Day 3 in New York started with a 5:30am rendezvous at New York Penn Station. I was almost late, but luckily the hostel that I was staying at was only a block away. At 6:00am we left for Washington D.C. and what was, for many of us, the highlight of the trip; National Geographic and washingtonpost.com.
At Geographic we met with Illustrations Editor Kurt Mutchler. He described what it was like working on a story for the magazine, and what the editing process was like. Mutchler went over two of the stories in the February 2007 issue, “Healing the Heart” by photographer Robert Clark and “Curse of the Black Gold” by photographer Ed Kashi. Our group learned that assignments typically last only about two months, with photographers coming back in halfway through to meet with an editor and go over images. In the case of Ed Kashi’s story on Nigeria, he shot around 12,000 images and saw 13 go to print.
Coming in to the trip, I was most looking forward to visiting the Washington Post, and it did not dissappoint. Our group had the opportunity to talk with Managing Editor, Multimedia Tom Kennedy and Deputy Multimedia Editor Chet Rhodes about the POYi winning work that is being done there (btw, the washingtonpost.com office is in Virgina, physically separate from the print operations).
Kennedy explained that, while being a separate entity caused some problems and made communication with the print operation even more important (as in a case when both offices sent reporters to the same small story), it was important that they, the multimedia section, be left unshackled and remain different, deliberately, from newspapers.
Many are aware, from the Apple promo, that 50+ reporters carry around video cameras. The office is also equiped with video editing equipment equivalent to that of a mid-market television station and a small radio station, with a tv studio being built. What has all of this meant for the company? For starters, Kennedy mentioned that they get 230 million page views a month, 9 million of those being unique visitors. Also, the online side of the company has been profitable for the past three years.
As far as the future, the Washington Post now has the ability to deliver content across a variety of platforms; newsprint, the Internet, podcasts that can be downloaded and played on your computer or portable music devices, and now, HD podcasts that readers can subscribe to through iTunes and watch on their televisions through Apple TV.
Kennedy explained that, when delivering content through the Internet, storytelling is even more important, as journalists are now having to prove that they are worthy of an audience’s leisure time.