Military Editors

Balloons Float Skyward, Survivor Outreach Services Family & MWR Command, 100724, originally uploaded by familymwr.

The splashes of color make a relaxing, random pattern across the sky, nicely contrasted against the weights of the clouds behind. The kids and volunteers on the ground work to draw the viewer into the photo; by happenstance the red in the T-shirts goes with the red of the balloons, adding to the pattern. A scene of beauty, well captured and exposed.

On Saturday at the 2010 TAPS Fort Hood Military Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp, the children of survivors and their Soldier-Mentors walked out to a field to release balloons with messages to their loved ones lost. Family and MWR Command photo by Rob McIlvane.

BTW: Check the story in the photo description and the other photos from McIlvane’s shoot at the link.

100718-F-2319R-001, originally uploaded by U.S. Department of Defense Current Photos.

Draw the lines vertically, horizontally or diagonally — the subject’s face, in this case, is dead center. Yet this is a pretty strong composition due to the juxtaposition of mass – the tree balancing the troops – and several imaginary lines leading to the subject. Add good depth-of-field work, color, and the expression on the cadet’s face, and this comes off as an excellent storytelling image.

U.S. Air Force Academy basic cadets crawl down a hill while navigating the assault course in Jacks Valley in Colorado July 18, 2010. Cadets spend about two weeks in Jacks Valley learning how to work as a team to conduct military operations. (DoD photo by Dennis Rogers, U.S. Air Force/Released)

DoD revamped its Social Media hub  July 22. It’s now well thought-out with a visitor focus.  It’s dead easy to find what you need.

From Federal Computer Week:

DOD today launched an updated Social Media Hub Web page to provide quick links to service-affiliated Facebook, Twitter and YouTube social media sites as well as policy documents, training manuals and other information and to provide a forum for discussion.

The military services have been active participants in social media. For example, as of today, the U.S. Marine Corps’ Facebook page counted more than 435,000 fans; the Army’s, 344,000; the Navy’s, 162,000; Air Force’s, 95,000; Defense Department’s, 38,000; Coast Guard’s, 19,000; and National Guard’s, 10,000.

via Defense Department creates online hub for social media — Federal Computer Week.

Photo File: Determination and depth, originally uploaded by Utter East.

U.S. Army Pfc. Jennifer Eldridge, from 12th Combat Aviation Brigade (CAB), pauses for a moment during the Joint Multinational Training Command (JMTC) Best Warrior Competition 2010 on Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, June 9, 2010. (U.S. Army photo by Gertrud Zach/Released).

Framing the face. Rule of thirds in the position of the eye. Shallow depth of field to minimize background distraction. Expression of determination. Have I spoiled the magic for you? Not likely. Excellent capture.

 Original (and larger version) at http://www.defenseimagery.mil/imagery.html#a=search&s=best%20warrior&guid=e8f5e04f9056dce2e803143590718df2bb32924d

Next time you want to search for Army images on a specific subject, try this trick in Internet Explorer 7 or higher:

1. Go to the Add Search Providers to Internet Explorer page (select “Find More Providers” in the search window on your browser).

2. In the yellow “create your own” box, under step 3, insert the following code: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=TEST&ss=0&ct=0&mt=all&w=35703177%40N00&adv=1

3. In block 4, name it something memorable, like “Flickr search: Army photos.”

4. Click install.

This limits the search to Army images on Flickr, and it begins right on your browser. Your custom search will appear as one of the choices in your browser’s search window.

How seriously do industry communicators take social media monitoring? Here’s an interesting glimpse, courtesy of Mashable:

The room features 6 big monitors with 5 seats for Gatorade’s marketing team to track a number of data visualizations and dashboards – also available on to employees on their desktops — that the company has custom build with partners including Radian6 and IBM. Below are a few of the visualizations that we got to check out in an interview last week:

 

 

 

This monitor is a visualization of tweets that are relevant to Gatorade; the company is tracking terms relating to its brand, including competitors, as well as its athletes and sports nutrition-related topics.

 

 

 

This monitor measures blog conversations across a variety of topics and shows how hot those conversations are across the blogosphere. The company also runs detailed sentiment analysis around key topics and product and campaign launches.

Check out the video on Mashable to see exactly what the other four monitors do. The room does look a little like mission control for a space flight – or like the dark room lined with monitors in every movie set in a casino. 

The goal: every time you type – or perhaps even utter – the word “Gatorade” near a computer, or mention one of its sponsors or taglines, that instance is captured, processed and analyzed.

As government communicators, we don’t have the budget. But shouldn’t we use our own tools, and free tools on the Web, to do what we can? Our programs, our installations, our publications, are brands. And we aren’t selling electrolyte-laced sugar water.

Read Inside Gatorade’s Social Media Command Center.

Associated Press released its 2010 Stylebook today. Good news:  AP acknowledges 21st-century usage. Bad news: We gotta learn the new rules.

Mashable reports:

The AP Stylebook has released its new social media guidelines, including the official change from “Web site” to “website” (a move first reported back in April) and 41 other definitions, use cases and rules that journalists should follow.

Among the more interesting changes –- at least from a grammar and style standpoint –- are separating out “smart phone” as two words, hyphenating “e-reader,” and allowing fan, friend and follow to be used both as nouns and verbs.

via Mashable: AP Stylebook Adds 42 New Guidelines for Social Media.

PBS and the Newseum in Washington, D.C., offer this companion blog to their series, The Future of News. Seems to come from an old-media perspective, however.

Cheryl Rodewig of The Bayonnet, Fort Benning, Ga., did more than justice to one of the first African-American WACs in her profile, ‘Pioneer’ for women in military shares story.

The piece might have written itself, based on the subject’s life story. But Rodewig used pace and variety to drive the reader from lede to conclusion. She found a quote strong enough to capture the reader’s interest at the top:

FORT BENNING, Ga. — “It was one of the coldest Decembers on record for Cincinnati in 1943. Money was tight, we were at war, and I was needed at home,” said Dorothy Hunter Davis, one of the first African-American women to enlist in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.

She had just finished her freshman year at Wilberforce University when she applied for a position in the secretarial pool at The Kroger Company headquarters.

It’s a story her daughter, Army Community Service marketing manager Carmen Davis, has heard more than once.

Interaction with the daughter is one of the strong points of the piece.

“She took the examination for the secretarial pool, and she got a 100,” Carmen said. “The test giver at the time came out and said, ‘Well, Miss Hunter you did excellent on the test … however, you may want to look for a job elsewhere because you will be the only colored girl here.’ And she was crushed, absolutely devastated.”

Leaving the building to catch a streetcar home, Dorothy passed the window of a local post office, and everything changed for her.

“They had a poster of a woman in a uniform inviting women to join the military service – ‘We need you.’ And my mother said she stopped and dried her eyes, and she walked in,” Carmen said.

Note how each paragraph answers the previous one’s question, then raises an issue for the next graf to answer?

Click here to read on (betcha can’t help it) …

Published in Jan 2010, a George Washington University and Cision survey of journalists reports 89% use blogs and 65% use social networks to research stories.

Lee Odden at the TopRank Online Marketing Blog analyzes results of a couple of  studies measuring reporters’ use of online resources. PAOs should be aware of these techniques; and our own journalists could pick up a few tips. Here’s one example, from a local TV news reporter:

I begin every day at search engine. It doesn’t matter what story I’m working on, it always starts with a search. I work on a segment called “Good Question,” so I often type my question directly into Google, and see what comes up. When searching for local experts, I’ll often take the subject matter, tack on the word “Minneapolis” and add the word “expert.”

For example, last week I did a story on whether cursive handwriting was vanishing because of e-mail. I typed “Minneapolis handwriting expert” into Google, and found several local handwriting analysts. Next, I searched for private schools (because public schools are often challenging to get permission to shoot at) and found the school we used for our story.

For my story on whether we get enough Vitamin D in Minnesota, I searched “Vitamin D” “Minneapolis” and “expert.” If a local company showed up very high with their own expertise in those results, I would have called that company.

Read the original for more examples: From How Journalists Use Search & Social Media – Online Marketing Blog.