Broadcasting or publishing?: A new kind of student-created media.

Having been involved in the electronic media of radio, TV and video production since I was in high school, I tend to look at web media as essentially “broadcasting.”

Like radio and TV, computers carry electronic media. Like radio and TV, information on a website can be transmitted instantly.

So even if we’re talking about an online version of a newspaper, I still say it’s a form of broadcast media.

But If I had taken another path I contemplated — becoming a print journalist (after writing for my high school newspaper), I would probably look at web media as “publishing.”

Both views are correct.

The lines between print and broadcast media have blurred into what we call new media. Text, audio, video, photography, and the ability to interact with content creators and other readers/viewers are all ingredients.

And it’s increasingly apparent that new media will share a characteristic with their “old media” forerunners of radio and print: they will be portable. Multimedia websites must all be designed with devices like the iPad in mind.

So what kinds of skills will someone need to work in new media?

Everyone is running around with a camera these days and anyone can post a video to YouTube, put photos up on Facebook, or start a blog.

When someone does these things, he or she becomes a new media content creator.

It’s easier than anyone could’ve ever imagined to share something with family, community, customers or with the world.

The “how” part of creating new media isn’t really the challenge anymore. It’s the “what” that becomes the content that people seek out.

The platforms of web media are easily accessable. We can communicate something immediately, and often for free.

But if we want to make an impact, content creators need to work on the skills that make us better communicators.

We need to challenge ourselves to take photos that are more than snapshots.

We need to learn to edit video in a way that advances a narrative.

We need to work on becoming more creative writers.

We need to learn to ask interview questions that will elicit thoughtful responses.

We need to find out what our readers, viewers, and listeners really want to know, and find ways to bring it to them.

This fall at Northland, we’re going to work on those skills as our New Media students build a new kind of student media.

We’ll work on a multimedia website that’s part broadcasting, and part publishing.

The site will feature audio and video podcasts, live streaming of college events, blogs, photo galleries, and as much interaction as we can generate.

And we’ll make it as portable as we can, so get yourself an iPad!

So, what should we do first?

Pioneer 90.1 presents Little Bobby & the Storm March 6.

Little Bobby & the Storm

Pioneer 90.1 presents a free concert by Thief River Falls-based blues performers Little Bobby & the Storm, Saturday March 6 at the Northland College TRF Theater at 7PM.

The show is the latest in a series of live performances highlighting Minnesota musicians that will be recorded and shared with public radio stations in our statewide network.

Along with the live performance, the radio broadcast will feature Bobby’s stories of playing last summer at actor Morgan Freeman’s blues club in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Little Bobby & the Storm have released a concert DVD recorded last spring at the Empire Arts Center in Grand Forks, ND.

The March 6 show will be a trial run for our new TriCaster portable video switcher. The TriCaster lets us cover music and arts events on location with inputs for four live cameras. We can add graphics and transitions, and instantly encode the output for web streaming.

Networks such as FOX, ESPN, MTV, and the NHL use the Tricaster for portable live web video production.

Pioneer 90.1 Operations Manager Ben Kosharek and I are looking forward to bringing more diverse, original Minnesota music to Northland in the months ahead. Check back for a list of upcoming performers.

See you at the show!

See the future: New Media’s New Digs.

The faculty and students of Northland’s Architectural Design program have given us a look into the future with these models of our New Media classroom and studio space. Construction begins this summer!

Classroom/Mac Lab

The New Media/Radio Business classroom will be equipped with an iMac for each student. Students will get hands-on training with Final Cut Pro for video editing. These machines will also be used to write copy, edit audio podcasts and create blogs.

FM HD Studio 1

One of three new on-air studios, this space will be one of the labs for our Radio Business program. Students will use this space to conduct live and telephone interviews, present newscasts, and host music and talk programming on our community-oriented analog FM station. The studio faces into the hallway outside our department, so people walking by can check out what we’re doing on the air.

FM HD Studio 2

Our two new digital-only stations (Pioneer 90.1 HD-2 and HD-3) will allow students in the Radio Business program to hone their skills before moving up to FM-1. This studio will be home to an indie rock/alternative station. Students in the Webcasting and Podcasting courses will also use this studio to create web-only content.

Video Master Control Room

This studio will be used by students in the Webcasting and Podcasting courses to create video for the web. Control room operators will use our Globecaster switcher to switch multiple camera feeds, insert prerecorded video and add graphics to video streams and video podcasts. Using an intercom system, the director gives instructions to performers and camera operators in the video studio seen through the window. We’ll use a green screen to add digital backgrounds.

Reception Area

Just outside the FM-1 Studio, this area will be used to welcome guests prior to interviews.

New Media’s New Frontier: Apple’s iPad.

When Apple makes a new product announcement, as it did today with its new iPad, I feel like I’m living in the future I grew up watching on The Jetsons.

Apple’s products aren’t just gadgets.

They are beautiful machines.

When I purchased the first Mac (a G5) for our mass comm department in 2004, I got a lot of quizzical looks from students.

There were many people who thought that the PC had simply “won” the never-ending battle of competing products.

Like VHS beat out Beta.

One media technology product is supposed to replace another.

It’s nature’s way.

Besides, everyone knows Windows. Why learn a different system?

But the iPod and iTunes and Drew Barrymore’s boyfriend changed all that in a very fast few years.

In 2010, everyone has an iPod. Everyone uses iTunes.

Everyone is getting very comfortable with Apple’s Jetsonian way of doing technology.

Today, the company changed the game again with its introduction of a 9.7 inch tablet computer that was talked about so much in the news my grandma said she was tired of hearing about it all day.

But I can’t hear enough about the iPad.

That’s because it opens up the market even more for the new media products we’ll teach students to create.

As another indication of how new media is beginning to heat up around niche programming, take a look at the buildup to this product announcement today …

Podcasters and bloggers  have speculated about an Apple tablet for over a year.

Sites like Gizmodo, Appletell, and Engadget had reported on rumors and posted Photoshopped pictures of what such a device would look like.

All of this talk lead up to today’s announcement, which was covered  live on web tv shows like Leo LaPorte’s MacBreak Weekly.

I watched the coverage on my laptop over lunch today.

At one point, Leo said they had 114,000 webcast viewers. To put that into perspective, some niche national cable channels are lucky to have 50,000 viewers at a time.

With the iPad in the hands of millions of web surfers when it goes on sale in late March, the audience for targeted new media content (audio and video podcasts, blogs, social media, Internet radio, live streaming events) will grow exponentially.

So, what do you think? Are you buying an iPad? Will it replace your netbook or laptop?

Pioneer 90.1 takes MN Arts on the Road.

Some really exciting things are happening at Northland’s student and volunteer-staffed radio station, Pioneer 90.1 KSRQ.

Installation of our new HD digital transmitter begins this week.

As soon as it hits the air, Pioneer 90.1 will be the first radio station in our region to multicast. We’ll have three channels of audio on 90.1 that can be received by anyone with an HD radio.

(Best Buy’s in-house brand Insignia makes a great little portable HD radio that sells for under 50 bucks. It even has RDS, so you get scrolling song title and artist information on analog FM stations, too.)

MN Arts on the Road

Pioneer 90.1 receives a MN arts and culture grant that allows us to create programming to be archived online and shared with the other stations in our statewide AMPERS network. 

Beginning later this month, Pioneer 90.1 will go on the road to record area arts interviews and musical performances that we’ll broadcast locally and share with other AMPERS stations using PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.  

We’ll also use our Tricaster portable video switcher to present these performances online, bringing a new media element to radio programming as we did with the Saturday Morning Barndance broadcast I wrote about last month.

Our new “MN Arts on the Road” series will give area artists and musicians a new outlet to share their work statewide, and with the online world.

Here’s a video explaining how PRX allows public radio stations like ours to share their programming.

I’ve been mining the site for programming we can add to Pioneer 90.1 and our digital channels. There’s a show about social media I’d like to add to our weekend lineup.  

So, what else would you like to hear on the radio in northwest Minnesota and northeast North Dakota?

Do you know of any arts or music events we should feature on “MN Arts on the Road?”

PolkaCast Update.

Our UStream experiment during the Saturday Morning Barndance Christmas party this weekend went off without a hitch.

The site’s built-in metrics tell us we had 117 unique viewers and a total of 271 viewers from 7 to 11:15 AM Saturday.

In emails to Pioneer 90.1, people reported viewing from as far away as Montana, Idaho, Winnipeg, Alaska, Florida and the Czech Republic!

The recorded segments continue to get hits this morning.

And page views of this blog tripled as people searched to find the broadcast.

Use new media. Your audience will find you.

More photos here.

Polka like it’s 2009!

Polka music and new media are an unlikely pairing. But you’d be surprised at the number of online listeners we have at Pioneer 90.1 for The Saturday Morning Barndance polka show.

This Saturday, we’re adding more new media to the Czech Mix as we present our first ever live video stream on radionorthland.org. And this isn’t just webcam video. In the DIY spirit of new media, I’m using an antique 1994 video switcher I found in a closet to mix video from four cameras as we present a live broadcast from Gunderson Commons at Northland’s Thief River Falls Campus.

The hosts of the Barndance radio show have invited Karl and the Country Dutchmen from Wisconsin to play for the live Christmas party broadcast on Saturday morning.

The group has previously performed at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

If the past three years’ events are any indication, we expect to have over 100 polka fans at the college. These are very generous people who donate about half of what the radio station takes in each year from listener donations.

Pioneer 90.1 Operations manager Ben Kosharek and I set up the station’s UStream account and embedded it into the station’s website yesterday. It was unbelievable how easy it was to take the switched video from an output on a digital recording deck, feed it through firewire into a computer, and connect with UStream. We had a live stream up and running in about two minutes.

Ustream also allows us to record the broadcast and archive it on our Ustream page or upload it to YouTube. The site has a live chat feature, and allows a streamer to update Facebook and Twitter right from Ustream.

UStream takes all the technical work out of streaming video so we can concentrate on creating great content. I plan to use it for video streaming other Northland events in the future.

So if you’re in the area Saturday from 7 to 11 AM, stop in for the Barndance Christmas Party. Or check us out on Pioneer 90.1, the video stream on radionorthland.org, or on Sjoberg’s Cable channel 13.

This is going to be fun!

Live from Drayton, ND … It’s Christmas!

I just had an interesting conversation with Larry Ritzo, president of the Drayton, North Dakota Chamber of Commerce.

Ritzo is also publisher of the weekly newspaper in the town of about 900 people. Of his subscribers, half are former Drayton residents who have moved out-of-state but stay subscribed because they want to remain up-to-date on Drayton events.

It was that fact that lead Ritzo and e-commerce consultant Larrie Wanberg to create http://www.draytonchristmas.com/. The site uses live streaming video to bring out-of-towners back into downtown Drayton for a host of Christmas activities, including the Old-Fashioned Christmas celebration held last weekend at the Drayton Community Center.

The site uses UStream, a  streaming site that allows anyone with a webcam (or a video switcher with multiple cameras) to “broadcast” live to the web … for free. The site has a broadcast schedule for last weekend’s activities that included church services, a Christmas auction and a visit from Santa Claus.

There’s also a page of links to local businesses, opening these small shops to customers worldwide.

Ritzo said that he and other Chamber members are in the beginning stages of learning about the tools of new media. They used a simple one-camera setup from the Old-Fashioned Christmas event. The video was streamed to UStream over a wireless router that Ritzo attached to the side of a building across the street.

In future years, the webcasts could easily expand into using multiple cameras with graphics.  

Just a few years ago, this kind of internet broadcasting would have been very expensive, if not impossible, to pull off. Today, the tools are essentially free. Add creativity …  and a small-town Christmas celebration can reach a worldwide audience.

Audio: Scott Hennen on New Media

AUDIO: SCOTT HENNEN ON NEW MEDIA

Fargo, ND-based company pioneers new media marketing

Scott Hennen, AM1100 The Flag talk show host and owner of Great Plains Integrated Marketing discusses new media marketing in this interview with Northland New Media Director Mark Johnson. Recorded November 19, 2009.

Small businesses need online video. USA Today says so.

I couldn’t have written a better ad for our New Media program than the article that appeared on page 5B of last Wednesday’s USA Today. A quote from a Forrester research analyst in the second line of the story says it all:

“Whether you’re a hot-dog vendor in Boston or a design firm in Santa Fe, you will be producing video for the Web. Video is how your customers will find you.”

The story goes on to say that right now only 2% of small businesses have adopted online video, because small business owners “don’t know how to get the video produced.”  

“They don’t understand yet how it will drive their business. That will change in the next two years,” said fliqz.com’s CEO Benjamin Wayne.

We’re looking at a ground floor opportunity for entrepreneurs trained in the tools of new media. If you can make compelling video that helps small business owners better communicate with their customers, you have value in the marketplace.

If you are a small business owner and can make videos yourself, more power to you. You have a really powerful edge over your competition.

The tools for making video are inexpensive. But making compelling video is not “point and shoot” simple.

There’s a lot to consider: What information am I trying to communicate? Who’s the audience? What do I want the viewer to do after watching this video? What mood am I trying to convey? 

There’s the artistic stuff: Camera angles, lighting, good audio, editing in a way that succinctly communicates the message, choosing music and visual effects.

And there’s the technical stuff: Knowing the camera’s manual controls, chosing the best compressed format for a small-but-good-quality file, creating graphics.

Here in northwest Minnesota, we may not have many video production companies, but there are some exciting opportunities for entrepreneurs and freelancers who have the skills to help small businesses use video on the web. It’s a wide-open market in an innovative new field.