You Can Dance If You Want To

Gabriel Dance that is. He's the senior multimedia producer for The New York Times and recently spoke to CUNY journalism grad students about multimedia journalism. Several points in Dance's presentation resonated with me. Dance spoke at length about having passion for multimedia journalism. He said if you're going to go into this new field you have to be passionate about it or, like anything else, you're not going to be good at it. He went on to say that if you don't have the desire to take what's out there on the web and make it better, and more creative, then you won't thrive in the field.

I like that he encouraged the audience to be OK with failing and that it's a sign you're trying hard. As I lack a technical background, this statement makes trying multimedia tools less intimidating. The time and place he says to try new projects and really experiment is grad school. Lucky for us, we're in grad school! Free from the real-world restrictions of profit, deadlines, and directed content--we're able to create innovative and interactive sites. Dance advised the audience to find sites you like, create your project, and really push your self to go to the next level.

My questions for Dance are: At the NYT you have access to a great deal of resources. What are some smaller papers, or media entities, that are producing stuff you like on a shoestring budget?

Also, do you think we could soon get too out of control with focusing on aesthetics and not on the integrity of the "journalism"?