Class Agenda: Thursday, March 19 – Multimedia Reporting

Audio Editing Workshop

Audacity shortcuts to know:

Play/pause: space bar
Split track: Command I
Zoom in: Command 1
Zoom out: Command 3

In the tool bar, this is the selection tool that allows you to click and highlight and delete sections of track or select a spot where you want to split it:

And this is the tool that allows you to move sections of track:

And this is the one that lets you adjust the volume, basically the same way the pen tool works in Premiere:

You’ll need to export the finished sound file before you can upload it anywhere.

In Audacity, it’s File –> Export Audio –> select “WAV” from dropdown menu and give the file a name and location, then hit “Save” and “OK.”

I recommend uploading to Soundcloud rather than hosting it on the blog. It’s free to create an account. Please post the link on the class blog when you’re finished (by class time next Thursday at the latest).

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Script

Host intro: With CUNY schools transitioning to online learning this week amid the coronavirus outbreak, professors across New York City are getting creative. Emily Johnson spoke to one CUNY adjunct about what it’s like trying to teach during a pandemic.

AMBI: Nat sounds of tea kettle boiling (FADE DOWN AS TRACK BEGINS)

AMBI: Room tone (LAYER UNDER TRACK)

TRACK: I’m here with Anna Ficek in her Brooklyn apartment, watching her make tea while she works from home. She’s a PhD student at the CUNY Grad Center and when she’s not working on her dissertation she teaches art history at Baruch College and Borough of Manhattan Community College, or BMCC.

ACT: ANNA: When I found out that everything was getting shut down and especially CUNY I felt extremely sad. Because CUNY is such a big part of my lie, such a great community that it was hard to feel that kind of dissipating.

TRACK: She says teaching from home has been a real challenge because of the way she runs her classes.

ACT: ANNA: It’s been very difficult to adapt to teaching remotely just because I really value the discussion I have with my students.

TRACK: Still, she’s trying to see this as an opportunity.

ACT: ANNA: What I’m hoping to get out of this is more time to really focus on what’s important both in terms of teaching and my own dissertation and my own research and trying to figure out creative problem solving ways to deal with these new issues that are going to come around like libraries being closed and inaccessibility to archives and how myself as an academic and as a researcher can get around that. So challenges, but also good challenges!

TRACK: CUNY schools will continue with distance learning for at least the remainder of the spring semester. For Baruch College, I’m Emily Johnson.

For next class:

Please have a revised pitch for your radio assignment ready to discuss by class time on Tuesday. To restate from my email:

Obviously, most of the pitches you came up with for your radio stories will not be executable at this point unless you already did most of your reporting before we were advised to stay home. I do not want any of you going out and reporting stories that would require you to break with social distancing. This means we’re going to have to be creative when it comes to your radio assignments.

Since the coronavirus is the biggest story in the world right now, I would advise you all to find an angle on it that you’d like to cover—one that you can cover by recording phone interviews and by using audio from official press conferences, etc. Talk to a healthcare worker who lives with her elderly, immune-compromised mother and is agonizing about whether to keep going to work. Interview an undocumented person who has symptoms but is afraid to get tested. Find someone who is coordinating a relief response in your neighborhood to deliver groceries to older folks who are afraid to go to the store. Etc. There are endless stories to be told about this unprecedented, historic time in our city.