When I need a laugh, I head over to a new corner in our newsroom in which Brent Bollenbach and Jason Klein sit. These two young men, who carry the title of multimedia and graphic news artists, are at the epicenter of the Wisconsin State Journal's multimedia efforts. While they are quite serious about their jobs, there's lots of fun and humor not only in the way they work but in the clever flourishes appearing now on www.madison.com/wsj.

My current favorite is the scratch-the-record game on Hip Hop 101's Deejaying page. http://www.madison.com/wsj/projects/hiphop/index.html

After 30 years in the static journalism business, it cracks me up to see our work moving around via timelines, games, quizzes and, of course, streaming video. The change sends a signal to the rest of us who consider ourselves top-notch storytellers. Brent has shown us new tools through his stunning ability to pull together Hip Hop 101 in a coherent way. What did we learn about the keys to success in the world of new journalism? 

Collaboration

Yesterday I wrote about Leah Jones, the photographer who came up with idea for the Hip Hop project. Today I'm featuring Brent. I can't talk about Brent without talking about Jason. As I'm writing this, I got an email from Andy Erdman, an intern from UW-Madison, who also worked on this project with Leah, Laura Sparks, multimedia editor; Chris Juzwik, features editor; Jonathan Utz, photo editor; Ron Larson, librarian. Andy describes his work on the project as an "amazing collaborative effort" that "forced me to step up and refine my skills." I have been rolling around the newsroom asking the people who worked on Hip Hop 101 who was responsible for what portion, and they are having trouble identifying who owned what piece because they were all working so closely together. This is something the ego-driven tradition of print journalism will need to ponder.

Choosing our shots

Now that we know what we can do, we will need to be careful that we don't spend months on "vanity" projects on pet topics that are fun to cover but don't have impact. Hip Hop 101 is a good model of worthwhile work for several reasons.

Brent's brainchild, the scratch-the-record feature at Hip Hop 101, is fun to play with and it also gives you a sense of how Hip Hop artists create their music. So I learned something while being entertained.  

Speaking to a broad audience is at least for the near future our role at the Wisconsin State Journal. I have written several times about how I see the media world divided along the generational fault line: older readers like the slow, thoughtful media of the newspaper; younger readers like the fast, convenient media of the web. In this latest project, Brent and Leah walked that line with a deeply layered story focused on younger readers'/users' interests that is inviting enough for older readers like me to learn about this very popular music format called Hip Hop.

Nimbleness

Trained as an animator at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Brent decided to become a journalist. He hit the market at just the right moment. Our newspaper has been expanding its online content and we needed a news artist who could edit video, create animation and most importantly create content that our users, many of them younger readers, find useful and relevant. We wanted a technologist who wanted to learn how to be a journalist. We didn't want a technologist who wanted to occasionally commit journalism.

Brent also shot much of the video and creatively edited it by integrating sound, typography and images. He designed the tools that made the photo slideshows, video and interactive graphics work together. He displayed incredible nimbleness as did others on this project.

Contagious imagination

One of the wonderful outcomes of the effort was that Brent, who has no formal journalism training, took cues from the traditional journalists in the room and re-imagined what we do in a different format. I am thrilled that the journalism is evolving right in front of our eyes in Madison. I am very grateful that this change is fueled by the imagination of this young person who wants to be a journalist. 

Our photographers soon will train to use video cameras and will begin producing videos in the spring. Jason Klein, who also has excelled at online graphics, will debut Monday an online NCAA lover's guide that will have you chortling at your computer. Now that Brent is Jason's co-conspirator, it's almost scary to think what they might come up with next.

The very cool thing for me as an editor in this transition between generations is that the old values of truth-telling are being interwoven with the new values of interactivity. It is a revolution but a collaborative one. And for that, we have Brent, Jason, Andy, Laura, Chris, Jonathan, Ron, Leah and their colleagues to thank.