Beats and blogs, posting your project, and finishing

1. Beats and blogs,posting your project, and finishing Oct. 16

2. Class outline • Blog review • Audio Rookie mistakes • How to upload your audio project • - Editing in Audacity, continued

3. News blog vs. Personal blog What are some ways a news blog differs from a personal blog? What are some of the similarities?

4. Blog writing Journalistic Blog posts, like newspaper articles and TV articles, are supposed to be informative and objective. Each post should address a clearly identified topic, related to your beat. Every piece of information should be attributed or sourced. - If citing the reporting of other news organizations, provide a link - If you gathered material from an interview or report, label it as such - Try to answer the who, what and when somewhere in your post (how and why, as needed, too!)

5. Blog writing Succinct Limit the length of your posts to no more than 500 words. Accept that you may not be able to include every piece of information you feel is important to the story. Be selective. Use links to give readers an opportunity to go deeper.

6. Blog writing Clear writing Assume Web users want information fast. How can you inform them in a direct but engaging way? All content should be clear and concise. Edit your content before posting. Remove information which is irrelevant. Check you spelling, punctuation, grammar, style.

7. Blog writing • Headlines • Must be short, accurate, direct • In present tense, active voice • Not: Supreme Court conservatives • expressed skepticism over voting law • provision • Express a complete thought • Subject-Verb-Object • - Immigrant release – sparks – firestorm • Not: Opposition to illegal immigrant release • - SupCo conservatives – express – skepticism • Not: Voting law skepticism

8. Blog writing Generally speaking: Gather, organize and interpret

9. Audacity help If you get stuck… http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq_i18n?s=install&i=lame-mp3

10. As you work on audio editing When you start your project, check under preferences > directory> location SEE WHERE YOUR PIECE IS BEING SAVED—in the lab, put it to desktop Put the project on your jump drive at the end of class.

11. Mono vs. Stereo Tracks are audio files. They can be Mono or Stereo: Stereo tracks: Audio files with two different channels (Right and Left) Mono tracks: A single track audio, with sound distributed toboth channels For most news broadcasts and for our purposes: Use Mono. Most interviews are done with a mono microphone You can select mono on each And can convert stereo recordings track when recording: to mono by highlighting the file, then Tracks>Stereo Track to Mono

12. Useful tools Fade in/Fade out: Eases your ear into or out of a sound. Silence: Use this to write over a heavy inhale or exhale in your recording. Highlight the part of the track where you want to generate audio nothingness, and then select Generate > Silence. You can modify the selected period of silence manually, if you are not satisfied with the length of time you highlighted.

13. Posting your audio project There are multiple ways to post your project to your Wordpress blog. See: en.support.wordpress.com/audio/ The quickest way is to do this via SoundCloud: www.Soundcloud.com

14. Posting your audio project 1. Go to SoundCloud and establish an account 2. Once you’re logged in, click Upload http://soundcloud.com/upload

15. Posting your audio project 3. > Choose files, and select your file from your desktop

16. Posting your audio project 4. When project has uploaded, enter project information … … Then hit the Save button at the bottom

17. Posting your audio project 5. You’re ready to go! Hit “Share” and copy the Wordpress code at the bottom of the pop-up window.

18. Posting your audio project 6. Log into your Wordpress blog and paste that code into a New Post.

19. Posting your audio project 7. Add supplemental text as needed into post body, then publish!