What’s more important in journalism: good audio or good photo/video? This was the question that our Multimedia Journalism professor posed to us at the beginning of our lecture this week. I answered photo/video. You all know about how enamored I have become with photography and photojournalism. I’ve become convinced that photojournalism has incredible power and of incredible import to our society. But I was wrong. Not about photojournalism. I still love it and I’m still convinced of its paramount importance. But when you have to make a choice between the visual and the audio, audio is going to win every time. As my professor said, “People will watch bad video if you have good audio. They won’t watch good video if you have bad audio.”
And that makes sense. I thought about it terms of watching a sporting event on television. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been watching a baseball game, a basketball game, a football game, a whatever game and I’ve wanted to watch the game but the announcers have made it nearly impossible. This is not a knock on sports broadcasters. It’s a tough job and when it’s done right, it’s a thing of beauty (looking at you Vin Scully). But because it’s so tough, there are a lot of instances when it doesn’t go so well. And these times are particularly painful. There have been countless times when I’ve had to mute the television broadcast and either turn on the radio broadcast or watch in silence. The moral of the story: the audio is the dominant medium. No matter how entertaining and appealing the visuals are, bad audio will kill it in no time.
But let’s dismiss the idea that audio needs to be a companion to something visual to be effective in journalism. Because that’s just flat out wrong. Audio, in fact, is the foundation of journalism. Huh? What? Blasphemy! Journalism is all about writing! It’s about making the news look visually appealing! This is what we’ve been taught. Journalism began with the written word and has seamlessly moved into a visual medium. But we’re forgetting two important things. First, all of our major network stations began as radio stations. Isn’t that sneaky? While Edward R. Murrow may be best known for his interviews or his signature sign off on CBS newscasts, it was his radio reports from Europe during World War II that made his name in journalism and provided Americans with a genuine account of what was happening across the ocean.
Second, journalism didn’t start as writing. It didn’t start with the quill, the printing press, the typewriter or the computer. It started with the spoken word. The first journalists were the millions of people who lived thousands of years ago without the knowledge of the written word. They still had to communicate the news of the day and they did the way 99% of us continue to do to this day: they talked. At its core, journalism is a form of storytelling and storytelling has always been an audio pursuit. Like there are moments that can best be captured by a camera, there are some stories that are best told orally. The art of storytelling is illusive, difficult and beautiful. A good storyteller can put an audience right where he or she wants them as long as their talking. They can lull them into a false sense of security. They can assault their imaginations, creating images of both striking beauty and terrible tragedy. They can play with their emotions like a fourth grader plays with a yo-yo.
I got to work with audio for the first time this last week, and I really enjoyed myself. As part of my project that I’m working on for the first part of this semester, I had to put together 1:00-1:30 of audio to tell part of my subjects’ story. I’ve always thought that written journalism is at its best when it leans on quotes from those involved and this assignment was all that. She got to tell her story and it was so much more powerful and impactful to hear tell it with no distractions and no interpreter (I had hoped to link it here but I couldn’t embed the audio file). Next, we will be working on an audio slideshow where we will be wedding our audio with our still shots. I’m excited to use my photos to enhance even further the powerful audio I’ve gotten.
Oral storytelling is a beautiful thing and it sits right at the heart of journalism. I hope I get to do some more of it in the future.
Until next time.
Ryan's Multimedia Blog 