Charles Apple

No fewer than 93 people show up yesterday at the SND quickcourse at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in downtown Atlanta.

The sessions went well. I got to see old friends, meet some new ones and I got to hear a bunch of speakers I’ve never heard before. What a swell event.

I have to give particular credit to visuals czar Dee Dee D’Asaro and her lieutenant, Kenny Monteith. They picked up the ball for planning and pulling off this conference in the middle of a massive reorganization of the AJC newsroom. I’ve spoken at a number of events over the years. This one was one of the better-organized. You’d never know what the folks upstairs have been dealing with the past few weeks.

Dee Dee D’Asaro and Kenny Monteith

And, of course, visiting Atlanta is always a treat. I lived here in the mid-1980s and my wife grew up here. We come back to visit her family two or three times a year. I’ll sometimes slip downtown and have lunch with my AJC pals. When I was asked to speak at this quickcourse, we simply planned our vacation around the event. We drove down Thursday. Tuesday, I’ll be downtown again when I drag the family to visit the Atlanta aquarium. Thursday, we’ll drive to Thomson, Ga., to visit my dad for a few days. I’ll get back to work in Virginia just in time for the July 4th holiday.

But back to the quickcourse…

I drove in Friday night and had dinner with Chris Kelley of The Kelley Group, an interactive strategy consulting firm in Dallas. We ate seafood and talked about our careers in journalism and the future of newspapers. Very interesting stuff. Chris has done a lot of interesting things. If you ever meet him, ask him about the infamous Dallas Morning News CueCats.

We met bright and early Satuday morning in the lobby of the AJC. Dee Dee and Kenny helped me tote in two bundles of newly-redesigned Virginian-Pilots and saw to it that I could park in the employee lot, saving me a bundle from the overpriced-as-hell local decks. Thanks again, guys.

A packed house at the AJC

After bagels and coffee, we kicked off the day’s presentations with Ron Coddington of USAToday.com. Ron walked us through the process USA Today has gone through, over the past year-and-a-half or so, merging its newsroom with its internet operation. The last phase of that merger — mixing the “rich media” department with the print graphics and photo department — is happening now.

Ron showed us a number of pieces that were produced as a result of having web designers sitting with features reporters and editors. Most of the work was wonderful. A few weren’t so wonderful. Ron showed us those, too, and explained why they didn’t work.

He gave several tips on how to cover breaking news online, where speed is even more important than it is in print. He showed us an example in which his folks prepared graphics in advance of a big government announcement that could be posted within moments. Then, as that’s uploading, his crew could work on more graphics to replace the first ones. Essentially, it’s like writing drafts of a news story, except you’re letting your readers peer over your shoulder at each draft.

I also enjoyed Ron showing us the part of his web site in which he demonstrates transparency for the reader. Most of his larger projects have a tag that allows readers a peek behind the project. We saw a couple of examples in which Ron had even posted rough sketches of his initial web page design. A fabulous idea, I think.

See USA Today’s interactive transparency page here:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/interactivity/

Waiting in the wings: Cassie Armstrong, Emily Murphy and Chris Kelley.

Next up was a team of four folks from AJC.com. They talked about some of the strategies they’ve used to turn their paper’s web site into a success. The key: Using very cheap off-the-shelf software to publish loads upon loads of photo galleries. Readers in Atlanta love photo galleries, it seems.

From left to right in the photo immediately below:

* Scott Baker, Online design Manager.
* Emily Murphy, Multimedia Manager
* Chris Heisel, Director of Online Development
* Michael McCarter, Online Photo Manager

They passed the microphone around and chatted quite informally about what they’re doing online and how they do it. They send out “metrics” every Monday that show statistics on what kind of traffic AJC.com receives. “I love it when the photo galleries have 25 percent of all our web traffic,” said online photo manager Michael McCarter.

They showed us conventional slide shows and sound slide shows — slide shows that incorporate NPR-like audio presentations. The AJC.com staff uses Olympus recorders that cost only $60 each, we were told. Microphones — “Good ones,” they said — can be had for only $25. The slide program costs only $25. And AJC.com uses a free application called “Audacity” to edit their audio.

It was encouraging to hear that the rest of us won’t have to pay an arm and a leg to get involved with audio slide shows.

Because of the success of their photo presentations, AJC.com posts their photos at 575 pixels wide — “One of the widest news pages,” said Chris Heisel, director of online development. And, of course, they try to give the sponsor of their galleries — Atlanta-based Wolf Camera — a “prestige position” on the page. A small Wolf Camera logo appears in the upper right corner of every gallery.

See some of those photo galleries here:
http://www.ajc.com/multimedia/content/multimedia/photo/index.html

Chris Heisel makes a point.

And, of course, the team showed us animated graphics drew in the wake of the baseball team bus accident on an Atlanta interstate earlier this year. They showed us one example that paired an animated map with a video of a car, recreating — roughly — the movements of the bus as it sped up the wrong off-ramp and across a bridge. Powerful stuff, and a reminder of what an incredible tool video and animation can be in telling a story.

The quartet left us with five questions, the questions they ask themselves before embarking on any online project:

1. Does it have an audience? Who?
2. Will it generate traffic?
3. Does it provide a service to the reader?
4. Will it have a long shelf life?
5. Do you have the resources to pull it off?

Good stuff.

For lunch, we all walked to the food court located on the ground floor of CNN Center, a couple of blocks to the north of the AJC. I ate a Wendy’s Double-with-cheese while comparing notes with Kris Jensen of the AJC’s Gwinnett edition. I’ll look forward to seeing what Kris does with that edition over the next few months.

Kris Jensen participates in Cassie’s exercise after lunch. 

Also at lunch, this one guy walks up to me and asks if, by any chance, I might remember him. Hell, yeah, I remember Cameron Tankersley! (And hell, yeah, I strongly suspect I’m butchering the spelling of his last name.)

Cam and me.

Cameron and I worked together about four billion years ago at The (Rock Hill, S.C.) Herald. I had no idea he was at the AJC. I asked around. Folks there think highly of him. I’m glad to see he’s doing well.

When we reassembled, it was time for Cassie Armstrong of The Orlando Sentinel to talk about inside page design. She used a brief brainstorming excercise to drive home the point: It’s a lot easier to brainstorm in a crowd.

She also won the audience over by pointing out that we all have occasional dogleg pages. There’s not a thing you can do about them, she said, getting a big laugh.

Cassie showed us how to carry through a theme from your front pages. She explained three basic rules they use at the Sentinel:

1. Be bold
2. Be consistent
3. Speak with conviction

She showed examples of news pages from earlier this year in which the Sentinel carried through these principals: Deadly tornadoes in central Florida and coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. Cassie also showed us lots of interesting pages in which content was researched and written by designers. I was particularly delighted she covered this, since it fed right into my own presentation.

She showed us a few ways to combat the problem in which you have no art with which to lead your section. “Sometimes, ’stretches’ can end up being your best pages,” Cassie said. She proved her point by showing us incredibly clever solutions by the Sentinel’s Sara Reeves.

And she gave good advice on how to gain the respect you need to get those big enterprise ideas approved: Basically, prove your competence first with more basic tasks. Baby steps, she said.

“If you prove you can be trusted on smaller things,” Cassie said, “Maybe you can move up to the bigger pages.” She showed lots of examples of small pieces where desigers had researched a text box or graphic that essentially served as a sidebar or as a small story.

“It’s all about the attitude,” Cassie said.

Following Cassie was Chris Kelley of Dallas. Chris spent 18 years at The Dallas Morning News, two years as metro editor and five years as an editor for the Morning News’ web operation. He took a buyout last year and went into consulting.

Chris was quite entertaining, which helped us digest his material. He walked us through some of the basics of business theory, which helped put into perspective what’s going on right now in the newspaper business. Essentially, newspapers have enjoyed an enormous bubble economy for years, growing fat off enormous profit margins. One large newspaper, Chris said, had margins as large as 36 percent. Unbelievable.

But now, that bubble is bursting.

Chris showed us how all this fits into standard economic business models. The words of comfort he offered: What’s going on is a result of forces far beyond our control. Don’t panic, but ride it out, he advised.

He did offer some good advice to newsroom executives, however. It’s all far too complicated to explain here in detail, but Chris described how we’re losing one of the few competitive advantages we have — “brand equity” — by cutting back our news operations. I only wish some news executives or publisher types could have been there to hear him.

Chris finished by reading recent headlines that showed the four categories of reaction to this change in our business economy: Panic, Confusion, Search and Answers. Only time will tell if we have enough of the latter.

Once the applause for Chris had died down, it was my turn. I closed the day’s activities by imploring not just graphic artists but visual journalists of all types to become more proactive in their approach to their work. You’re the most creative people in the newsroom, I told them. So pitch those ideas. If your ideas get shot down, then pitch more ideas.

I punctuated my topic with plenty of examples from The Virginian-Pilot and from my previous paper, The Des Moines Register. I took time to focus on two particular case studies: The Register graphics coverage of the space shuttle Columbia accident in 2003 and the Pilot’s graphics coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings this past April.

A few of my talking points, in no particular order:

• Don’t give reporters or editors what they ask for, I told them. The graphics department is not a McDonald’s. Dig a little deeper. Find out what it is they really need, and then give them that instead.
• Learn how to think fast. In this environment, the ability to think fast can be a powerful tool.
• Don’t worry about what 3D application you’re using. Stay focused on the content. Telling the story is much more important than making it pretty.
• Look for holes in your coverage. Look for things no one else in your newsroom is doing. Look for things your readers really want — or need — to know. Shape the ideas you pitch to fill those needs.

• Prioritize your work so that you make time, up front, for all those nice, big enterprise projects you’re pitching.
• Turn off the damn iPod and get out into your newsroom. Find out what folks are working on. You can’t be proactive if your nose is buried in your monitor.

And there you have it. A Saturday well-spent at the AJC in Atlanta.

Ron had to leave early and Chis needed to rest after the quickcourse. Dee Dee took Cassie and Me over to Ted’s Montana Grill, just a few blocks away.

Ted’s is a chain restaurant. You can read more about it here:
http://www.tedsmontanagrill.com/about.html

The particular restaurant where we dined, however, is the mothership. Ted Turner himself lives in the building and often eats there. Cassie and I both had to try the Bison steak.

If you get a chance, try some. It was very similar to an Outback steak, but even more tender. What an interesting end to an interesting day.

If you missed the Atlanta quickcourse — or, for that matter, the other quickcourse held Saturday in Portland, Oregon — all is not lost. There will be other quickcourses in other cities. Go to the SND web site:
http://snd.org/

And search for 2007 events. And, of course, don’t forget the big international workshop in Boston this coming October:
http://www.sndboston.com/

Make plans to attend now. If you’re not careful, you might even learn somethin’.

Now, if you’ll excuse me: I have a vacation to get back to. Catch you later.

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