Next, a fine round-up of relatively inexpensive multimedia equipment from Adam Westbrook. Great for those starting out or adding to their repertoire.

Hyperlocal alert! Will Perrin has a very nice slideshow, which provides an action plan for free and effective local journalism based on local authority data. Pay particular attention to the final slide (slide 18).

Excellent post from Advancing the Story called the ’10 laws of multimedia’. Quick, relevant and to the point. A must read.

There has been plenty of discussion about this article in the New York Times on reporter burnout – but here’s the link just in case you missed it.

Finally an amusing link from 10,000 words on journalists learning programming skills.

Festival bound with Clockwork Noise, have a good weekend,
B

Some Irish users could complain about the time it takes to load these large images. But bear in mind most people in the US have faster connections. (Must return to examine how slow connections could be holding back certain forms of storytelling in Ireland).

The New York Times featured a great infographic showing the inter-linking of European debt. To explain this in  written form would have been taxing for the reader but this, quite simple, graphic tells the story so well.

Third example comes from The Guardian’s web coverage of the elections. It has a nice feature where it’s asking voters to tweet when they have voted and tag their tweet with their postcode so that it can be represented on a map to illustrate voter turnout. Good interactive way to tell the story even though it’s limited to Twitter users. (When I checked it out it didn’t seem to include Northern Ireland)

Have you seen any good storytelling this week?

B

I was lucky enough to be one of the journalists who received funding from the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund for a reporting project this year.

A few weeks ago I traveled to Kenya and Uganda. Going by road from Nairobi to Entebbe I reported on people who keep bees for a series of stories focused on food security.

I traveled alone with a backpack full of equipment: video camera, digital camera and lenses, audio recorder, plenty of tapes and leads and of course paper and pen. The aim was to come back with a multimedia project similar to a series I also did for RTE called Global Classroom.

Today, the first part of the series, The Humble Bee, went live on RTE.ie. It focuses on beekeeping as a means of improving food security on a macro and micro level. It looks at a family who keeps bees to make an income and a farmer who uses bees to improve pollination on his farm. There are videos and photos (more hopefully on the way) and an accompanying radio report, which was broadcast on RTE Radio One on World Report.

The rest of the series will look at other aspects of bee keeping in east Africa including women who keep bees, the environmental impact and the challenges some people face.

This has been a wonderful and challenging series to work on – I hope you enjoy it.

Check it out here
-B

Joe Zefran, RTÉ.ie News Editor and I have put the cross-media series together.

Joe traveled to India and I went to Rwanda and Kenya where we reported and shot our own video for three reports on three programmes, including the Irish charity Camara, which are using three different approaches to reach the same goal: educating the world’s youngest citizens.

The series looks at how children in the slums of New Delhi are linked to the larger world, how one experiment wants to make sure every child in the world has their own laptop, and how an Irish charity is changing the lives of people in Kenya.

There will be full-length text features and web-exclusive interviews on RTÉ.ie/globalclassroom.

Plus, for the first time at RTÉ, RTÉ.ie will produce a three-part television series that will air on the Six One News and News on Two.

My reports will air on Monday and Wednesday and they focus on Camara and One Laptop Per Child.

This has been a very exciting project and I look forward to doing more like it in the future.

**Six One News reports**

Part One, Two, Three