The assignment feature allows producers to tell photographers how much they’ll be paid. Photo and video journalists retain rights to the work they create using the app and can share it with their followers on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.

The free service launched for iPhone last November; an Android app is in the works. Rawporter allows publishers from news organizations to bloggers to solicit either video or stills via geolocation push notices and to pay users for their work. In an interview with the citizen journalism blog NewsMeBack, co-founder Kevin Davis said the tool aims to make it easier for “everyday people to cash in on being in the right place at the right time.”

Rawporter wants to help media outlets crowdsource cost-efficient news content that they would normally not have access to. At the same time, it’s important to us that our contributors’ rights are protected, and that they get the recognition they deserve. That’s why, if something sells, contributors get paid. If something is used, they get the on-screen or online credit.

The new reality of local TV newsrooms, which produce more hours of news than ever before, makes these kinds of tools appealing to managers and anathema to professional photojournalists. We’ve written about this new world in which everyone is a news photographer before. YouTube claims that many news organizations are using its Direct platform to collect citizen reporting about news events, among them ABC News, the Huffington Post, NPR, Politico, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, WHDH-TV in Boston, Tribune Company, Gannett, Al Jazeera, and ITN News. Rawporter is so new, it’s hard to tell if it’s being used at all. The question, once again, is whether these tools are a serious threat to the profession.

My own sense is that newsrooms won’t use these services instead of staff photojournalists, but they may turn to them when news breaks where they can’t go, or when they can’t get somewhere fast enough. But freelancers could face a real pinch if stations find they can reliably and quickly get cheap video of breaking news from a bystander with a smartphone. Beyond that, asking non-journalists to get video in what could be dangerous situations raises all kinds of ethical red flags.

What’s your view?

One strategy when faced with a non-visual story or a story that would typically be told with predictable images is to think of an analogy that can bring the story to life. What does this situation or process remind you of? Ask your sources for ideas. Can you compare it to something that people are already familiar with?

One of my all-time favorite stories illustrated this way explained the physics behind a NASCAR crash. The driver survived because his car hit a wall with a glancing blow, not head-on. WGHP’s Bob Buckley showed what happens when a tomato hits a wall the same way–splat for a head-on collision, but only a split skin for a glancing blow. Trust me, it was both visual and memorable.

The same basic strategy–comparing something you can’t really see to something you can–helped NPR produce a memorable story when the earth’s population reached seven billion. Instead of relying on the usual images of babies and crowded streets, NPR found a great analogy and produced a video to illustrate it online.

The reason this strategy works is that it employs what I like to call the velcro theory of news. News is just information unless it sticks to something you already have, at which point it becomes knowledge and understanding. Try using an analogy for a non-visual story, if you haven’t already. And please point us to more examples of stories that put this principle to work so we can share them.

When did videotaping become a crime?

Several recent incidents suggest a disturbing new trend: public safety officials targeting photographers, including professionals. “Cops don’t want to be identified,” says Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “They don’t want their pictures taken.”

The relationship between journalists and police officers has always been tense, of course. “They’re both aggressive professions, and sometimes they get in one another’s face,” says John Timoney, former police chief in Miami and Philadelphia.

But something clearly has changed. “It used to be guys with a reputation for not following orders” who wound up in confrontations with police, Dalglish says. “These days, it’s folks keeping their mouths shut and doing their jobs.”

In the Milwaukee case, Fillinger was charged with obstructing a police officer after he objected to being forced back “for safety” while members of the public were allowed to stay put, watching the house fire from across the street. His boss concedes that he used an expletive and raised his arm when the officer closed in on him, but says the arrest was not justified.

“While the language was coarse, I truly believe Clint had no intention of touching the officer, and the whole thing certainly did not rise to the level of being dropped to the ground and handcuffed,” says Jim Lemon, news director at Milwaukee’s Fox affiliate, WITI. “It was a bad spur-of-the-moment decision made by the police commanders on the scene.”

Two recent cases in Suffolk County, New York, reflect similar bad decisions. In late July, a photographer for a local TV news service was arrested while videotaping the end of a police chase. An officer ordered Phil Datz to leave the scene, even though he was standing on a public street with other people. When Datz asked where he was supposed to go, the officer responded, “I don’t care where you go, just go away.” After Datz set up in the next block and started shooting video again, the officer jumped in his squad car, raced up to Datz and arrested him for obstruction. The charges were dropped.

A few weeks after that incident, an emergency services official in the same jurisdiction manhandled a photojournalist for New York’s NBC-owned station, WNBC, as he tried to videotape the cleanup of a chemical spill. The official grabbed the photographer’s camera and tried to wrestle it away.

What’s different now, some say, is the proliferation of cellphone cameras on the street combined with heightened concern about terrorism. “I think that post 9/11 police treat everyone with a camera as suspect,” says Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association. “In certain instances, news photographers are singled out because of their high visibility.”

Photojournalists aren’t the only ones who have been targeted. Cases are pending in several states against citizens who have been arrested and had their cameras confiscated after videotaping police action. And the arrests keep coming, even though the police keep losing in court. The latest ruling, from an appeals court in Massachusetts, said the First Amendment “unambiguously” protects the right of citizens to videotape police officers performing their duties in a public space. Journalists clearly deserve the same protection.

“The press may have no greater rights than those of the general public,” Osterreicher says. “They certainly have no less right of access on a public street.”

Police officers should know better than to run anyone in just for taking pictures. “We tell them constantly at the academy, ‘Take it for granted, you’re going to be on camera,’” Timoney says. “Everybody has a camera and they’re entitled to use it. We police have to suck it up.”

Journalism groups say officers need training to make sure they understand the rights of professionals and citizens alike to take pictures of police activity in public places. But Timoney doubts that more training is the answer. “If police don’t understand this now, all the training in the world isn’t going to help.”

Piling up victories in court probably won’t help either. When charges against photojournalists are dismissed, as they inevitably are, the police officers involved pay no penalty and face no sanctions. Suing for false arrest might make a difference, Dalglish says, by hitting the police department where it hurts – in the budget. But it’s unlikely any cash-strapped news organization would be willing to shoulder the cost of a lawsuit just to make a point.

So what’s to be done? Keep shooting, I say. Nothing makes a better case for the First Amendment than good video of a police officer behaving badly.

Originally published by American Journalism Review, December 2011

Some of you may know that my dad recently passed. He was my hero and defined the words gentleman and optimist. When he was stationed over in France for the war, he and his Army buddies loved to read Shakespeare. Growing up in Iowa he quoted Shakespeare all the time. (I thought it was normal that dads did this.) One of his quotes stuck with me over the years and I wanted to share it here…

“Nothing is but thinking makes it so.” Read those words again. Nothing is but thinking makes it so. In essence, our actions are defined by our thoughts. We manifest what is on our minds. The popular book “The Secret” is all about manifesting our thoughts into reality. I recommend reading it.

Think of it as self-talk. Professional athletes do it all the time. So can we. My own self-talk when I am out telling stories is very simple. “Wide, medium, tight, super tight, get the moment.” I say it over to myself a hundred times while covering a story. I am hyper-focused on it. We manifest our thoughts. We really do. Dave (Wertheimer) and I brought this simple storytelling philosophy to KSTP when we were there.

Great storytelling doesn’t require some deep hidden secret or some magical formula, it’s as simple and fundamental as this statement: “Wide, medium, tight, super tight, get the moment.” What is your self-talk while out on assignment? What’s running through your mind? Lunch? Well, that’s not a bad thought as lunch is important. Maybe you are grousing about the story. (We’ve all been there.) Remember: It’s an honor to tell stories. Your story and the people you are covering need your best commitment.

We know that the building blocks to a great story are wide shots, medium shots, tight shots and super tight shots. It does not get much more elementary than that. Edited together they make for a wonderful sequence — just as the eye sees life. Life is a series of wide shots, medium shots, tight shots and super tight shots. They are like pieces to the puzzle. Life is NOT a series of medium shots cut together. Your self-talk heavily influences your outcome. If you are out complaining about your boss or whatever negative thought you may have while on assignment, your story is going to suffer. That is baseline reality.

When we are focused on this kind of self-talk (WMTST) all of a sudden we are aware of all kinds of gorgeous wides and tights. Why, (I’ll say it again) because we manifest our thoughts. Plus, when we record a variety of wide shots, medium shots, tight shots and super tight shots, your editor will LOVE you for having your bases covered. In the end, we all edit faster and hit our deadlines quicker when we have all the pieces to the puzzle. If you don’t believe me, try to edit a story with all wide shots.

On top of shooting wides, mediums, tights and super tights, remember the moments. Moments, moments, moments! If Elvis is running naked along a corn field, what are you going to do? Set up a tripod, wait for the clouds to pass or the color temperature to warm up (well that would be nice) but moments are fleeting, just get the dang shot. Shoot and move. Be nimble on your feet. Anticipate. Don’t be afraid to go handheld if you need the moment. If it does not exist on tape or a digital file, it does not exist for your viewers.

Moments are simply emotional scenes. It may be laughter, sadness, happiness or suspense. It could be a simple smile. The emotion is what people remember. Rarely do people remember what we said or what we did, what they remember is the emotion, how we made them feel … the moments!

WMTST makes your story air-able. Moments make your story memorable.

“After 45 years of chasing news professionally, I realize I cannot be first on the scene with a camera unless I am the first one on the scene,” says WCVB photojournalist Stanley Forman in the latest issue of NPPA News Photographer magazine.

The problem [is] that as a long-time news photographer, I cannot beat the competition any more. The competition is anyone who has a cell phone, smart phone or any other portable device that takes still or video. The other problem is that practically everyone has the technology and knows what to do with it.

Forman says this new reality has changed the way he approaches breaking news. He still tries to beat the other stations to the scene and shoots the best video he can right away. But now, he has an additional task: Find the best images other people have shot and secure them for his station.

“I do well on the search for the best stuff available because my station sort of allows me to make offers to the owner of the images with a financial reward,” Forman writes. Right there on the spot, he screens what others have shot and decides if it’s “good enough” to offer to purchase it.

Has the new reality changed the way you operate in the field on breaking news? I’d be curious to know how.

“The Sewing Machine” is a video produced by former NBC reporter John Larson and one-time NPPA photojournalist of the year Lisa Berglund. It’s a video with a clear purpose–to raise money for VisionFund, the microfinance arm of World Vision International. But it’s also a story that illustrates many fundamental principles of good storytelling.

First, a strong central character. As with many PR shoots, an advance team had done the legwork at a remote location in Rwanda. But Larson and Berglund, being newsies, didn’t think much of the original plan, as Larson explained in the Facebook Storytellers group:

We rejected story lines that had been set up for a month, and found the sewing machine woman because we were searching for a more photo-rich, metaphorical story line. We found and selected the stronger details and story lines within her story.

Second, the story has a clear beginning, middle and end. In this case, there’s a story within the story, which has its own beginning, middle and end. But the viewer never feels lost or confused. See what you think when you watch the video.

Because this wasn’t a news story, Berglund and Larson did a ton of set-up. To use a news term, they staged the shoot, moving locations to get a more photogenic background, deciding what people should wear, and matching shots they knew they would re-create when they got back to the United States.

And because this wasn’t a news story, Berglund had the courage to shoot it with a camera she had never used before–the Canon 5D–a digital SLR.  ”It is not good in reactive situations (like news),” Larson says. “The lenses are slow, bulky, time consuming… and gorgeous.” Virtually everything was shot with natural light.

Audio was a different matter, Berglund says.

Monitoring audio is one of the biggest challenges. Most of the audio was shot with my Sennheiser MKH-60, plugged into a Zoom H4N audio recorder. The interviews were shot with a Lectrosonic 400 series wireless, also plugged into the Zoom.

Because so much additional equipment was required, Berglund wound up recruiting an assistant on the spot who carried the recorder, wore headphones and got the mics in close.

Sound is my passion. It was really hard to give up complete control. But the risk was worth it in the end, and allowed me to concentrate on the visuals.

One of the most memorable moments in the video is the shot that reveals how the woman expanded her business. It’s a lock-down shot that was carefully planned, with each individual element shot separately and then combined in the edit room. “The trick is using the effect when the narrative is building, or adding, or growing,” says Larson. “Then the effect supports the story you’re trying to tell.” So it does.

“If you don’t really love doing it, you’re not going to do well,” she said in an NPPA interview. “It’s such a monster that you battle every day. You have to be so many things in a day.”

Here’s one of Michael’s prize-winning stories, a story that she says changed her life because “it showed me a lot about what people are willing to give up and do for other people.” It’s also an example of the value of listening. Michael says she met the man in the story when he demanded to see her ID as she entered a government building. She had to put down all her gear to find it. She wasn’t all that happy to see him again on her way out, but when he asked if she wanted to hear his story, she stopped long enough to hear what he had to say.

Michael does plenty of stories like that without a stand-up, but when she does decide to include one she spends a great deal of time setting up and shooting it. The result is often a multi-part stand-up, like the one in this story.

Did you count the number of shots in that stand-up? How long do you think it took Michael to get that done, working alone? Here’s the answer, in a behind-the-scenes look at how she produced that stand-up:

Thanks, Michelle Michael, for sharing your work and showing what it takes to do it well.

It’s often used for “point of view” video, which is what it was designed for, after all. Two of the top-selling models are the Helmet and Motorsports versions, cameras the company bills as “wearable” and “mountable.”

WJZ reporter Mike Schuh is a recent GoPro adopter. He’d never used a GoPro until he was sent out on a story this fall about firefighter training that involved working in very tight spaces. Having seen what he was up against, Schuh ordered the camera on the spot and used it to get shots he never could have captured with a full-sized camera.

Photojournalist Brandon Whitworth of WKYT in Lexington, Ky., used a GoPro for the first time last week for a story about the hazards emergency responders face on the road:

How did he get all those angles? “I was shooting inside the cab, and I had one GoPro that I mounted on the various spots on the truck,” Whitworth said. “Every other time we stopped I changed its location.”

People who have used the GoPro say the key is to use the video shot with it sparingly. “Sometimes the angles are too different and call attention to themselves,” says KGO reporter Wayne Freedman.  But he also says the camera comes in handy at times. ”Due to the wide angle, it can capture some very unique, up close perspectives.”

Freedman used a GoPro to get the opening shots in this story:

Reporter Garvin Thomas, who works for KNTV in San Jose, used a GoPro in an underwater housing attached to a light stand to get some key shots for this story:

Photographer Dan Fox of Citizen Pictures, formerly with KCNC in Denver, notes that the wide angle of the lens depends on the HD mode, which is selectable on the latest model GoPro2. “In 1080 mode, the angle is not so extreme. In 720, it’s fisheye, so for mounting on bikes, cars, surfboards, etc, it’s useful, but in 1080, it’s a more normal looking image.”

Bottom line? “GoPro doesn’t make your story better,” says Detroit Free Press photojournalist Eric Seals in an article in the latest NPPA News Photographer magazine. “It adds a visual hook to your story.”

If you’re thinking about getting a GoPro, here are some additional tips from Seals and other photojournalists:

• Use top-of-the-line SD cards to ensure a good capture
• Shoot sparingly so the download doesn’t take forever
• To improve the audio, remove the camera’s plastic housing
• A monitor is essential if you want to see what you’re shooting
• Other accessories worth considering: a chest-mount harness and a rollbar mount

The GoPro isn’t the only small HD camera photojournalists are using in the field. Others include the Canon G12, the Sony Cybershot DSC-WX9, the Canon Elph 300hs, Contour and Iconix.

Are you using a small HD camera to shoot elements for TV news stories? Please share your experiences and tips!

Planning means everything from setting up interviews to selecting the right gear for a particular shoot. For Steve Noviello, consumer reporter for KDFW in Dallas, it means thinking about what he’d like the story to look like on the air and sharing his ideas with the photographer he’s working with.

At a recent journalism workshop sponsored by the Texas Association of Broadcasters, Noviello shared a couple of stories that benefited from careful planning. For a story about a woman who’s a champ at saving money by coupon-clipping, Noviello wanted to use quick edits and speeded up video to reflect the woman’s frantic pace. “We needed twice as much B-roll as normal because we were going to double speed it,” he says.  For a story about a late-night designated-driver service, Noviello knew he’d need video shot from a moving car. Planning ahead allowed him to use a colleague’s convertible, not a news vehicle. The story won a National Headliner Award for best TV feature.

Noviello started in the news business 13 years ago as a one-man-band, which he says taught him the greatest lessons he’s ever learned. What would those be? Watch our interview, in which he also talks more about his approach to planning:

In Warco (short for “war correspondent”), players document a conflict that echoes recent events in the Middle East. Each scenario has different story elements and the player decides what elements to capture and how to combine them in an edited news story.

“It’s both a story telling engine and an action adventure with a new perspective,” one of the developers told Wired Magazine. According to the write-up, the game will force players to make tough ethical choices, “navigating through a morally gray world and making decisions that have human impact.” Sounds just enough like real journalism to have some potential as a training tool.  Here’s hoping the folks at Defiant Development get the project to market.

Check out the trailer and see what you think:

http://youtu.be/sQlkYY88wLM