Playing with Sound

It was refreshing to have Tom Snyder, audio-guru and the creator of Comedy Central's Dr. Katz, in class last week. Tom is not journalist, rather he's a comedian - and he's made his living (at least the part he discussed in detail with us) capturing and editing audio.

I think it's important to have people like Tom, who comes from a non-journalism background, assist both students of journalism and those already in the field. If we are going to save the news (which needs saving) and mediums like multimedia are going to be tools to do this then we (as journalists) can't look inward for help.

Sure, there are experts on multimedia and components of it within the field of journalism, we had two guest speakers that meet this description already. But, they are not the only experts who need be consulted; surely there are experts with skills and insights to assist journalists outside of the field. Especially since audio and video editing aren't the bread and butter of the news industry.

In addition to the advice Tom gave us about editing I think it was important to have someone from a comedic background in class. While our primary role is to tell the news and to tell it factually we always must keep in mind that we need to be entertainers as well. And one of the strategies we can employ to entertain, or draw-in, readers (or viewers) is comedy.

That said, keeping in mind the NEWS aspect of our jobs, I had a few questions about ethics after Tom's presentation. For instance: to what degree can manipulate audio? Is it okay to move entire sentences in to different locations? We do this with text. Can we move parts of sentences? Words? Can we edit audio endlessly so long as the truth is still conveyed and the interviewees words are presented as he or she intended (not misused)?

These are questions for class today.