COMM 209: Dogged pursuit of a photo-op

Let's watch a photo-op ...

This afternoon, President Obama and his family introduced their new dog to the White House press corps. The photo-op lasted 11 minutes and 11 seconds, and C-SPAN covered it live. As you probably know, C-SPAN is the cable TV network for news junkies, and it's known for its gavel-to-gavel coverage of meetings ... it just lets the cameras rolll, in other words, from beginning to end.

In this case, there were no gavels. But C-SPAN let the cameras roll just like they always do. And we got an unedited picture of the press corps in action.

As you watch, listen for quotes you could use in a story. Maybe three or four, tops. Notice how much time it took for the reporters to get these four or five quotes. Since it's outdoors, C-SPAN has to use a "wild" mike rather than tapping into a sound system, so you can hear the reporters' comments, too, and sometimes you have to strain to hear the Obamas. Be on the lookout for potential sound bites and visuals, too. It's an age of convergence, as you know from reading this week's chapter in the text, and as media professionals you'll work with all three. Sound bites, also known as actualities, are nothing more than quotes caught on camera. But some of the best visuals here are silent. Which images would you edit into a TV report?



Now let's see how the story -- and, yes, it is a story -- got written up on a couple of newspaper websites.

Michael Mcauliff of The New York Daily News filed a fluffy little color story ... which is about all you're going to get out of it anyway.

By way of comparison, Maria Puente of USA Today filed a ... well, another fluffy little feature story. What else can you do with it? How do her quotes compare to Mcauliff's? What else can you do?