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PODCAST EPISODE #74: John Sharify & Joseph Huerta, “Bob’s Choice”

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The most powerful 60 minutes I watched last year came from two storytellers at their best.

John Sharify has won umpteen awards through a reporting career that has spanned decades. Joseph Huerta is assembling an equally impressive resume as a photojournalist, now at WFAA-TV in Dallas. Last year, for their final story together at KING-TV in Seattle, Sharify and Huerta produced an hour-long documentary about a man named Bob.

That man, 75 years old and diagnosed with terminal cancer, had chosen to end his life.

Bob Fuller planned to utilize Washington’s Death with Dignity Act to request a lethal dose of medication on a date of his choosing. Several months before that date, Fuller reached out to Sharify to see if his story was worthy of being told.

Sharify knew he wanted to tell it.

He teamed with Huerta to produce “Bob’s Choice,” which is embedded below and available anytime on YouTube. It is stirring, touching, moving, and just about every other emotional adjective you can name. It is also musical, downright funny at times, and a thorough look at a difficult subject.

Sharify and Huerta are my guests on Episode #74 of the Telling the Story podcast.

This is among the longest episodes I’ve done. That’s partly because of having multiple guests, but it’s mainly because this subject cannot be rushed. Sharify and Huerta discuss their many storytelling decisions on “Bob’s Choice,” but they also open up about their own emotional journeys and the experience of watching someone voluntarily – but peacefully among family and friends – take his own life.

The discussion is heavy, but it’s worth it.

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5 lessons from the NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism 2018 video winners

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I haven’t blogged in a few months, taking some time for a particularly busy season at work, at school, and as a dad.

But this occasion called for me to restart the engine.

Every year I pay particular attention to the winners of the NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism Video Awards. It’s a one-stop collection of some of the finest photography from some of the most prolific and talented photographers in the country. This year I set new marks personally, placing with five different stories in six different categories. But I never stop learning.

Through their work, my colleagues across the country never stop teaching.

Here are five lessons I learned from five powerful pieces of journalism and storytelling:

THE STORY: Remembering the Stains on the Sidewalk, by Jed Gamber (WBFF-TV, Baltimore)
THE LESSON: Commit at every level, not just with the camera.

I remember seeing this story when it first showed up in my Facebook newsfeed. I was blown back then and was blown back watching it again this weekend.

Jed Gamber has won a cavalcade of awards for photography in his still-young career, and he has helped build a tremendous team at WBFF-TV in Baltimore. This story shows the standard he sets.

Gamber and reporter Paul Gessler follow a still photographer who’s documenting the city’s homicides every day for a year. The camerawork is immaculate, but Gamber doesn’t stop there. He uses a projector, he stacks photographs on top of each other with a series of smash edits, and uses subtle but effective camera clicks to provide audio cues.

The whole thing is a masterpiece, pushed by a moving, meaningful message.

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5 lessons from the NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism 2016 video winners

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Every year I watch the video winners of the NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism awards.

Every year I go back to the same thought:

The building blocks of storytelling are absolutely important to a great piece of journalism, but they require the foundation of a story worth telling.

If we cannot get in the door with meaningful material, we cannot expect viewers to appreciate the various techniques on which we pride ourselves. Last year I profiled several BOP winners on this site and drew lessons from them. In my introduction, I wrote: “The best stories I saw last year demanded my attention, and I watched zero of them on television. I watched all of them online, via links and recommendations from colleagues and friends. I arrived upon them organically and, when I clicked on the videos, found myself instantly engrossed.”

Ditto for 2016. In general, the stories that won BOP awards — and stood out in public as well — were triumphs of content over technique.

Here are five first-place winners and the lessons I took from them:

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3 GREAT STORIES: Starring homelessness, Solange, and facts

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Every week, I shine the spotlight on some of the best storytelling in the business and offer my comments. “3 Great Stories of the Week” will post every Monday at 8 AM.

Under the Bridge: a virtual reality visit with homeless in Seattle (1/19/17, KING-TV): The first two stories I’m featuring this week are significant for breaking new ground in messy circumstances.

Let’s start with “Under the Bridge”, a 360-degree mini-doc produced by KING-TV’s Toby Rigby and Matt Mrozinski (himself a recent Telling the Story podcast guest). They work with photographer/activist Tim Durkan to explore a homeless camp in Seattle, and they devote five minutes to providing immersive looks and raw moments.

One cannot take on a new frontier without growing pains, and this production definitely presents a few from a storytelling standpoint. Watching it on my phone in a public place, I struggled at times to figure out where I was supposed to be looking. I often needed to take a few seconds during moments of dialogue to actually spot who was speaking.

But this is foremost an inspiring effort. Rigby and Mrozinski use the 360-degree space in innovative ways, from the opening titles to a sea of surrounding photographs towards the end. I applaud their dedication and perseverance here, and I look forward to seeing what they do next.

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3 GREAT STORIES: Starring seafarers, Greenland, & Super Mario

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Every week, I shine the spotlight on some of the best storytelling in the business and offer my comments. “3 Great Stories of the Week” will post every Monday at 8 AM.

Seattle mission serves foreign ship crews who cannot come ashore (12/28/16, KING-TV): As we turn the calendar to 2017, here is a touching, deceptively straightforward piece worth watching from 2016.

Ted Land with Seattle’s KING-TV is an especially talented solo video journalist, as well as a one-time podcast guest of mine and one of the interview subjects of my new how-to book for MMJs, The Solo Video Journalist. He is also a former National Edward R. Murrow winner for writing, and in this story he displays why.

Land tackles a seemingly simple subject — a Christian group that puts together care packages for foreign seafarers who dock in Seattle — but puts immense care into every word and shot. One needn’t work too hard to spot picturesque shots along the Pacific Ocean, but Land goes further and finds some of the most beautifully framed clips of video I’ve seen all year (2016, not this year).

That work ethic shows up throughout the piece, and it culminates in a winner of a story from a tremendous storyteller.

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PODCAST EPISODE #45: Matt Mrozinski, founder, Storytellers

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Many of us in the TV news business spend the years of our 20s trying to “make it”.

We expend all of our energy building our craft, learning from others, staying afloat, and climbing the ladder to a point of relative stability in a ruthlessly unstable industry.

Then we get to our 30s, and we make a conscious choice to begin to give back.

I know I went through that process. It’s why I started this blog four years ago. It’s why I almost always accept requests to speak at workshops and conferences. It’s why I helped organize and direct a workshop back in June.

(It’s also why I have been working on an exciting project for which I’ll be making a special announcement next week.)

And it’s why I began the Telling the Story podcast, in which I always devote a segment with my guest about advice for younger journalists.

My guest on this episode has fulfilled the same calling in a magnificent way.

He is the director of photojournalism at KING-TV in Seattle, but he is perhaps even more highly regarded as the founder of Storytellers, a web site and Facebook group for critiques and conversation that just cleared 10,000 members — almost all of whom are current journalists, news managers, and media professionals.

He is Matt Mrozinski, and he is my guest for Episode #45.

I have been a member of the Storytellers group for several years, but I had never heard how it began until interviewing Mrozinski for this podcast. I found his story fascinating, mainly because he did not start the group with the intent of reaching thousands of people. On the contrary, he stumbled upon its success — but then seized the opportunity to ensure its growth in a meaningful way.

I really enjoyed this interview and believe you will too. Mrozinski gives great insight into how the Storytellers community has benefited its members; he even provides some self-proclaimed “BREAKING NEWS” about future plans.

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3 GREAT STORIES: Starring Team Ortho, Kyle Korver, & laughter

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Every week, I shine the spotlight on some of the best storytelling in the business and offer my comments. “3 Great Stories of the Week” will post every Monday at 8 AM.

Running for a cause? (11/12/15, KARE-TV): One of the hardest jobs in reporting for television? Making investigative stories look good.

TV stories are often built around moments, and with many pieces, one finds those moments naturally and visually. Investigative journalists must produce those moments informationally and confrontationally — a much tougher task in a visual medium.

In this piece, KARE 11’s A.J. Lagoe and Steve Eckert show how it’s done.

Uncovering deception and monetary misuse from a local non-profit, the duo layers this story with “Didja see that?” moments. Eckert edits nicely the sequence that shows the misuse of funds over several years, and Lagoe leaves the viewer with a jaw-dropper through his final revelation and confrontation with the man behind the non-profit.

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3 GREAT STORIES: Starring candles, Peru, & a dozen scientists

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Every week, I shine the spotlight on some of the best storytelling in the business and offer my comments. “3 Great Stories of the Week” will post every Monday at 8 AM.

Hundreds gather in Roseburg to mourn shooting victims (10/2/15, KING-TV): On its own — and, really, that’s all that matters — this is a powerful story of the upsetting, unfiltered emotions of a community after last week’s school shooting in Oregon.

What makes it more impressive, from a behind-the-scenes standpoint, is how quickly this story was produced: from start to finish, in 70 minutes.

KING5 reporter Alex Rozier and photographer Dan Renzetti were dispatched to Oregon to find compelling stories, and they discovered one here in a candlelight vigil at a nearby park. Renzetti makes some beautiful maneuvers in his shooting and editing; I found particularly poignant his allowing a candle to naturally light one interview subject. Rozier writes the piece with care and context.

I would love to hear their takes on this, but I imagine the compressed time frame forced a certain level of precision and focus. Regardless, Rozier and Renzetti produce a package that brings home the emotions of a tragic situation.

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3 GREAT STORIES: Starring Mother’s Day, Berlin, & cake

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Every week, I shine the spotlight on some of the best storytelling in the business and offer my comments. “3 Great Stories of the Week” will post every Monday at 8 AM.

Anna Jarvis was sorry she ever invented Mother’s Day (5/8/15, BuzzFeed): Cinco de Mayo the classic example of a holiday “celebrated” by so many who know nothing of why it exists.

But what about that other May holiday?

I had little knowledge of the origins of Mother’s Day and was fascinated by this article, which explained them. But Joel Oliphint goes further. Writing for BuzzFeed, he examines the life of the holiday’s founder, Anna Jarvis, who crusaded to both make Mother’s Day a reality and then prevent its commercialization. She was portrayed in the media as a eccentric spinster, but was she?

Oliphint succeeds here by applying a modern-day lens to historical questions. He gives Jarvis a fair shake in every debate about her personality and tactics (she even went after non-profits for, she said, coopting Mother’s Day for their own causes), but he refrains from offering knee-jerk sympathy. Beyond that, he writes an article that is simply interesting from top to bottom.

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5 lessons from the NPPA’s best video stories of 2014

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Effort.

It’s the one through-line of every great story I see.

Television news constantly forces the hands of the people who bring it. At various points throughout the evolution of a story, a reporter, photographer, or multimedia journalist must decide when they have done enough:

Did I do every interview I can do for this story, or do I need to find another?

Do I have enough footage for this story, or do I need to shoot more?

Is this script exactly as I want it, or should I read over it again?

How much time do I have to keep editing, or do I need to submit my story for air?

These are the questions that daily confront TV news journalists, and they are often answered by the ticking clock of the deadline. But more than that, they come down to effort.

I thought about this frequently as I watched this year’s video winners for the NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism awards.

In each one, I saw numerous moments that only succeeded because the winning photographer made an extra piece of effort, be it during the gathering or editing process.

This year, I was one of those winning photographers; as I mentioned last week, I received 1st place in the category of Solo Video Journalism: General News. I won for the story of a Madison County, Ga. man who rescued a baby on the side of the road; the piece went viral and aired, in slightly edited form, on NBC Nightly News. As I wrote then, that story is a quintessential example of the value of effort.

Here are four other winning entries that I found particularly powerful — and the lessons I took from them: (more…)