1st Place: Julie Jacobson-Associated Press-Staff

Jobless man
Well shot, well scripted. Good old-fashioned journalism. We’d liked letting the subject tell his own story without narration. You saw people reacting to him and subtle story-telling shots made it seem like the video camera wasn’t there. We loved the opening shot with the volunteer collecting for the homeless. It was in depth piece on a simple subject that didn’t get bogged down. It tells the bigger story of the economy through one person, who you care about.

2nd Place: Jeremy Michael Bales-Independent

Eva Zeisel: Distinguished by Design
What started out as a simple birthday celebration turned into a wonderful in-depth piece of this woman’s life. We enjoyed the historical shots, the mixing of video and stills, and the overall depth of the piece. Well-edited, though it could have been a bit tighter , especially at the beginning, to get to the heart of the story sooner. Use of three images simultaneous worked for this piece. The visuals helped tell the story and not just covering audio with b-roll.

3rd Place:Aristide Economopoulos-The Star-Ledger

It’s never too late to find love
Strong story which captured the spirit of their relationship. It has some great audio, but some of it is hard to understand. We think it would have helped to have her voice subtitled. The pictures helped carry the piece and we believe it would be a popular piece with readers. Having the third voice of the worker helped the story though we felt her self-introduction could have been edited out or done with chyrons.

HM: John Paraskevas-Newsday

His Next Battle
Well shot and technically excellent. Would have been stronger with a better interview with the subject/ The piece suffers from a little too much about the ‘process’ of recovery and would have been more compelling if there’d been a little better sense of the subject’s personality, which they mention at the start, but we don’t get to see much of. There were some really nice moments interspersed throughout.

HM John O'Boyle-The Star-Ledger

Dragon Boat
Nicely sequenced images helped this piece a lot. We felt the interviews, though not that compelling could have been helped by being shot on location rather than in the studio. It was a complete story and made strong use of the visuals. Grabs your attention from the start with the nat sound and visuals. It would have added a lot to the story to see the women support each other, which they talk about we don’t get to see. The editing of the audio and the visuals together makes this piece stronger – you see what you hear.

Back to Contest Results

Judges:
Mish Whalen, Multimedia Producer, MSNBC
Paul Segner, Multimedia Producer, MSNBC
John Makely, Senior Multimedia Producer, MSNBC
Phaedra Singelis, Supervising Producer, MSNBC