I'm a Los Angeles-based journalist who has been asked to spend ten days in Slovenia presenting workshops in multimedia journalism to college journalism students, professional journalists and business leaders.
I will also officially introduce the European premiere of a documentary by my old pal and colleague, Ken Kobre (right), a San Francisco State University photojournalism professor whose film follows a dozen Associated Press photographers on assignments all over the world. It's called "Deadline Every Second" and I will be telling behind-the-scenes stories about how Ken single-handedly captured so much close-up footage of top pros in action -- though of course my anecdotes will be no match for the opportunity Slovenians will have to see the hour-long film itself. (For stateside aficionados of photojournalism, "Deadline Every Second" will premiere at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. on March 22; at the Columbia University School of Journalism in New York on March 26; and at UCLA in Los Angeles on May 8. It will also be broadcast in several PBS markets -- details to follow!While he was on sabbatical this past year, Ken led various photo and video workshops in France, Turkey and Bulgaria. Now that he's back at SFSU, he recommended me when Slovenia came calling. I helped Ken launch and maintain his pioneering Website, KobreGuide to the Web's Best Videojournalism, which has been consulted by newsrooms and classrooms around the world since 2008. Essentially it's a curated aggregation of the highest quality nonfiction videos produced by leading news organizations -- not TV-style news reports, but rather short feature stories that more resemble five-minute mini-documentaries. There still aren't that many practitioners who do it well, and often the gems are hard to find, so KobreGuide is designed to be one-stop shopping for those who appreciate top-notch video stories. We call it "the thinking person's YouTube." I also edit KobreGuide's companion blog, KobreChannel, which addresses news and issues relating to visual journalism. (Note: both KobreGuide and KobreChannel are temporarily on hiatus, but there are hundreds of archived stories you can still enjoy.)
Ken and I met when we were relatively neophyte journalism teachers at the University of Houston, circa 1980. We were the young turks, not much older than the students themselves, and the only faculty who had bylines since WWII! I was actually an adjunct, as I was a full-time magazine editor (for Houston City Magazine, at the time), but Ken was a full-fledged tenure-track prof. I remember him handing me a thick manuscript back then for my input. "What's this?" I wondered, as it was way too hefty to be a magazine article. When he told me it was a textbook about photojournalism, I laughed. Since when do kids write textbooks? Well, the joke was on me. It turned out to be not just any textbook, but the most widely used textbook in the field for the past 30+ years. "Photojournalism: The Professionals' Approach" is now in its sixth revised edition -- and since the industry has changed so dramatically in that time, there's scarcely a word from the first edition that's survived all those revisions.
It was in this latest edition that Ken presciently added chapters on the burgeoning fields of Videojournalism and Multimedia Journalism (along with a DVD of his own short documentaries) -- and then expanded those chapters into yet another textbook, which debuts this month: "Videojournalism: Multimedia Storytelling," with contributions from many of the field's top practitioners. (I contributed a chapter on how to conduct video interviews.)
So now I'll be on my way to Ljubljana, Slovenia in mid-March to help spread the good word to a country for whom a free press is still a relatively new concept. During my travels (which will include Maribor and Sezana), I'll use this blog to record my thoughts and impressions of the people I meet, and the ideas we exchange. I look forward to learning as much from my European counterparts as I hope they do from me.
I am especially indebted to Barbara Jakse Jersic (left), who is graciously undertaking the gargantuan task of coordinating this massive project, and rounding up audiences and preparing venues to make it possible for me to take my show on the road. To help prepare, I'm peeking at the Websites for Slovenian newspapers and TV news programs (and running them through Google Translator, so I can at least get the gist). I've compiled all these various links into a Storify page, so feel free to follow along.
I've also bookmarked a site that translates "Useful Slovenian Phrases" into English -- hello, goodbye, please, thank you, and, inexplicably (though I'm not eager to discover the explanation), "My hovercraft is full of eels." (Moje vozilo na zračni blazini je polno jegulj, in case you're wondering.) Fortunately, Barbara's English is terrific, so I know I'll get by just fine in her company.
In the weeks ahead, I will share some more about my journalism background, insights into the content of my workshops, and more stories about Ken Kobre's life and career. (Did you know that he is the inventor of the Lightscoop, that inexpensive DSLR camera attachment that's the best thing that ever happened to flash photography? That's an amazing story in itself!) Once I am in Slovenia, you can follow me around as I record my adventures and interactions (including photos and video). And I'll do my darnedest to keep those eels out of my hovercraft!
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