From left: Christopher Wink, Brian Blanda, Sean Blanda at the Eiffel Tower

So, that was fun.

If you have noticed the lack of posting around here, it is because my friend Chris Wink and I have been traveling Europe while podcasting our advice along the way over at We Dont Speak the Language.  Im back now, and if you are looking for some sort of summary of the trip, head on over the WDSTL (the last episode will be released on Sunday).  However, I’d guess if you are reading this blog you are more concerned about media and behind the scenes aspects of the podcast.

This was my first experience with any sort of video podcast, as well as the greatest test of my ability to produce content under a wide range of circumstances.  I’ve written posts in London train stations, filmed an episode in a Eurail train, and co-interviewed a former prostitute in Amsterdam.  While I would be lying if I said I mastered the art of the video podcast, here are a few lessons I can pass on to anyone considering something similar:

Promote, promote, promote. Initially we sent out a mass email to those in our contact lists that we thought were interested.  We also created pages on multiple social networks.  This wasn’t anywhere near enough promotion.  In reality, for every three posts we wrote we should have sent an email to a travel blog.  We should have left comments on other blogs.  We should have hung a billboard on Philadelphia City Hall if we had to.  This is not to say we were unhappy with our numbers.  I cannot speak for Chris, but our hits and subscribers were right around where I thought they’d be.  I was happy with the comments left as well.  However, after about two weeks on the road, the numbers stayed relatively flat.  Had we been more active in promotion our numbers may have been better.

I severely underestimated the work needed to grow an audience in the short term.  Most projects I have had were long term in scope and, foolishly, I was never in a rush to attract hoards of viewers.  I was big believer in getting the ball rolling and then letting traffic grow organically.  But WDSTL taught me that your promoting to content creation ratio should be somewhere around 25/75.

You need tons of hard drive space. According to the “WDSTL” folder on my external hard drive we created just under 30 gigs of content.  Additionally, when editing video you need a large portion of your hard drive available as a scratch disk.  Luckily, Wink had a laptop with a decent amount of space and I lugged along an external hard drive.  As a rule, I’d say each minute of video you wish to produce in your episode you need at least a gig.  Sounds obvious, but the first time I received the “out of disc memory” warning it blindsided me.

Carpe Wifi. The odd thing about trying to maintain an Internet property on the road is that you, um, need the Internet.  The hostels we were staying in often had shoddy connections, if they had one at at all. And when you are uploading video that can be as big as several hundred megabytes, a bogus connection can slow you down for hours.  An alternative was to pay as much as $3 every half hour for Internet access at a cafe. I once was so desperate that I walked the streets in Hungary at 11 p.m. with a laptop in hand trying to mooch off of a open wifi connection.

So whenever we found a reliable and fast connection we stopped and uploaded all of the video we could.  Sometimes this caused us to delay our plans, but mostly it was a matter of seizing the great wifi while we could, because we never knew when we would get another chance.

You can produce a decent looking podcast with a digital camera.  We produced all of our video using a Nikon Coolpix s210 camera.  It produced 640 x 480 video that was more than good enough to be played on a computer screen.

Seriously, our tripod saved our lives. We didn’t have a camera man after my brother Brian went home, but our trusty bendy tripod usually fit the role just fine.  To learn about all of our equipment used, check out the WDSTL post.

Being on camera is tough. Aside from once presenting a business plan and speaking at CMA, I have very little public speaking experience.  Although, I was once conned into doing our high school play (I was Kili the dwarf in “The Hobbit” thank you very much).   Being on camera and constantly rewatching myself as I was editing forced me to pick up on my verbal and physical ticks.  Ticks such as talking too fast, using certain phrases repetitively, and not speaking clearly. I also began to dissect my posture so I could appear comfortable on camera.

I still have a lot of work to do, but the only way to get better is to do it.

Be familiar with compression.  I spent more time than I would like to admit recompressing video in Final Cut and Windows Movie Maker.  Before you begin your podcast shoot some test video and try to get the right mix of quality and size.

Be familiar with distribution options. Know that iTunes needs Quicktime video. Know how to utilize BitTorrent.  A true podcast will make the content available in whatever format their views demand.  If I were to start over, I would have done a better job and offered more options than just an iTunes and a XML feed.

Above are just a handful of suggestions.  I do recommend you check out Kelly Sutton‘s work if you want someone who knows way more about video podcasting than I.

Time to put food on the table

Sean's future is in this box.

Since graduating, I’ve been lucky enough to travel cross country, work for one of my favorite newspapers, and podcast my trip across Europe. But I’m done vacationing and exploring for the time being, and it is time to get to work.  I’ve struggled with what my ideal job would be.  Throughout my college career I’ve wavered between what industry I wanted to get into.  Did I like writing?  Video?  The Web?

But I’ve come to realize that I just love information and will do any job that allows me to create content in multiple forms.  This may be through personal projects such as Consumer Whore (which will get a kick in the pants in a few days) or by getting on the staff of a forward thinking newspaper.  But as of now, basic parts of my life such as of where I will work and live in the coming months are a big question mark.

If you excuse me, I have some cover letters to write.

Ron Davis and I while waiting to be seated. Photo by Bri Barry.

I remember sitting in the nurse’s office in the 5th grade as she looked up my name on the computer. In my file, right below date of birth and next to my address, read “Date of HS Graduation: 2004″. I remember thinking: “2008. That’s the magic year when I’m done school forever.” Fast forward to this past Thursday, and there I sit in Temple’s Liacouras Center with thousands of my closest friends listening to a former dessert spokesman.

Two things I thought would never happen.

In 2004, Bill Cosby promised the Class of 2008 he would speak at our commencement. Yet, as the date approached he was never announced as a speaker. I, thinking he wouldn’t come, even wrote an op-ed lamenting Cosby’s broken promise. He then surprised the class by speaking. In a cheesy way, it made my graduation.

But now that my diploma is in the mail (or so they say) it’s time to move on to that pesky “real world” thing. Starting this Tuesday, I will be working as a part-time Web designer for the Philadelphia Citypaper. The Citypaper is one of the two alternative weeklies in Philly, and a publication I have read every week since I was a freshman. The Citypaper’s location allows me to work in beautiful Old City Philadelphia, which is a subway ride away from my house. I also enjoy the fact that I will be working with a small independent paper as opposed to one in a national chain.

I will also hesitantly admit that I am not ready to dive full-time into journalism (or any job). The time after college is one of minimal obligations, and I plan to take advantage. There is a great deal of traveling I want to do while I have the chance (and while the student loans are deferred). I also have a list of side projects and business ideas I would like to explore.

In other news…

I was lucky enough to be selected as one of the UWIRE 100. Special thanks to all of my fellow Temple News staffers, many of whom you can find in the blogroll to the right. Fellow Temple Newser (and commencement speaker) Christopher Wink also shared honors.

Recognitions are also due to fellow nominees and Twitter addicts Greg Linch, Kyle Hansen, and Chelsea Otakan. I’m currently on a quest to find the sites of the other 95…

The whole “new media” thing is usually a problem when looking for a journalism job.

As highlighted in a recent post here, as well as in a Mindy McAdams post, most newspapers don’t quite know what they are looking for. Many also have unrealistic expectations of their potential hires.

But one comment on Mindy’s post struck me.  It was by a commenter named “Nick”. Without a last name or Web site link, I can’t vouch for who this fella is, but his comment was:

Isn’t it funny (well not to me, Mr. Dedicated Journalist), that these sorts of jobs would pay $30,000 at a newspaper but pay at least 2 times that in other parts of the real world.

This is something that has bothered me. First, I have to state that I’m aware nobody gets into journalism for the money, and that this profession is first and foremost a labor of love. However, that was a reasonable sacrifice with the traditional demands on a journalist and journalism student. That is, your job was to gather information and then sit down and write it. Not getting paid top dollar for this work was not as big a concern, as writing jobs in general don’t pay much.

Fast forward to current day, and we are being told we should know how to edit video, audio, and maybe have some sort of Web production skill. But the problem lies that if I go into any of these fields, I may be able to make up to three times what an entry level journalist makes. For example one journalism job posting for a position in Wyoming is paying $15,000 – $20,000 a year. A quick calculation (20,000 / 50 weeks / 40 hours) shows that that is ten dollars per hour at best. I made that being a picker at a Delaware warehouse in the summer after my freshman year.

Okay, that’s Wyoming where the cost of living is low and in a small town where the “do everything” types are necessary. In California, a similar posting has a salary ceiling of $30,000. Given the drastic difference in cost of living the “actual salary” is pretty even with the ceiling of the Wyoming job being comparable to the ceiling of the California job. In Pennsylvania (where I currently live) the average is a similar $31,000.

Keep in mind, these are not editor positions but reporting ones. Now, lets say someone took their multimedia skills and chose a job more traditional to that skill. For example, if I can code HTML/CSS, I could be a full time Web designer. Could I make more than $30,000 dollars after one year? By my second? With one $500 site a week, I could equal my potential newspaper salary.

Now the point of all this is not to shed light on how poorly paid journalists are, but to show that the demands on new hires have increased. Yet salaries are not matching the educational demands placed on new hires. These days it seems you have to know more just to earn the same salary that would have been standard even 10 years ago (inflation aside).

This scares me, because as long as these conditions are true, newspapers will never attract the best and brightest new media minds. If I am a talented video editor there are many more appealing options in front of me than newspapers and journalism in general. I would essentially be asked to take my valeable skill to a place that would pay me less while having little job security.  Plus there is the sticky issue that most newspapers still don’t know how relaible something like video is to their business model. In other words, it is very possible newspapers (or any publication) will one day decide video is too costly and ax the concept all together. Suddenly an idealistic video editor will be stung, and will surely tell any peers with similar skills to get out of the journalism market.

Until jouralism becomes more appealing, it can never break out of the downward cycle it is in. This goes beyond just simply money, but all the factors of a good job such as job security and benefits. Both are areas that journalism is not exactly known for these days.  How can an industry have declining job quality, yet ratchet up its demands on new (and old) employees?

So I ask given two options: a low paying job in a shaky market where your talent may not be needed in a few years, or a more “traditional” job for your skillset that can pay 1.5 times as much (a modest estimate) and, depending on the company, offer benefits as well. Most people will choose door number two.

Which leads me to ask, how the hell is journalism to compete with this?

Sources: How to be a Rockstar Freelancer, CNN Money, Journalism Jobs, Monster.com, PayScale.com, a left brain

Therefore, one of my biggest fears while applying for a job is that I will end up in the back room, tucked away in somebody’s Web department emerging only to make small talk about some sit-com. Sometimes I feel like any “web producer” , “web editor” , or “multimedia reporter” is just code for hiring a computer zombie to do monotonous tasks on the computer all day without leaving the office. In fact, a lot of language on journalism job postings is really leading to some other idea. So allow me to translate the often cryptic language of hiring editors:

“We are looking for an applicant who can maintain rich and powerful digital media” = You will be staring a computer screen all day. Don’t think about leaving. Seriously, we’ll bring your lunch to you and everything.

“the idea of working nights doesn’t scare you and if you think you can keep up the pace” = We are going to give you insane hours and work you like a dog. But if you whine about it, we are just going to call you a sissy.

“is in search of focused, resourceful reporters interested in working as stringers in various locations” = We are too cheap to give out health insurance.

“Town X offers a wide variety of outdoor activities” = We know we are in the middle of nowhere. But you never worked at a newspaper before, so suck it up and move.

“motivated and willing to go the extra mile for the paper” = You’re totally going to stay late and get no overtime.

“The ideal candidate will have a minimum of three to five years experience building Web sites plus two years combined experience in object oriented languages such as Python, Java, C#, or Ruby. Experience using XML, HTML, XHTML, CSS, AJAX, and/or JavaScript ” = We are looking for computer jesus.

And I swear if I read “looking for a self-starter” one more time, I will turn off my computer, dismantle it into 50 parts, and bury one piece in every state.