My students will learn about interactive storytelling tools, but I won’t teach them

I told faculty of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in January that one of their most important jobs was to help students learn for themselves how to use new tools. That’s what I’ll be doing next semester: I’ll be teaching without teaching.

Dean Sarah Bartlett had asked me to speak at a faculty meeting about what journalism graduates needed to succeed in digital media. Back then, I was thinking I’d be working the next several years at Digital First Media. A key point of my presentation was that students needed to learn how to use digital tools — not that a school needed to teach any particular set of tools, but that students needed to learn how to learn new tools by themselves. Whatever tools a journalism school teaches students, some of them will become obsolete before long, and new tools will come out soon after any student graduates. So it’s important that journalists have some experience and comfort with the process of figuring out how a tool works and how to use it to do better journalism.

Well, that Digital First thing didn’t last as long as I thought, so I’m teaching now. And next semester, I will be teaching a class in interactive storytelling tools. Only I won’t be teaching the students how to use the tools (some of them I may not know myself). Instead, I’ll be guiding the students in exploring how to learn new tools themselves.

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Examples of stories using interactive tools

In some emails last week and in my post on a workshop last Friday, I asked for examples of effective use of interactive storytelling tools.

Below are examples sent by some friends. I haven’t had a chance to check them all out, but I trust these friends’ judgment, so I pass them along enthusiastically. With the exception of Mike Reilley, all the examples come from my former colleagues at Digital First Media. I was seeking enterprise examples, but they sent interactive stories from a variety of situations. I think in many of these cases, other colleagues were involved. I wasn’t asking just for their own work, but for good work they had seen lately. With light editing, the list is pretty much what they sent me.

Buffy Andrews’ interactive stories

Buffy, assistant managing editor at the York Daily Record and a novelist, sent along these:

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Links and slides for workshop on digital enterprise stories

I’ll be leading a workshop today on digital planning for enterprise stories at the Excellence in Journalism conference in Nashville.

Much of the workshop will revolve around the questions for planning enterprise stories that I blogged about earlier this year.

Other links relating to the workshop:

Five Satins: A ‘Sunday’ story published digitally the Monday before

‘In the Still of the Night’: Five Satins recorded biggest hit in New Haven church basement

Sunshine Week project showed digital-first enterprise approach

Sunshine Week project

10 steps toward a mobile-focused culture for your news organisation

Denver Post’s Chasing the Beast

Denver Post’s The Fire Line

Nola.com’s then-and-now Hurricane Katrina photos

ProPublica Patient Harm Facebook group

Gettysburg 150 app

Cost of Dying app

Daniel Victor’s post on infusing community contribution throughout the reporting process

Carrie Jewell-Dugo project, story by Paula Ann Mitchell, photos by Tania Barricklo, design by Ivan Lajara, using Creatavist

Ed Stannard and Angi Carter interactive map on Yale’s tax-exempt property in New Haven

I’ll probably update this with some more examples. I welcome any you might want to suggest, whether by you, colleagues or competitors:

My #EIJ14 workshop this afternoon is on digital enterprise stories. Welcoming last-minute examples of excellent digital enterprise.

— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) September 5, 2014

Here’s my first update, a Spundge from Buffy Andrews of the York Daily Record, explaining a variety of digital tools.

Here are my slides for the workshop (also subject to updating as I get more fresh examples):

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I finally add my Facebook Timeline; I think I like Intersect better

Since Facebook Timeline came out a couple months or so ago, it’s been one of those things I kept planning to get around to “next week.” When they made Timeline available for branded pages last week, I decided I’d better finally add it to my personal page. When you have “social media” in your job title, being busy working on social media doesn’t work very long as an excuse for looking outdated on a social platform.

So I did my Facebook Timeline last night. Here’s what I like:

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Google+ Hangout helps with video interviews

How is your newsroom using Google+ Hangouts?

In recent months, I’ve seen some good examples of Google+ use in some Digital First Media newsrooms. I asked my colleagues to explain what they did and how. Their responses are presented below, with minimal editing. (You’ll note that I’ve been hanging onto these examples quite a while. I’ve had more blog-post ideas than blogging time lately. I hope to catch up in the next few weeks.)

From Karen Workman of the Oakland Press:

The Oakland Press and The Macomb Daily made Michigan history Thursday, Dec. 22, by conducting the first editorial board meeting with a governor by using a Google+ hangout.

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