After months of planning, Morgan MOJO launched a beta version of New Content Providers. In the beginning of our project, Jan Schaffer advised us not to rely solely on students for content. She was certainly right! Our students, while excited about the MOJO Lab, often had to distribute their time between school, work and the Lab. Even though MOJO Lab students are doing the work for a grade (and are registered in a practicum class) they were initially intimidated by the level of thought and planning that goes into a multimedia piece. One student said, “I thought I was just going to shoot things going on in Baltimore. Why do I have to prepare an outline?”
The fun part of creating our website was emphasizing to students that the videos, in isolation, do not tell the story. We tell the MOJOs that story (and writing) are still key. Around November, they started to catch on. We began to see more carefully crafted stories, rather than profiles of cool Baltimoreans. One stand-out story featured a student’s enterprising piece into who plans to run for Baltimore Mayor in 2011. We need more stories like that, to gain reader credibility.
The only downside to our steady flow of content is the amount of work its takes to edit every piece. All of our students’ stories still have not made it online, but we will definitely post them all during the holiday lull. All in all, running a website is very time-consuming, tedious work. It can be a labor of love at times, what with all the fact-checking, photo credit-checking and caption-writing. It really does take more than one person to be a webmaster. We are looking forward to selecting an editor, once the second installment of our grant comes through.
New Technology Partners: Morgan MOJO added to Global Project
In early 2011, VeriCorder, which manufactures production used by mobile journalists, added Morgan’s MOJO team to its Global MOJO Project. Richardson has provided feedback on the mobile application, and the VeriCorder staff has offered advice on how to build a better news site. Newsrooms from 16 countries are participating and Morgan MOJO Lab is the only Historically Black College or University involved. You can watch a promo video on the project here.
The MOJOs are using iPods with VeriCorder microphones attached, for improved audio. VeriCorder also invented the iPod app that the students use to edit, called 1st Video Net. While I was tinkering with the app, in preparation to teach the students how to use it, I got stuck on how to add captions. I e-mailed the company’s salesperson. She asked how I was using their product, and I shared the MOJO Lab concept with her. She was intrigued, and mentioned our work to the company’s CEO. As a result, Morgan State students are now one of very few official product testers for VeriCorder! The company’s reps have sent us an advance beta test of the iPad app. It will allow one master user, such as a teacher or editor-in-chief, to view several stories on the screen, to create a website playlist. There is also a drag-and-drop feature for easy uploading to our MOJO website. To avoid any conflict of interest, the MOJO Lab still will pay for its edition of the VeriCorder newsroom syncing, the apps and the microphones. We are excited, however, about being a pilot school.
We are excited about our new partnership with News Trust too. The organization, funded by Open Society, aims to improve readers’ media literacy and news judgment. Their website allows readers to rate news stories based on key principles, such as objectivity, credibility and context. After meeting with News Trust’s Executive Director, Fabrice Florin, we agreed to place a widget on our website, which will allow readers to rate us. I think this level of accountability will help our MOJOs become better reporters. The students groaned, of course, when I told them of this new partnership. Nevertheless, News Trust will teach us in January to integrate their site seamlessly into ours.
The Takeaway: Student MOJOs
The students readily embrace video podcasting, but they shied away from audio podcasts this semester. At the end of the course, I asked why, when given a choice, they preferred the visual medium. One student told me, timidly, that he was self-conscious about his accent. When I asked the other students if they felt the same way, nearly half of the class raised their hands. They felt it was easier to edit out their voices in video.
In the second part of the course, next semester, I have booked a vocal coach for the students. He is a member of our faculty, so it will not cost the Lab anything but smiles. Many students have shared that they will feel much more confident after learning this soft skill. In many ways, the MOJO Lab literally gives these students a voice. They really are a timid bunch. Many of my students are first-generation college students, graduates of low-performing high schools or youth who have beat the myriad odds Baltimore has thrown at them. Those odds caused them to create the swaggering bravado they use to communicate to each other. Yet, when their teacher hands them an iPod and says, “Create!” they incredulously ask, “Who? Me?” The MOJO Lab has allowed me to say, “Yes, you.”
The first day the students handled the iPods, they were like children on Christmas Day. They poked the screen and slid around icons. They groaned when their videos froze or when an editing partner accidentally erased their B-roll. As their teacher, the hardest thing has been not to interfere with their experimentation. Although I know how to add a voiceover track to an existing video, I often refrain from butting in, in favor of allowing the student to figure it out themselves. The reporters are more empowered this way. They also shared that they feel more confident in the field, when technical problems arise.
The Takeaway: Citizen MOJOs
Citizen journalists have rounded out our coverage tremendously. Our best citizen MOJO is Bobby Marvin, who attended Morgan State University. The graduate now has his own blog, called HuesVoices.com. Bobby was so excited when he heard about the MOJO Lab, he asked if he could contribute. You will see some of his videos alongside our students’. Our other citizen MOJO is Doni Glover. Doni publishes the online newsmagazine, BmoreNews.com. Doni reached out to us too, when we put out a call for more content support. His video has been invaluable as we begin to build our library.
The best thing about working with citizen journalists is that they share the same passion for hyperlocal storytelling that we have. What we would like to do, however, is start setting publishing standards for our site. Both of our citizen journalists are not too fond of preparing print companions for their video pieces. We want to train them to beef up their coverage in this way. Our website is a little skimpy on the print, and as a former magazine journalist, that unnerves me! Therefore, our first citizen journalism boot camp will take place in January, with support from the Baltimore chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists. We are designing invitations to send out to local grassroots leaders, and other indie bloggers and journalists.
Next Steps
Now that the site is live, the real work begins. The site soft launches on Monday, December 20, to about 100 area journalists and professors. We will use their feedback going into the new year to perfect the site. Let us know what you think.
Personally, I have some goals I would like to achieve as a web developer. I wanted, for instance, to have a dominant slider image on our home page, but got stumped by Java. I will be working diligently during the Christmas break to get us a rotating main picture. I also will work hard to figure out how to post our Flickr account pictures in our sidebars. I put a placeholder gallery there, as you will see, since our API key just would not cooperate in time for this report. WordPress says “Code is Poetry.” I would paraphrase this to say, “Code is Unforgiving.” One incorrect bracket could stop the whole show. This is the kind of challenging work I wanted though, when I signed on to be the site designer. Every time I solve a programming problem, it is like a little victory.
Aside from coding, gracious volunteers and students also will continue to upload all of our student MOJO work. When we get our next award installment, we will also invest in our own video hosting, through Brightcove. We hate the look of the YouTube player, but it was the only free alternative that played video on PCs and mobile devices. (While experimenting with an iPad, we realized that Vimeo’s player would not appear on the screen. We suspect it relies on Flash.) YouTube is not a long-term option though, since user traffic bogs down its servers. Too often in our testing phases, our videos took too long to load, or simply did not load at all. So we are looking forward to a more reliable video library host “in the cloud,” which also gives us more control over our player appearance.
You can also follow along as we build this on our blog. I will post my lesson plans here, and real-time commentary from our MOJOs. I think chronicling this exciting experiment will help other schools interested in MOJO training. We hope we inspire some folks!
—Allissa Richardson
