iSalon meetings

A couple weeks ago senior innovation editor Carla Savalli called for a new meeting called the Innovation Salon, or the iSalon, as a weekly one-hour brainstorming session and new media club. It’s the next iteration for iTeam meetings - iSalon is open to all newsroommates.

There have been two iSalon sessions, one a couple Mondays ago and one yesterday. The subject is flexible. Come as you are, come with ideas, and we talk about new things we can do with storytelling.

And Savalli brings cookies.

First session functioned as a Q&A where everybody could get updates on multimedia and online redesign. Discussion included whether we would allow commenting on stories and whether visitors should be allowed to post anonymously or under pseudonyms on blog threads.

Second session was a training workshop for audio recorders, shown at right, including how to collect better audio for our radiomen and for the Web site in general. Some of the tips and topics that came up:

» A typical radio ‘soundbyte’ is five to 10 seconds long, radio reporter Dan Mitchinson said. A print story used for the radio can even be condensed down to three or four sentences, and his perfect soundbyte (essentially, a quote) is a mere eight seconds. S-R radio also has use for “nat sound” or natural, ambient sound from the scene. For example, Mitchinson said, he recently used the sound of the Falls to introduce a newscast during the height of the gawking season.

» How do you get a good soundbyte ? Get the person in relaxed and natural speech. Ask the simple, oftentimes silly questions. And don’t allow the person too much time to think about it, Mitchinson said.

» How about the technicals of collecting audio ? Multimedia editor Colin Mulvany’s tip for getting better voice audio, with less background noise, is to turn down the sensitivity of a recorder and put it closer to your subject. This can apply for a one-on-one interview, or for a podium and speech setting (in which case, best case scenario is to put the recorder on the podium). Test your recorder alone before you go, and monitor the sound using headphones, he said.

» But out in the field , the venue is not always perfect - multimedia mofo Thomas Clouse is often covering stories outdoors where there is a lot of traffic or other noise, which presents oodles of challenges for good clean audio.