HuTube: A Multi-Platform Look Back

We know journalism can often be more powerful when married with sound and images and community interaction. Yesterday, Matt Stiles created a one-stop-post on our data projects introduced since launch. Since that was helpful (and since we can't get one-upped by Stiles), the multimedia/social media side of the TT operation has various projects and enterprises to connect you with in case you missed them.

TribCast
The TribCast got off to a great start and we'll continue to post each week. All nine episodes of the Weekly TribCast from 2009 are available on iTunes. Just enter TribCast in the iTunes store and subscribe. We record on Wednesday afternoons and post by Thursday morning. If you are an iTunes subscriber, the freshest episodes will download as soon as we post them.

Connecting Socially
Thank all of you for joining our community by registering as a TT user on this site, following us and talking to us on Twitter and Facebook, or subscribing to our YouTube channel. We believe in the social web and what it afford us as journalists -- crowd sourcing, useful conversations, building trust. Feel free to ask questions or air out concerns via Twitter or elsewhere, we're happy to respond. Here are links to join our social networks:

TexasTribune main Twitter account
TribData spinoff account
Facebook fan page
YouTube

Video Stories
Neilsen ratings show online video usage is up 53 percent from last year. And a recent Cisco report predicts that, “video communications traffic — including video over instant message and video calls — will grow to 10 times its current size” in the next three years. We certainly believe in video -- but not just for video's sake. We pay attention and devote resources to the journalism elements that transcend  medium. Strong photography, good writing and graphics that communicate clearly.

-Getting Personal with Rick Perry, a traditional video "package" on the Perry campaign's use of personalized video messages to reach out to supporters.

-Jennifer Howson's story, the video component of Emily Ramshaw's launch-week piece on restraints in public schools.

Television Partnerships
TT video isn't limited to our site. We're on the broadcast airwaves, too. In Dallas, catch our weekly "Buzz" segment on WFAA-TV's Inside Texas Politics every Sunday morning. Houston TV stations KHOU and KTRK are both our partners for various investigations. For example, KHOU led their 10pm news a few weeks ago with a story we teamed up on for the release our Congressional Travel app. We start our Austin partnerships soon, and in Waco-Temple, catch our Wednesday morning "Central Texas Votes" segments each week on KWTX-TV.

A note: If you're a TV station in Texas that wants to get a TT partnership going, feel free to email me. The more the merrier.

Public Radio Partnership

Not only is he an awesome personality to have around the office, Ben Philpott of Austin's NPR station, KUT-FM, has been a huge asset to the TT. Not only does Ben share his award-winning radio reporting with us, he has coached a lot of our reporters through editing audio and helped us engineer a good sound recording quality in our multimedia lounge.

One-on-One Interviews (in audio and video)
Every few weeks, Evan sits down with a notable name in the news for a 20-30 minute interview about issues of the day. On television these subjects are typically limited to a few soundbites. We're pleased to present what they have to say in full - with an entire audio taping of the interview. If you don't have that kind of time, we pick out a few notable video clips from the sit-down session.  

Dan Bartlett
Dan Patrick

Audio Slideshows
We've recently gotten ourselves a few SoundSlides licenses to begin working with our still photographers on audio slideshows. Our reporters from the newspaper side (who are learning this stuff at exponential speeds) have demonstrated good instincts in piecing these slideshows together on their own. We're all learning as we go along.

-Transition Medicine slideshow (by Emily Ramshaw and Steve Moakley)
-Border Bus slideshow (by Brandi Grissom and Bob Daemmerich)

Stump Interrupted
This is our "Pop Up Video"-meets-stump-speeches new story form. I thought doing something like this could enliven otherwise colorless stump speeches, while helping educate audiences and contextualize what candidates are saying. It's something that hasn't been done before, and while doing the first one, we realized why. It takes a village to do it well, and the degree of difficulty in research and striking the right tone changes with each candidate and speech. They are far from perfect. But we're trying to improve with each one, and with more experience. Many, many thanks to one of our dedicated multimedia producers, Todd Wiseman, for all the graphics work he puts into these projects. The Stumps so far:

Kay Bailey Hutchison
Rick Perry
Farouk Shami
Bill White

HuTube Vlogs
I'm still getting the hang of these, but we want to open up the journalism process by giving you more behind-the-scenes glimpses of the people and political events we cover, as well as the inside shenanigans at the Tribune. I've always thought politics would be more interesting if more people experienced it as the practitioners do. This is an attempt to give you a more real experience, by going along with my little pocket camera.

A Tribune to the TT Developers
Under the Farouk Tent
Behind the Bill White Announcement

Of course, those of you in Austin have an open invitation to our Wednesday Morning Breakfast Summit.

Coming Up...

Next Monday, December 28th, we'll post our "Best Video Moments in Texas Politics 2009" compilation that I hope you'll enjoy. Besides that, so much more is ahead. The designers and developers have been working on a great multimedia landing page so you can find all our videos, photos and audio in one place and get there with the front page tab. I'm also looking forward to aggregating candidate introduction videos so you can see and hear candidates from around the state.

Thanks for a great seven weeks... here's to more multi-platforming it in 2010.