Tale of the tape
You have an hour or three of audio tape involving an investigation of an assistant police chief. Some people who have heard it say it is newsworthy.
Question: Assuming it is newsworthy, do you put the entire tape(s) up or do you edit it down so that it's easier to download and listen to?
At this point, we don't know what we're going to get -- and frankly, it's easier to put the whole thing up and let the good times roll -- but our current plan is to edit it. We do that mostly for user ease, but also to protect the innocent. (We don't know that there are innocents to protect, but we figure it is likely that the names of some people may pop up on the tape for no legitimate reason.) It falls into the category of just because you can publish doesn't mean you should.
Still, we know how some of you feel about our editing. :) Thoughts?
Update: What we have is here, including audio and the city manager's statement. We'll continue to update as we report.
Wednesday update: More tapes and statements here.
Comments (5)
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It's not a hard decision: do both. Put up the entire tape as soon as you get it (because it's public and people will visit your site to hear it) and then put up the salient snippets with descriptive links to them.
An hour's worth of voice is a pretty big file. If it's popular, make sure you can spell "redundancy" on your servers. Purely a tech decision for me - higher site hits sooner AND protecting your servers.
Posted on February 20, 2007 6:25 PM
Thanks, Sue. Course the city's producing nothing right now. Technical problems, they say.
Posted on February 20, 2007 6:29 PM
I think there are a few things that need to be considered:
Is every minute of that very long audio clip necessary? Is every minute newsworthy? How would you, as a user, respond to an hour-long audio clip?
My guess is that every moment of that tape is not essential for telling the story. I'll refer to the News & Observer's discussion about video editing they chose in the Chapel Hill murder last year. I think you have to go through and pick out what is most important. Sure post the full clip, if there is some compelling reason to offer it. But, if you know that people don't come to the NR site and spend hours scanning the content, what makes this different?
From a user stand point, I know I won't ever listen to an audio clip that lasts more than 2 minutes. I don't think there's a time rule, but I know I get bored after a few mintutes. I also know I don't have time to dedicate an hour or more to hear an unedited audio clip. If it were me making the decision I'd post clips that go along with what is being covered in the story (in print or online). Offer the full clip as an alternative, but I say post exactly what is necessary and move on.
If it's a matter of ease of publishing... Sure it's easy to post the long clip, and faster. But does that do any good if you lose users after the first few moments--especially if what really matters in the audio clip does not come until the middle or end?
Posted on February 20, 2007 6:56 PM
If you use the tape as the basis for a news article I strongly suggest you post the entire tape for public consumption.
You DIDN'T do that with the RMA report when you received a purloined copy and that led to serious concerns about you "cherry picking" facts and not telling the whole story. Come clean this time.
Posted on February 21, 2007 10:15 AM
Apples and oranges, jaycee, but everything released is there.
Posted on February 21, 2007 12:06 PM