John McCain, already sucking wind in Florida, may have hurt himself in the area that’s his greatest strength — his reputation for “straight talk.” Check out the headline on this AP story: “Romney didn’t say what McCain says he said on withdrawing from Iraq.” By mischaracterizing Romney’s position, he’s succeeded in taking the spotlight off Romney’s own tenuous relationship with the truth.
Author: Dan Kennedy
The multimedia journalist
It wasn’t long ago that a local reporter could head out on an assignment with nothing more than a notebook and a pen. Maybe a camera, but only if there were no photographers available. But those days are rapidly drawing to a close.
Take, for instance, Cathryn Keefe O’Hare, a longtime print and radio reporter who’s been editor of the Danvers Herald since 2000. The Herald is part of the GateHouse Media chain, which is pushing its journalists to supplement their stories with videos for its Wicked Local sites. O’Hare shot video for the first time last Memorial Day. Now she does it regularly.
For a Flickr slideshow of O’Hare shooting and editing her story, click on the photo above.
Last Monday I met her at the Danversport Yacht Club for the eighth annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Awards Dinner. It was a routine assignment — take some notes, write it up. It was also a good opportunity for her to put together a video package. And for me to tag along and watch how she does it.
O’Hare wielded a Casio Exilim ex5600, a tiny, relatively inexpensive piece of technology that shoots still photos, video and audio. She had a simple goal: to ask some of the 450 people who were on hand why they had chosen to attend and what King’s message meant to them. She shot in ambient light, which, as you’ll see, was good enough, if not perfect. Audio is recorded through a microphone in the front of the camera.
O’Hare still finds being a multimedia journalist a challenge. She stands on her tip-toes when interviewing people taller than she. A couple of interviews proved to be unusable. “It’s more stressful than just taking notes,” she says. But she got sufficient material to put together a nice video supplement to her print story.
Three days later I met her in the local GateHouse newsroom in Beverly, where she was editing her clips into a news video. She used Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker, a free program that lets you cut extraneous material out of the clips, piece them together in any order you like, and add transitions, titles and an extra soundtrack. (The Macintosh equivalent is iMovie.) O’Hare spliced in music from the Follow Hymn Interfaith Choir, which had performed on Monday, to supplement the interviews.
To read O’Hare’s story and watch her video, click on the YouTube graphic above.
Finished videos are uploaded to YouTube and then embedded on the Danvers Herald site. O’Hare still hasn’t figured out how to do that, so she leaves it to one of the regional managing editors, Peter Chianca.
“The thing that remains true, whether it’s in print journalism or the Internet or video, you have to tell a story,” says O’Hare. “And you have to tell it as true as you can make it. And you have to try to speak for those people who can’t tell their story.”
To listen to an audio interview with O’Hare, click here.
To watch other videos from the Danvers Herald, click here.
The Kennedys and the Clintons
It’s hard to imagine that anyone would base his or her vote on what a Kennedy says. (Especially this one!) Still, it’s pretty interesting that both Caroline Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy would endorse Barack Obama on the same weekend.
Caroline Kennedy’s choice, which she reveals in an op-ed piece for the New York Times, is all the more impressive because she submitted it before last night’s South Carolina blowout. For all she knew, her op-ed was going to appear on a very good day for Hillary Clinton — that is, the day after a narrow loss in South Carolina and bulging leads in most other states. Whatever the opposite is of inevitable, that’s how Obama was starting to look, and Kennedy endorsed him anyway. As it turns out, she looks prescient.
As for Ted Kennedy, I have to assume his endorsement has been in the works for some time, and that he’s been waiting for the moment when it would have maximum effect. With Super Tuesday coming up on Feb. 5, and with Massachusetts being a part of it, now’s the time. I’m surprised by Kennedy’s choice. The Clintons have always been wildly popular here, and Kennedy seemed to have enjoyed a good relationship with them. Did something happen? Or does he simply find Obama too impressive not to support?
With Sen. John Kerry and Gov. Deval Patrick also supporting Obama, that’s the trifecta for the state’s top three elected officials. House Speaker Sal DiMasi’s endorsement of Clinton isn’t looking all that significant right now.
Predictions, always futile, have been especially so this year. But I can confidently predict this: The next few days are going to be the roughest of Clinton’s campaign, regardless of whether she has a happy Super Tuesday or not.
Photo (cc) by toastiest. Some rights reserved.
More Clinton-bashing on MSNBC
As Hillary Clinton was about to begin her speech, Joe Scarborough and Margaret Carlson started tut-tutting that Clinton would not congratulate Barack Obama for his victory, that the Clintons somehow don’t play by the same rules as everyone else. I mean, they were really getting into it, all venomous smiles.
Naturally, one of the first things Clinton did was congratulate Obama.
A great speech
Obama just finished. Is there more to being president than giving a great speech? Well, sure. But I don’t think I’ve heard a politician in my lifetime who can move a crowd the way Obama does. To inspire may not be enough, but it’s a necessary start.
Obama’s best speech yet?
As we all know, he always gives a great speech. But it strikes me that, tonight, he’s being unusually effective in putting some flesh on the bones of his “change” message. No, he’s not being much more specific than usual. But he’s at least making a thematic case that old-fashioned partisanship is holding back progress on issues from health care to the high cost of a college education.
Yet another big surprise
On CNN, Carl Bernstein just supplied the story line for at least the next few days: “Bill Clinton is a huge loser in this.” Wow. Barack Obama, 54 percent; Hillary Clinton, 27 percent. The Clinton camp was reportedly prepared to declare moral victory if they could find a way to lose by less than 10 percent percentage points [Thanks, Mike_B1]. Instead, Obama beat her by two to one.
Could you imagine what people would be saying if the polls in South Carolina had been this wrong in Clinton’s favor? And will someone (i.e., Obama) finally get some momentum out of a primary victory during this weird election year?
Dan Rea’s radio days
I’ve got a profile of Dan Rea in the new issue of CommonWealth Magazine. Rea, a longtime television reporter at WBZ-TV (Channel 4), is now the host of the talk show once helmed by the late David Brudnoy and Paul Sullivan at WBZ Radio (AM 1030). “NightSide with Dan Rea” is an oasis of civility in the talk-radio wars. But can it work in today’s caustic environment?
Rea’s got some tough things to say about the state of local TV news, telling me, “It was very clear to me that there was a direction of television news that was not going to be reversed, and I wasn’t quite sure that I wanted to continue doing television news as I was doing it.” He added:
Local television news is one of the great purveyors of racism of our time. They don’t understand that. But if you are somebody who lives out in one of the 128 or 495 suburbs, and never have a reason to really interact with people of color, the only time you’re going to see young black males is when they’re being arraigned, they’re being arrested, or they’re dying in the street. We ignore the 99 percent of the kids in that community who are trying to do the right thing, trying to go to school, trying to participate in community programs and athletics.
Rea is probably best known for his years-long efforts on behalf of Joseph Salvati, wrongly convicted of murder because of the false testimony of a government-protected witness.
Globe denies layoff story
Globe spokesman Al Larkin calls the Metro report “factually incorrect,” according to accounts by the Phoenix’s Adam Reilly and the Herald’s Christine McConville, although he doesn’t rule out the possibility of some layoffs.
Credit where it’s due: Looks like Lisa van der Pool of the Boston Business Journal was the first to report the Globe’s denial. Meanwhile, in today’s Metro, Saul Williams says he stands by his story. (9:40 a.m.)
Can the Globe really lay off “hundreds”?
This item in Metro Boston looks pretty alarming. But if the Boston Globe lays off “hundreds,” as Metro claims, wouldn’t that pretty much empty out the building? And wasn’t it just yesterday that Joe Keohane reported at Boston Daily that the Globe had messed up a story about downsizing at Metro? And aren’t the Globe and Metro corporate cousins? And isn’t it a full moon tonight? (Close.)
The Newspaper Guild is taking the Metro report seriously. This one obviously bears watching. But I’m skeptical about the prospect of “hundreds of layoffs” — and I hope I’m proven right, given what it would mean for journalism (and journalists) in Boston.