I continue to follow the story of the public outcry over a man shot in a confrontation with police. Here’s the latest, in words, pictures and sound.

I was in Manhattan today when I saw some Twitter posts from Josh Stearns, who has been doing some great work tracking the arrests of journalists covering the Occupy movement, mentioning a protest planned outside Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s house.

I was on the other side of Central Park, [...]]]>

I was in Manhattan today when I saw some Twitter posts from Josh Stearns, who has been doing some great work tracking the arrests of journalists covering the Occupy movement, mentioning a protest planned outside Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s house.

I was on the other side of Central Park, so I walked over there to see what was going on. Turns out demonstrators were protesting the arrests of journalists, and among the speakers was one of the proprietors of GlobalRevolution.TV, which has been broadcasting and compiling livestreams of Occupy demonstrations.

“Global Revolution brands itself as non-hierarchical,” reads a recent New Yorker profile, “but if anyone is in charge it is Vlad Teichberg, a thirty-nine-year-old former derivatives trader.”

GlobalRevolution.TV was evicted from its space in Bushwick this week and, according to The New York Times, Teichberg and five others were charged with trespassing and obstructing governmental administration.

Teichberg told the crowd assembled on the corner near Mayor Bloomberg’s house (police blocked protesters from actually demonstrating in front of his building) the story of their eviction and arrest. I’ve embedded it above. Forgive the wind noise — I wasn’t expecting to cover any protests today and didn’t have the windscreen handy.

I have been following the difficult story of a North Jersey teen who was wanted on domestic assault charges, turned himself in, later fled the police station and was shot dead in a confrontation with police. Details are complicated, so read my latest update for more.

Supporters of the teen’s family have [...]]]>

I have been following the difficult story of a North Jersey teen who was wanted on domestic assault charges, turned himself in, later fled the police station and was shot dead in a confrontation with police. Details are complicated, so read my latest update for more.

Supporters of the teen’s family have been calling for a grand jury investigation into the shooting, and a large protest is planned for this weekend. As part of a story package I have planned ahead of the demonstration, I’ve compiled some interviews and sound from the previous protest, held just before the holidays.

It’s important for journalists to crystallize moments into digestible bits for readers, but I’m a big believer in the power of sound, and I think allowing more access for those interested in hearing more directly from key players — the teen’s mother, a local preacher, the mayor — adds a lot of value.

It’s been about two weeks since I went down to Zuccotti Park to document the sights and sounds of Occupy Wall Street.

SoundCloud, the social audio-sharing website I use to store my sounds, featured my interviews on their weekly SoundCloud Voices feature. Meanwhile, I used some of the nat [...]]]>

It’s been about two weeks since I went down to Zuccotti Park to document the sights and sounds of Occupy Wall Street.

SoundCloud, the social audio-sharing website I use to store my sounds, featured my interviews on their weekly SoundCloud Voices feature. Meanwhile, I used some of the nat sound from the demonstrations as a soundbed for a piece on New England Public Radio’s “Morning Edition Extra,” where I’m an occasional contributor.

Spent the week buried in mayoral coverage and haven’t had time to post material from Occupy Wall Street. Above is a gallery of photos taken at Zuccotti Park, where the demonstrators have been camping out, and surrounding areas.

Here’s an audio playlist of my interviews:

A lot of people seem to be [...]]]>

Spent the week buried in mayoral coverage and haven’t had time to post material from Occupy Wall Street. Above is a gallery of photos taken at Zuccotti Park, where the demonstrators have been camping out, and surrounding areas.

Here’s an audio playlist of my interviews:

A lot of people seem to be interested in this growing occupation movement, so I posted the raw audio from my interviews as a sort of miniature oral history. The first draft, anyway.

I also put together a local story package for MassLive.com, focused on the demonstrators from Western Mass. that I met while I was documenting the scene. Check that out here »

I couldn’t really call myself a journalist if I was in New York this weekend and didn’t try to document what was going on over at Occupy Wall Street. As luck would have it, the first thing I’d see were some women from Holyoke, MA — right in [...]]]>

Marcella Jayne, center, demonstrates with her friends from Western Mass. at Occupy Wall Street. Jayne is a student at Mount Holyoke College and works for the tenant advocacy organization No One Leaves Springfield

I couldn’t really call myself a journalist if I was in New York this weekend and didn’t try to document what was going on over at Occupy Wall Street. As luck would have it, the first thing I’d see were some women from Holyoke, MA — right in the heart of MassLive.com’s coverage area.

That’s what we in the biz like to call a “local angle win.”

I’ve got audio and photos and video to sift through, so this is just a taste. I’m headed back over to Zuccotti Park tomorrow, so stay tuned.

— Ira Glass, explaining what makes “Radiolab” awesome.

An aside: “Radiolab” host Jad Abumrad just won a MacArthur genius [...]]]>

Do I need to explain here that part of making great radio is remembering that you always need to give the audience things to look at?

— Ira Glass, explaining what makes “Radiolab” awesome.

An aside: “Radiolab” host Jad Abumrad just won a MacArthur genius grant.

After listening to me complain about not being able to monitor sound on my Canon 60D without spending another $400 on a JuicedLink box, my roommate the engineer lent me a simple stereo splitter he had lying around. This was pretty much a game-changer, and I feel incredibly stupid for [...]]]>

After listening to me complain about not being able to monitor sound on my Canon 60D without spending another $400 on a JuicedLink box, my roommate the engineer lent me a simple stereo splitter he had lying around. This was pretty much a game-changer, and I feel incredibly stupid for not thinking of such a simple solution before.

Previously, I wasn’t able to monitor sound with headphones because the 60D doesn’t have a headphone jack, which is way lame. So if I wanted to monitor sound, I had to record it externally on my Zoom H2 and then sync it later in Final Cut. This was a pain in the ass.

So here’s how I can now monitor audio with my 60D in six convoluted, still-hard-to-carry-it-all steps:

I pipe the stereo output of my RODE Videomic (1) into the mic input (2) on the Zoom H2. The stereo splitter now plugged into the line out (3) creates two female stereo slots, and I can plug a pair of headphones into one (4), and a male-to-male stereo cable into the other (5), feeding the other end into the 60D’s mic input (6).

The bonus here is that now I have the sound recording directly on the 60D, with more manual controls using the Zoom’s audio interface. I also have a higher quality WAV version being recorded on the Zoom if I want to get fancy later.

It remains to be seen how I will manage all this in the field without a third arm. Get on that, science.

I recently got a new Android phone and used it to record a phone interview with a state senator for a quick piece about the state’s sales tax holiday.

I almost always record interviews if the subject is cool with it, because it isn’t much extra effort, ensures the accuracy of [...]]]>

I recently got a new Android phone and used it to record a phone interview with a state senator for a quick piece about the state’s sales tax holiday.

I almost always record interviews if the subject is cool with it, because it isn’t much extra effort, ensures the accuracy of their quotes and leaves me open to do something with the audio later.

Also, it’s insurance against libel suits. That’s always nice.

But since I’ve been getting more and more into playing with sound in storytelling, I’m revisiting how I go about recording stuff. I often sing the praises of my clunky little Zoom H2 recorder, and that’s what I used to snag this sound.

Basically, I pipe an 1/8th inch stereo cable (which I made myself!) into the phone’s auxiliary headphone jack and into the line in on the Zoom. With my old phone, this only picked up the subject’s answers, and not my questions, which could get a little confusing after the fact when dealing with longer interviews. But my new phone, a Droid X, picks up both of us, so I figured I could edit the interview into a quick-and-dirty podcast.

In this case, the levels coming from the Fine Senator from Barre were a little hot, and I was barely audible. But with some basic tweaking in Final Cut, plus a little low pass filter, I got us right around the same place. It’s not a masterpiece, and there’s still a fair amount of editing: I shaved it down from eight minutes to under two, and pulled out a lot of ums and ahs — both his and mine. But given the story, and the turnover, I think it adds a lot of value to the piece.

That said, without infringing on Apple’s trademark, there’s got to be an app for this. So I asked around. Turns out Google Voice, which I already use for call forwarding and voicemail, has a recording feature. Just hit ’4′ and it announces to both parties that it’s about to begin recording — that’s OK by me, because Massachusetts is a two-party consent state anyways, and I always ask.

When you’re done recording, Google automagically e-mails you an MP3. I’ll have to try it out next time and see how it stacks up against recording to .WAV files on my Zoom.

The third in a series of commentaries I’m doing for New England Public Radio aired recently. This time around I sing the praises of the hyperlink. If you’ve found your way to this blog, you probably don’t need a primer, but it drives me absolutely nuts when [...]]]>

The third in a series of commentaries I’m doing for New England Public Radio aired recently. This time around I sing the praises of the hyperlink. If you’ve found your way to this blog, you probably don’t need a primer, but it drives me absolutely nuts when I read news on the Web that doesn’t link to the stuff it references.

How many times have you read a newspaper story online that talks about a significant piece of legislation, never bothering to actually mention the name of the bill, let alone link to it?

This morning, I spent a good half an hour trying to hunt down the House roll call vote on the debt ceiling compromise, because when Congress votes on something major, I like to do a how-they-voted post about the local representatives. It took me forever to find it because a.) the AP and other organizations gave a final tally but never linked to the bill and b.) the debt ceiling compromise, for reasons I still don’t quite understand, was actually reached via a technical amendment to the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002.

So I linked to the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002.