a rather chaotic film clip here as a lesson about editing. What can you tell me about it?

Merrill Perlman: It's an over-pixelated clip from the movie "Braveheart." You really can't tell what's going on, except that you know there's an awful lot of stuff. People are falling all over. You can sort of tell it's a battle scene. But you can't tell who's on whose side, who's getting hurt. There's too much going on.

How can this relate to editing a written story?

Perlman: The story equivalent of that would be: too many verbs in a sentence. Too many verbs in a lede, too many verbs in an image.

Stories that particularly suffer from this are court stories, where each verb is an action. It might say:

"The court voted to overturn a lower court decision."

So, we have a vote, overturning a decision. Now, your head can jerk back and forth and you get whiplash trying to figure out which way they voted. What gets more complicated is if they voted to overturn a ban on something. So, what does that mean?

There's too much action going on in that sentence. And the reader is just going to get lost. You want to slow the action down. You want people to understand what's going on. And if it means over-simplifying, that's fine:

"A court ruled yesterday that a petition can go ahead." Rather than:
"A court overturned a lower court's ruling that banned a petition."

Let's talk about numbers.

Perlman: The movie "A Beautiful Mind," based on the book written by Sylvia Nasar, is about this brilliant man who is a savant with numbers. He could process thousands of numbers of formulas and new ways of looking at them. He's a true, mathematical genius.

A scene from the 2001 film, "A Beautiful Mind," shows actor Russell Crowe amid a sea of numbers.

There's a scene in the movie where he is standing in a room and there are all of these numbers around him and they're lighting up, and they're flashing, and there are formulas. It's one of those 360-degree shots, where the camera is moving around him. He's absolutely surrounded by numbers.

The audience has no idea what's going on in his head, because there are just too many numbers.

That's exactly what happens in a news story sometimes, when someone says, "I've got all of these great statistics ... and there's no time to put together a graphic." Or, "I didn't think about putting together a graphic ... So, I'm just going to tell you that:

'Last year 1.4 million cars, each one carrying an average of 3.2 people, paid the $8 toll for the George Washington bridge, which yielded a revenue of $11.2 million, of which $355,000 went for painting.'"

It would take a John Nash to follow that.

Perlman: The rule of thumb is, no more than two or three numbers per paragraph. And then, let the reader rest a little, before you throw more numbers at them.

Numbers confuse people.

Perlman: Yes. And, from an editor's point of view, if you have too many numbers, even your eyes start to glaze over. And ... you're going to make the million/billion error.

What is the million/billion error?

Perlman: The million/billion error is probably one of the most common errors. At many papers, it happens about once a month. People focus on the number. OK, does the math work? OK, the revenues were 1.4 million and now they're 1.6 million ... OK, the numbers match.

But, what I didn't notice is that it's not 1.4 million, it was 1.4 billion! Because I'm looking at the 1.4 and not looking after it. It's an error of focus.

It's like perspective; you need to step back and say, here's the number, what's the modifier? That's true of a lot in editing. You focus on one thing, but you need to step back and see what's surrounding it. Frequently, the modifier is not the right one.

*  *  *

Late last year, before this interview was conducted, I rode with Merrill on a sightseeing trolley here in St. Petersburg. We were tired. We'd taught a long day at Poynter. The trolley driver blah-de-blahed about some movie that had been filmed in St. Petersburg, how many palm trees there were in the city. I dunno.

Then, he mentioned that there were more than 135,000 flights that went in and out of our little downtown airport each year.

I nodded as I stared out the window of the trolley. Um-hmm. Then, I noticed that Merrill had pulled out her calculator and was busy punching in numbers. She showed me her tally and shook her head, seeming to say "that would mean that there were 370 flights through that little airport each day. Couldn't be."

We finished the tour, gave the driver a tiny tip for his whopper of a tale and went on our way.

A good editor questions the veracity of things for those of us who just sort of believe everything we read and hear.

CORRECTION: The original version of this story incorrectly described the biography "A Beautiful Mind" and incorrectly named the movie that the clip is taken from.

Interactivity, Role Playing in News Games Engage Readers

By Sara Dickinson Quinn
If interactive games make you think of car chases and gunfights instead of conversations between world leaders on serious issues, see the gaming platforms created by two news-loving entrepreneurs.

Eric Brown and Asi Burak

Using audio, video and interactivity, Eric Brown and Asi Burak have created more than 100 games on "Play the News." The games are designed to help people understand complex topics that range from the U.S. election, auto mergers, big oil in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

With graduate degrees from Carnegie Mellon in Entertainment Technology, Brown and Burak venture that readers gain important perspective and better understanding by virtually standing in the shoes of world leaders.

"News consumers are starting to turn into RSS feed readers," said Brown. "And while that means that people see lots of headlines, it doesn't mean that they're engaging deeply with the content. So the question is how do you create value with the resources that you have that will compel people to come past that?"

In this edited interview, CEO of Impact Games Brown describes the reporting, editing and development process his company uses, and the efficient tools they've produced to help newsrooms engage the public.

Sara Quinn: Would you say that the idea of the gaming environment is that you immerse people in the situation so that they can see a lot of perspectives?

Eric Brown: Right. You can put multiple perspectives around an event.

By playing the game, people can see the cause and effect relationships in their choices as they relate to the event. Adding timelines, geography and highlights of the different groups and leaders that are involved and talked about in news articles, helps the understanding.

Icons on Peacemaker, a news game about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, indicate actions that might be taken as they relate to the story. The map plays an important role in helping players to understand physical relationships between events.

One major project you've created is about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, right?

Brown: Yes, Peacemaker. The feedback that we've gotten from Peacemaker is that people really have been able to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- because of the game interface –- in two to four hours, instead of reading the news for years and years and years.

You've had a number of different researchers working with you to report and outline the various perspectives. How did you go about hiring those people?

Brown: The writers that we've worked with are journalists. The whole medium of interactive journalism is sort of a young medium, so we had to do a little on-the-job training.

Can you explain the process for one story or project? Do you use sort of a template?

Brown: The way that Asi and I go about it is to think of it in steps:

1. What is the underlying issue that you want to explain?
2. Who are the groups and leaders who are involved?
3. What are the roles, moving forward?
4. What types of actions could they possibly take?

Players can choose to play a role in the scenario.

So, we built out the framework for interactivity with the goal of trying to create these things on a daily basis. That's the key to making news games –- something that can be turned around on deadline.
Much like a newsroom, we had a morning meeting to pitch what events had happened that we wanted to address. What news played well into the type of platform that we created?

Then, we'd create quick outlines to sort of hash out what the key things would be. We'd meet with the artists, continue to report and write the content to sort of fill in the holes throughout the day, and then publish.

A lot of conventional newsrooms lack the interactive skills that you’re describing to create something quickly –- conceptualizing, story boarding or visualizing and putting it into any form that's not a traditional form. It's obviously not easy to incorporate the interactivity.

Brown: Of course the editing is important; to look at the full text to make sure it all flows and makes sense, that we're not missing any key information.

At the end of the day, with our publishing tool, technically it would only take about 10 or 20 minutes to plug and play the images and things like that.

It was sort of a tough undertaking for us, to address every issue. We'd have to go out and research and report; to vet and source as well as we could.

We have a feed from Reuters. We'd use video and images from them and from open source communities.

News events might be highlighted and explained through graphics or video. Much of the appeal to players involves the ability to update the game as events unfold.

So many of the projects you've created rely on such deep background. You provide a real primer on the issue with lots of perspectives.

Brown: That's the reason that we want to partner with other organizations and journalists. If it's an issue that involves a reporter's beat -– let's say it's an article about an event in Zimbabwe -– that deep understanding would make the process so much easier and faster.

It's the concept and forms that we've developed that can help people understand the issue: looking for the underlying issues and then projecting into the future what the possible roles and actions might be.

There's really a craft to boiling it down to what the potential options are in a situation, so that you're covering all perspectives and options that someone (playing the game) would want to choose. The options that are feasible and in the realm of possibility.

The real editorial part of it comes in what we call the "adviser" text -– that's generally quoted from other, expert sources, different groups and leaders.

Most of the background involves archival material, pulling out facts and events in a way that's digestible.

The key to your idea is the way it's presented.

Brown: Yes. When you package it in this way, you're engaging someone with an interactive. You're increasing the likelihood that they'll come back because they care about the story. Or the likelihood that they're following the story because they want to see the next event in that string of actions.

The game forms allow for conversation between participants, including comments and polls. Other news games created by the group include stories about big oil in Iraq, the 2008 U.S. presidential elections, breaking sports news and mergers in the auto industry.

Is it the engagement of participating that keeps people coming back?

Brown: Seeing multiple perspectives, engaging with the story and the community over time. Our work to this point has shown that people are interested in engaging, in commenting on events, in creating sort of a social/political profile for themselves online.

What's next for you?

Brown: I'm out there, trying to find a partner who would want to use the tools that we created. A lot of our Beta community has been important to refine the process, refine some of the technology and to show that the tools are flexible.

At the end of the day, the gaming format can help to create deeper, richer content that engages. We think the content that news organizations already produce can work well with this process.

We're interested in working with journalism schools to possibly allow them to use our platform within the schools -- to sort of play around with the tools we've created. It would be a way for them to see what it's like to write articles in these forms. It's a way to dissect a story in a way that allows for interactivity.

SND Announces World's Best-Designed Papers; Live Chat Monday

By Sara Dickinson Quinn
Nearly 11,000 entries in the 30th annual Society for New Design competition resulted in 971 awards. Winners were announced Wednesday, including five newspapers that were name The World's Best-Designed.

Do you want to talk about the contest, judging and winners?

These front pages represent the five top winners in The World's Best-Designed Newspapers™ competition.

Join SND President and Co-Director of the Medill School of Journalism's Washington program Matt Mansfield and me for a live chat Monday, February 23 at 1 p.m. EST. Other panelists include SND Vice President Bonita Burton of the Orlando Sentinel, SND Treasurer/ Secretary Steve Dorsey of the Detroit Free Press and SND Competition Coordinator Dennis Varney of the Lexington Herald-Leader.

This is your chance to see great visual work, comment, ask questions and get insight into which news organizations won this year and why.

The World's Best-Designed Newspapers are:

 * Akzia, Russia, biweekly, circ. 200,000
 * Eleftheros Tipos, Greece, daily, circ. 86,000
 * Expresso, Portugal, weekly, circ. 120,000
 * The News, Mexico, daily, circ. 10,000
 * Welt am Sonntag, Germany, weekly, circ. 400,000

SND has posted a searchable database of all winners with fantastic video, comments from the judges and other details about the competition. Check it all out, then join us for the chat.

Inauguration Photo Manipulation Raises Questions

By Sara Quinn
Recently we witnessed one of the most documented events in history with the inauguration of President Barack Obama. From most every angle, historic moments were captured.

		PHOTO GUIDELINES
		A dozen news organizations shared their written guidelines with Poynter: Washington Post Charlotte Observer St. Petersburg Times Associated Press New York Times Atlanta Journal-Constitution Newsday Tampa Tribune Sarasota Herald-Tribune Spokesman-Review Kansas City Star Austin American-Statesman

Documentary photography is a powerful tool -- we're talking about real events in real time.

Why then, with all of the photo choices available to news organizations last week, would an image need to be manipulated?

One such image, taken by McClatchy-Tribune photographer Chuck Kennedy at the foot of the inaugural podium, was altered to extend the sky in at least two U.S. publications -- presumably to allow room for words to run over the photo. Those pixels were not a part of the original image.

Poynter Online has published photo manipulation guidelines from a dozen news organizations around the U.S. (see sidebar). The National Press Photographers Association and the Society for News Design have also drafted strong statements and guidelines for ethical standards of images.

To see our archived chat on photo manipulation and the insuguration, just click the replay button below.

Inauguration Photo Manipulation Raises Questions

By Sara Quinn
Recently we witnessed one of the most documented events in history with the inauguration of President Barack Obama. From most every angle, historic moments were captured.

		PHOTO GUIDELINES
		A dozen news organizations shared their written guidelines with Poynter: Washington Post Charlotte Observer St. Petersburg Times Associated Press New York Times Atlanta Journal-Constitution Newsday Tampa Tribune Sarasota Herald-Tribune Spokesman-Review Kansas City Star Austin American-Statesman

Documentary photography is a powerful tool -- we're talking about real events in real time.

Why then, with all of the photo choices available to news organizations last week, would an image need to be manipulated?

One such image, taken by McClatchy-Tribune photographer Chuck Kennedy at the foot of the inaugural podium, was altered to extend the sky in at least two U.S. publications -- presumably to allow room for words to run over the photo. Those pixels were not a part of the original image.

Poynter Online has published photo manipulation guidelines from a dozen news organizations around the U.S. (see sidebar). The National Press Photographers Association and the Society for News Design have also drafted strong statements and guidelines for ethical standards of images.

To see our archived chat on photo manipulation and the insuguration, just click the replay button below.