What you can expect at The Kalish
The Kalish is a workshop that has reinvented itself to design a bridge between the training needs of two distinct yet related news gathering groups: Online news organizations with staffs that possess incredible web skills but need help in visual storytelling and journalistic skills; and newspaper organizations that have skilled visual storytellers and journalists but are lacking web skills.
You’ll be involved in hands-on exercises and discussions that include making good choices about individual pictures, as well as, how multiple pictures can, or do not, work together on a news page or the web.
You’ll be expected to work from a story budget of daily stories and project work, and create a page one newspaper page with accompanying inside pages for a picture story.
You’ll be expected to take a set of pictures, marry them with sound and produce an effective web-based slide show. And, you’ll be expected to develop a story board which will lead to a video production.
You’ll get a full day of management exercises and discussions designed to help you, help your staff, move across a fast changing landscape. Topics for discussion include managing resources across platforms, demonstrating leadership qualities at the staff, mid-management and senior management levels, as well as a management panel to answer any questions you might have.
if you have questions
The 2008 Kalish Workshop schedule
FRIDAY SESSIONS
8:00 am Registration: Pickup books, nametags, etc, in Room 360, Arts and Journalism Bldg., McKinley Ave.
8:30 About the workshop: A brief history of The Kalish and other salient facts. – Scott Sines, The Commercial Appeal
8:45 Welcome to Ball State: A welcome, and a little history about the university from Tom Price, photojournalism professor.
9:00 Introductions: The first exercise in editing; attendees will be asked to introduce one another in two minutes or less. And the faculty will do the same.
10:15 Break
10:30 Keynote speaker: An industry expert will setup the workshop by sparking discussions on future trends and innovations in visual storytelling and how our roles may change.
11:30 Lunch
12:30 pm Skills assessment/training (InDesign): The Kalish is a visual storytelling workshop, not a technical workshop. However, we recognize the need for students to be sufficiently facile with some common tools, so they can keep their focus on making good choices about pictures instead of fumbling with the computer.
To that end, acceptance to The Kalish means that before the workshop begins, each participant is expected to fulfill prerequisite technical training in InDesign, Soundslides, Audacity and IMovie. Tutorials and exercises will be made available at Poynter.com and kalishworkshop.org. The exercises will be evaluated by faculty. After completing the tutorials, everyone will be asked for a self-assessment of their technical expertise. The faculty will evaluate the results of the tutorials combined with the self-assessment and offer a limited amount of training on Friday.
1:15 Break
1:30 Skills assessment/training (Soundslides and Audacity)
2:30 Break
2:45 Skills assessment/training (IMovie)
3:45 Break
4:00 Workshop teams are determined: At the end of Friday, the faculty will evaluate the technical expertise of each person and form teams that will work together during the workshop. Our goal is to make sure that each team (collectively) possesses the technical skills needed to get the most value from the workshop.
5:30 Gather in front of the Arts and Journalism building
5:45 Bus leaves to Szechuan Garden for dinner
7:30ish Return to residences, rest of evening free
Short faculty meeting in Room 360 of Arts and Journalism building
SATURDAY SESSIONS
8:15 am Eyeopener
8:30 What picture editors do: The reality of being a picture editor can be much different than the lofty image many people have in their minds about what picture editors really do. This session provides a valuable reality check about what it’s really like to be a picture editor and how to keep your focus on compelling storytelling.
9:30 Break
9:45 Generating assignments: Deciding which pictures will be published in the local newspaper/website determines how a community’s story will be told over time. Staff levels are shrinking, and the increased time required for multimedia production, make the choice of what to cover and allocation of resources even more critical. The goal of this session is to generate a good discussion around developing guidelines that picture editors can use as they decide what to cover and how to pick the best multimedia opportunities.
12:00 pm Lunch on your own
1:30 Building currency: For the photography dept. to become an originating dept. (as opposed to a service operation) in the newsroom the picture editor must have the respect of senior management, peer editors and staff. This session focuses on strategies to move the newspaper forward while building respect on those three levels all at the same time.
2:30 Break
2:45 Selecting the picture: Making good choices about pictures and being able to articulate the reasons behind those decisions are fundamental to The Kalish. Like any type of editing, picture selection is highly subjective. This session is more about articulating the reasons for picture selection, than it is about the subjective judgment of whether or not the right picture was chosen. Expect hands-on exercises to generate a good discussion about what you need to know to make good choices, and also how to defend those decisions in the newsroom where everyone thinks they are a picture editor.
4:30 Break
4:45 Introduction to the evening Decide and defend session: Decide and defend is The Kalish mantra. Saturday afternoon the teams will be presented with a set of facts surrounding a difficult picture decision or newsroom issue. (Many of these sessions grow from the personal experiences of the faculty and usually involve some sort of dilemma question to which there could be more than one suitable answer.) We’ll break for dinner so teams can begin discussing the exercise over dinner if they choose to.
5:00 Dinner on your own
6:30 – 9:00 Decide and defend cont’d: Each team will be asked to consider all that they’ve heard and learned during the day and apply it to the exercises. Then they must present their decisions to the entire group and make reasoned arguments for their choices.
SUNDAY SESSIONS
8:15 am Eyeopener
8:30 Community journalism: Whether it’s a website or a newspaper, local news still rules. People still want to know about the place they live and to see themselves and their neighbors reflected in local news. Readers expect us to keep watch on our institutions and provide news about local events of interest. Community journalism is also what most of us practice. This session reinforces the value of local news and the vital role photojournalism plays.
9:30 Citizen Journalism panel: Some newspapers are experimenting with reader contributed pictures and stories. Those newspapers that have not, will probably be forced to do so in the future, as staff levels go down and the appetite for community news stays strong. More and more newspapers are relying on “citizen journalists” to feed them content. A faculty panel will discuss different ideas they’ve tried, or heard about, and share the pros and cons.
10:00 Break
10:15 Legal issues: In this session, fair use, copyright law, invasion of privacy and the pitfalls of jury trials are some of the topics Jan Carroll, attorney with Barnes & Thornburg LLP, discusses. She leaves plenty of time for Q and A at the end of her presentation.
12:00pm Lunch on your own
1:30 Two-picture combo: Some pictures work together and some don’t. Using examples, this session points out some things you need to know about how pictures work well together. It includes examples of proper proportion and sizing of pictures and the image sizes inside the pictures. (head sizes, subject to camera distances, etc) Learning how two pictures work together is a building block toward making multiple pictures work together on a page.
2:15 Break
2:30 Picture pages: Building on the lessons from the two-picture combo, this session expands to a picture page. Now each team must consider how multiple pictures work together both in terms of content and sizing and proportion on the page. Working in teams, each team must edit and design a picture page that will be critiqued by faculty.
4:45 Break
5:00 Begin Front Page exercise: Teams will be provided with a news budget. It will contain all the stories and projects planned for the Sunday Kalish Chronicles. Every team works from the same set of pictures and stories to produce the front page and any pages needing inside display. The goal is to generate lively (non-violent) discussions about the appropriate play of stories/pictures on the front page, as well as, picture editing and designing inside pages.
6:00 Pizza delivered to the food court
6:45-10:00 Front page exercise cont’d
MONDAY SESSIONS
8:15 Eyeopener
8:30 Critiques: Each team will get feedback on their work. Faculty members will project the pages that demonstrate the best judgment, creativity, and innovation for discussion among the whole group.
10:00 Break
10:15 Ethics & diversity: Expect a high energy, highly interactive session that discusses issues including the value of diversity in the newsroom, to ethical decision making in a changing media. There will be several short exercises and the entire presentation is designed for maximum give and take.
12:30 pm Lunch on your own
1:30 Audio 101: An industry expert will give instruction on capturing audio. Topics include: how to interview for audio, how to pick up natural sound, etc, and how to write narration. The presenter will leave plenty of time for Q&A.
3:00 Break
3:15 Managing resources across platforms: It is a challenge in every newsroom. Resources are shrinking and newsrooms are being asked to work across platforms, which can be time intensive. This session discusses strategies for managing across the growing divide between the time demanded by multi-media reporting/editing and the march toward smaller staff levels.
4:30-5:15 Management panel: A faculty panel will share their ideas, and solicit ideas from the group, about different approaches to the “doing more with less” thing.
5:45 Gather in front of the Arts and Journalism building
6:00 Bus leaves for the bowling alley (The group picture will be taken immediately upon our arrival at Munsee Lanes.
7:30ish Bus returns to Arts and Journalism building, rest of evening free
TUESDAY SESSIONS
8:15 am Eyeopener
8:30 Soundslides: This exercise builds on lessons learned from the two-picture combo, the picture page and the audio sessions by adding sound clips to the mix. Depending on levels of expertise teams can choose to work from raw sound files or pre-edited clips. Each team is expected to produce a short slide show with audio.
11:30 Lunch on your own
12:30 pm MediaStorm: Brian Storm, a chief poobah in the new media world, demonstrates the storytelling possibilities of multimedia through a sampling of his company’s work. He will share his thoughts on how editing for multimedia is different, and richer, than traditional newspaper picture editing.
2:00 Break
2:15 Storyboards: The workshop started with pictures on pages, then audio was added which gave us Soundslides. Now we add video which gives the editors choices of still, audio and video to produce a multi-media presentation. The storyboard exercise provides a method for organizing all the different media “assets” in a way that best tells the story.
4:00-6:00 IMovie: This session closes the loop from pictures on pages to multi-media. Each team will produce a short multimedia presentation springing from the storyboard exercise. Critiques will be on Wednesday morning.
6:30 Bus leaves from the Arts and Journalism building for the Thai Smile for dinner.
8:00ish Bus returns rest of the evening free.
WEDNESDAY SESSIONS
8:30 Showtime: a video of the high and low lights from the week.
9:00 Workshop evaluations
9:15 Critiques of Soundslides and IMovie presentations
10:30 Break
10:45 Taking it back: The Kalish can be a very stimulating experience. The faculty leaves time at the end of the workshop for a discussion about lessons learned and how students can best implement them in their organizations.
11:45 It’s over
