Foothills in Focus is a project to help weekly papers in Appalachian Kentucky adopt multimedia. It is funded by the
McCormick Foundation, starting at
West Virginia University in 2009 and at the
University of Kentucky in 2010. The Kentucky program began with a Feb. 24 workshop on audio, which is essential for good video and a useful addition to slide shows.
Instructor David Stephenson looks on as Beattyville Enterprise Editor Edmund Shelby interviews Enterprise employee Cheryle Walton during the first workshop. Newspapers received Olympus digital recorders, microphones and headphones as part of the project.
At the second workshop, March 19, Stephenson showed how to edit digital audio files to prepare them for use in
Soundslides, a program for presenting slide shows on the Web with or without audio, and how to use the program, copies of which the newspapers received as part of the project. Each newspaper is working on a multimedia story. The final workshops, April 2 and 23, will cover shooting and editing video. Newspapers will receive Flip video cameras as part of the project.
Other papers participating are
The Estill County Tribune and the
Citizen Voice and Times, both in Irvine, and
The Interior Journal in Stanford. The Irvine and Beattyville papers are cooperating with Dr. Elizabeth Hansen of the Department of Communication at
Eastern Kentucky University and Al Cross of UK's
Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues on a survey of residdents of Estill and Lee counties about their local newspapers and the Web. Two of the papers, the Enterprise and the Tribune, are develolping Web sites because of the project.
Students are also part of the project. Each one in Cross's spring class,
Advanced Writing for Mass Media: Online Community News Site, is working with one of the newspapers on news and feature stories. Topics incldue local elections, the oil business and downtown redevelopment. The students have access to the digital recorders, new computers and cameras as part of the project.
Sandy Swett has a vision for Stanford
http://www.uky.edu/CommInfoStudies/JAT/ss/stanford/index.html
By Heather Rous
Posts
