How to make a paper rose from Andrew Zahler on Vimeo.
Before I went on vacation last week, I shot and edited a video to go with a story running in our Home section. The subject: How to make a paper rose.
I had never made a how-to video before. Here’s what the experience taught me.
The Spokesman-Review is running a series on the Spokane River by reporter Becky Kramer, who is taking part in a seven-leg raft/paddle expedition organized by the Spokane River Forum.
The project is the biggest undertaking I’ve been part of at this newspaper. To complement the stories, I developed an interactive map using Google My Maps. There are historical photos, aerial photos by S-R photog Jesse Tinsley, markers with information about key landmarks and illustrations by Rick Hosmer, a participant on the expedition.
The map was time-consuming but easy to put together. I didn’t dabble with KML or other more sophisticated Google tools, instead relying on the basic My Maps interface. You can check out a quick tutorial here.
The map has been getting decent traffic and love from my friends at Down to Earth.
Of course, I’m not the only one merging waterways and interactive maps in these parts. Cheney, Wash., resident Ron Hall introduced himself in my comments section and shared this link to his Google Earth aquifer tour. Also check out this profile S-R reporter Parker Howell wrote about Hall and his 3D modeling of Spokane landmarks. Great stuff, and miles beyond what I’m doing. For now.
On Monday we ran a story about the Old City Drive in Spokane, an excursion mapped out by the visitors center folks to highlight points of interest and charm in the Lilac City.
The city editor sent me a page of typed directions and asked me to post them with the story. I said OK but thought I’d go one up and replicate the drive in Google Maps. It was quick and the result, below, is embarrassingly plain. But I thought it might add something useful for a few readers.
On Monday morning, I was linking up content and read in the story that there was an online map of the new, longer city drive. When I found it at the Spokane Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau website, I had to laugh: the folks there had also used Google Maps, and it looks like this.
As a vegetarian, summer grilling can sometimes seem limited. Fortunately, with encouragement from my friends, I’ve started a quest to diversify my options.
Not content with freezer-aisle hockey pucks or the quotidian portabella, I’m taking recipes for nonmeat burgers and giving them my own twist.
The action is under way at www.burgerrevised.com. Check it out, and share your ideas!
I figured I’d post something basic about the work I’m doing as the online editor. Packaging, to be specific. Certain stories lend themselves to grouping words, pictures, resource links, video and other multimedia, and when that happens I get to bring it all together as attractively as possible.
The image is an example from today about some extra water floating around the region. (Note: This being one of the tamer inundations in recent memory, one of our city editors has dubbed it the “Amish flood.”)
Our site is undergoing a redesign, so the vertical page we present will not be around forever. But while it is, I face certain limitations. For instance, all of our breaking news items are presented in a stack, leaving something to be desired aesthetically.
We’re also hampered in terms of workflow. The links gathered under “Flood coverage” were created through hand-coding. Our next content management system will do a lot more with tagging, and I hope to see some of this packaging automated.
When that happens, the person in my seat will be able to put more energy into editorial decisions and less into typing hyperlink tags. The story you find when you click on the headline above is long – a pastiche of new information as it came in today. With more time, each new version could have been a rewrite: short, to the point, and complete.
