Ewen featured in Murphy Reporter
McKenna Ewen was featured on the front page of the Murphy Reporter, the University of Minnesota’s alumni magazine, in the fall of 2011. The article interviewed several journalism school alumni who are finding new ways to share stories. A link to the story is available here.
Photos from 2010 Vikings Season
As part of my work at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, I was fortunate to photograph a very eventful Vikings season. The year included a 40-year old quarterback’s comeback, unexpected trades, significant firings and a stadium collapse. These are my photos to document a very memorable year. Enjoy!
All work © StarTribune.
Quarterback Brett Favre celebrated after throwing a 23-yard touchdown pass to Percy Harvin at TCF Bank Stadium.
Quarterback Brett Favre threw a pass under pressure from Lions linebacker Ashlee Palmer.
Safety Donte Whitner intercepted a pass intended for Sidney Rice. Jackson threw three INTs in the game.
Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick fumbled a snap on the Vikings' one-yard line. Linebacker Ben Leber recovered the ball.
The murder of journalist Arthur Kasherman
In 1945, newspaper publisher Arthur Kasherman was gunned down on a snowy street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Was he a crusader for justice, or a low-life who angered the underworld once too many? Watch the video, read the stories and maybe you’ll solve a 65-year-old murder mystery.
About the Site
Rubbed Out is an experiment in digital history that draws on public and private archival sources to present in-depth, investigative material. It’s about a violent chapter in American journalism, and how to engage an audience by providing numerous entry points to a narrative. Investigative reporter James Eli Shiffer independently researched the project and collaborated with Ewen Media to present his findings on the Web.
Rubbed Out includes three short stories on Arthur Kasherman’s death, including his Hell-Raising Tradition, his Last Chow Mein and the Aftermath. The project’s short documentary is available on YouTube and Vimeo. There’s also an interactive map of Minneapolis at the time of Kasherman’s death.
McKenna Ewen worked with James Shiffer to build the independent investigation into an online multimedia project. Ewen used historical images from the Hennepin County Library and Star Tribune, in addition to historical footage from the Prelinger Archives, to produce the Rubbed Out documentary. He built the interactive map using UMapper, a web-based map application with the Yahoo maps framework. The site was powered by WordPress and designed by Graph Paper Press. If you have any further questions, you may contact McKenna Ewen at mewen@ewenmedia.com.
Help share Arthur Kasherman’s story
If you enjoyed this project, please take a moment to share and recommend it to others. You may also use the following promotional text and images if preferred. Ewen Media launched this project independently and needs your help to make it a success. We appreciate your support.
Promotional text:
Minneapolis, MN – In 1945, newspaper publisher Arthur Kasherman was gunned down on a snowy street. Was he a crusader for justice, or a low-life who angered the underworld once too many? Watch the video, read the stories and maybe you’ll solve a 65-year-old murder mystery.
Download the promotional images:
http://ewenmedia.com/rubbedout/rubbedout590x350.jpg
http://ewenmedia.com/rubbedout/rubbedout320x190.jpg
http://ewenmedia.com/rubbedout/rubbedout170x100.jpg
Here’s a link to the Almanac segment where I previewed the Kasherman project. I was also joined by professor Jane Kirtley and MPR’s Bob Collins to discuss the some of the latest media controversies of the week.
Interested in partnering with Ewen Media?
Ewen Media is a multimedia production company that uses interactive multimedia to share meaningful stories. The organization’s mission is to use purpose-driven journalism to explore the world in its current state and the world that it could become. McKenna Ewen would like to collaborate with local news organizations and nonprofits to help create similar projects. If you are interested, you may reach him by phone at 952-212-3013 or by email at mewen@ewenmedia.com. He is also available on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Thank you very much for your interest in this project and please let us know what you think. Thanks!
Learning innovation from the “Easy Raise”
In fourth grade, I had a brilliant idea that would completely revolutionize the future of elementary education. Okay, maybe not, but it was awesome! I decided to reinvent the “hand raise” using an ice-fishing flag and some suction cups.
This invention would solve a serious problem. Teachers wanted to encourage class participation, but young students struggled to withstand the dreaded wait required to ask their questions. Thousands of critical questions would remain unasked because of a simple, physical limitation.
My solution… the “Easy Raise.”
That’s right, the Easy Raise was an attention-getting device that could rise for hours without wavering. More importantly, this brilliant piece of innovation was going to win me the fourth grade inventor’s fair.
The revolutionary "Easy Raise" in action
Long story short… I lost! To what? The most ridiculous invention of all time.
I lost to a doggie backpack that allowed every dog to wear its poop. Not only that, but the same invention had won the previous year. How can you win an inventor’s fair using last year’s invention!? The future of education had lost to a poop pack.
It took me a few months to get over the loss. Then, three years later, I watched the Tonight Show with Jay Leno as five elementary students presented their winning inventions from the national inventors fair. Care to guess the winner?! It was the Easy Raise! Some dude, three years later, came up with the exact same concept and won it all.
I discovered something important as a young inventor. I was in the process of building something great, but I failed to understand its significance and find a way to make it work. I continued using the Easy Raise for the rest of the school year and quickly became my teacher’s new favorite student to answer questions. However, one more year of fine-tuning and my purple “participant” ribbon would have been gold.
What’s the point?
I feel like I’m performing at the fourth grade inventor’s fair once again. I recently started a company, Ewen Media, and have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. The panel, which is pretty much everyone, would rightfully assume that I am crazy and consider it time to move on. However, just like the Easy Raise, I think there’s something to it, which means this is no time to quit and join team “poop pack” before next year’s fair.
The most innovative ideas are usually met with the most resistance. Think about it. It’s hard to be inventive when there is another trusted alternative that has shown promise in the past. In today’s environment, re-inventing the “poop pack” isn’t going to cut it and it’s time to start moving toward true innovation. Most importantly, it’s time for the entrepreneurs to believe in their ideas strongly enough to carry them through.
I firmly believe that passion is the single greatest asset for any young journalist.
My generation is going to redefine the future of journalism. We are all applicants at the fourth grade inventor’s fair and presenting ideas to a panel of experienced professionals. Many of the ideas sound pretty terrible, but some of them will work and someone will succeed. So, the question is, will it be you or the poop pack?
The Other Future of News (2 of 2)
Please note: This is part two of a two-part post.
A couple weeks ago, David Brauer and Taylor Carik hosted the Other Future of News conference, a response to Minnesota Public Radio’s Future of News event in mid-November. The conference was divided into three sessions, including organizational change, tech tools and content. Here’s a couple brief highlights from the second and third sessions. Please note, I was only able to upload some of the presentations because of YouTube’s 10-minute limit and I didn’t make it for all of the presentations.
Programming for Robots
Julia Schrenkler (@juliaschrenkler), an interactive producer at American Public Media, emphasized the importance of data portability and searchability when uploading content on the Web.
“Everything you do has to be understood by robots… The search terms, the news robots, the robot editors, everything in the future is about the bots… Your data has to be able to speak to those bots.”
- Julia Schrenkler
Things to consider when uploading content to the web:
1) Communicating with robots
2) Easy migration to new tools
3) Stability of the code
4) Understanding the terms of service
5) Understanding user preferences
6) Fast and easy support
7) Adaptability to new technologies
Designing for readers
Matt Quintanilla (@blamedesign), a former print designer at the Star Tribune and current graphic designer at the Minnesota Science Museum, argued that the emphasis on design from printed newspapers has not translated to the Web because of technological limitations.
“When you’re talking about newspapers, magazines and really any news media, you really want to build for readers… The front page of the newspaper compared to the front page of the Web site of that newspaper is pretty much night and day.”
As part of his Paper News proposal for the 2010 Knight News Challenge, Quintanilla suggested a content and design framework that would allow news organizations to produce different layouts throughout the day. The proposal would be a Web-based framework, independent from each site’s content management system, that would allow news organization’s to easily re-design their homepage. In addition, it would allow for greater advertising potentially because commercial content could be placed where it’s most effective.
Paper News is an interesting approach to the future of news design and it could co-exist with “the robots” because it’s separate from the CMS. My primary concern with the proposal would be the additional emphasis placed on maintaining a “destination site.” Design is clearly important, but I’d like to see less focus placed on the homepage and more emphasis placed on individual stories that might serve as an access point to the site. For example, an excellent breaking news story could bring more people to the site if it were designed effectively. In addition, projects like the Star Tribune’s Liberia project and WCCO’s Bridge Retrospective could do the same if there was a framework able to produce similar stories more efficiently.
Albert Sun (@albertsun), co-founder of CoPress, suggested creating a set of open source Flash templates for his Knight News Challenge proposal (#KNC10) to allow more news organizations to produce extensive interactive graphics. Using a similar concept, there’s definitely potential for a universal framework to make interactivity more easy to implement with current content management systems and help improve the user experience.
Developing new audiences
Julia Nekessa Opoti (@Nekessa), freelance writer and publisher at Kenya Imagine, referenced a study by University of Minnesota professor Katherine Fennelly that said immigrants, specifically Latinos, Africans and Asians, will re-shape the state of Minnesota in the next 10 to 20 years. As a result, news organizations must appeal to these changing audience if they want to increase readers to keep the general population informed.
There’s an increasing digital divide, especially when it comes to information. We’re going to cut out a lot of people if we concentrate [too] heavily on the Internet and if we forget about the other small mediums.
This is an interesting approach to the future of news and something to consider. The type of coverage related to violence and crime in minority communities will need to change. There appears to be three approaches to the future of news that could resolve this problem:
1) More niche publications, such as small newspapers and magazines, could appeal to these growing audiences and cover issues important to these communities.
2) Traditional news organizations could alter their coverage to appeal to new audiences. Although this seems rather obvious, it would be somewhat problematic and difficult to implement. One of the current problems with mainstream news organizations is that they’re too broad and cannot capture a narrow advertising base. This would significantly expand the audience, specifically with a print publication, and make it more difficult to identify readers.
3) This appears to be a central argument for reducing the digital divide. News organization, foundations and/or corporations could help provide broadband to minority communities and develop new audiences with advertising potential. Any organization that decided to do this, such as Yahoo! or Google, would play a very powerful role in the future of news.
Curating niche content
Paul Schmelzer (@iteeth), editor of the Minnesota Independent, started a blog almost seven years ago called Eyeteeth: A journal of incisive ideas. The blog, one of roughly 30 independent art blogs, started broadly and developed a very niche focus. The site is most commonly known for its “Bits” segment that aggregates interesting links to relevant works of art.
Other #OFON presentations on technology tools included:
1) “Automating access to public data” – Steve Clift, E-Democracy
2) “Using Twitter” – Tom Scheck (@tomscheck), Minnesota Public Radio
3) “Mturk and Dapplr for reporters” – Ed Kohler (@EdKohler), The Deets
4) “Why your site design sucks” – Justin Heideman (@justinph), Walker Art Center
Other #OFON presentations on content included:
1) “Journalism cooperatives” – Jon Collins, Watch Cat
2) “Making the most of online video” – McKenna Ewen (@mckennaewen), Ewen Media
3) “Fitting in to a media diet” – Bennett Gordon (@BennetG), Utne Reader
4) “Entertainment and the news” – Jeff Horwitz, Minnesota Public Radio
5) “Immigrants and the changing media audience” – Julia Nekessa Opoti (@Nekessa), Freelance Writer
Times of Recession
In the midst of a broad-based recession affecting nearly all sectors of the economy, University of Minnesota student McKenna Ewen shows how the economic downturn has shaped his home state of Minnesota.
The best multimedia is the kind you can’t do – yet
Recently, when talking with multimedia journalist Jeff Achen, I was asked how young journalists could develop the skills necessary to compete in a new media environment. At the time, I wasn’t really sure. However, when I watched this video (see below), it all made sense.
As a Minnesotan, I was born loving Herb Brooks’s famous “miracle” speech. There isn’t anyone, even this kid, who can deliver the speech that he did. However, “Rizzo” made this speech his own. In the same light, when I look at the current journalism environment, I am always looking for ways to compete with traditional journalists by making these stories my own. I ask two questions:
1) How has this story been told?
2) How have I told similar stories?
Then, I do the opposite. These two questions have been very powerful tools for me. The first question is your competitive advantage in a given market. This defines the work that you can do that no one else can. The second question is your area for growth. I consider this the “wouldn’t it be cool if…” philosophy.
For example, “wouldn’t it be cool if a 4-year-old kid could imitate Herb Brooks on YouTube and become a viral sensation?” Yeah, I think that’d be pretty cool.
Individual journalists should think like publicly traded companies (I know… stay with me). If you’re not learning and growing, then you’re losing your marketability. No one wants to invest in last year’s Turbo-Man.
Most of my projects have been inspired by other journalists’ work. When I started college, I really wanted to produce a video piece similar to Lou Raguse’s “Road Trip (2004).” As a result, I started learning Final Cut Pro and similar video editing tools. Similarly, when I produced Times of Recession, I was first inspired by Ohio University’s Soul of Athens project (2007). So I always ask one more question:
3) Who’s telling this story better than I am?
There are a lot of innovative journalists out there who are doing really great stuff. There’s nothing more humbling and motivating than watching some of the finest in online multimedia. When I see great journalism, I study these pieces and learn from them. Then, I try to figure out how they’re made. That’s the fun part.
Lastly, here’s my “hit list.” These are works that are so amazing that they make me want to learn.
1) Choosing a President
2) Crisis of Credit
3) Charity Water
4) Times of Crisis
5) Auto-Tune the News (just because)
Corporate sponsors for journalism
I recently came across this incredible video by Matt Harding. The video was both fun and creative, but after reading the back story on the project, it seems like there are a couple lessons that freelance journalists can learn from the video.
First, before pitching the project, Harding already started working on his idea (demos, not memos). He traveled around the world to record his “unique” dance in several countries and posted those clips to his blog. At the end of his trip, he cut the clips together and created his first video, a viral sensation. According to Harding’s site, Stride gum approached him after the first video ran and asked if he would be interested in creating a second video. This time, Stride gum paid for him to travel to 39 different countries over the next six months. After Harding returned home and completed his second video, he pitched a third video that would include people dancing with him (the version shown above).
To me, this seems like the smartest way to approach freelance journalism:
1) Prove you can do the work
2) Pitch the idea
3) Come back for more
Now, if Stride gum is willing the pay for Matt Harding to travel 39 countries for a YouTube video, why wouldn’t they pay for high-quality journalism? Major companies appreciate great storytelling just like any news organization. If journalists approach the right companies, I think they could be equally effective in getting major sponsorships for innovative multimedia projects. It’s a realistic way to finance high-quality journalism by partnering with the sponsors who can supply the resources.
Finding moments
Here’s a video by Will Hoffman that tries to define a “moment” in time. It’s definitely interesting to see how one moment, lasting no longer than a second, can generate such strong emotion. Then put all those moments into one piece and wow.
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