TechTip from Correspondent David MacDougall

David MacDougall, one of our correspondents in our Baghdad Bureau was kind enough to send along a great tech tip for audio interviews:

I wanted to share a resource with you that might be useful to some producers/reporters/newsrooms out there if you think it's worth passing on. When I worked in local news (not that long ago) we'd often try do get phoners on a particular story. Problem was... it was very inconvenient to set up. You had to phone the person from your desk... rush into the sound-proof booth... get someone to transfer your call in there... and then get someone to roll on the interview from one of the editing booths next door. Sure, in big markets I bet they have cool toys to make this easy. But this was market 123, with linear editing equipment, and not a lot of resources. I'm guessing not much has changed for hundreds of producers all over the country in small markets.

I came across an online tutorial which explains with exceptional clarity how to use Skype, from your desk, to record interviews. The tutorial also tells you how to optimize your computer to get the absolute best quality (broadcast quality) sound out of Skype. It's very simple and very effective. The tutorial is at: http://www.blogarithms.com/index.php/archives/2007/12/23/skype-for-interviews/


((A group of Swarthmore student journalists used this to great advantage:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/26/051226ta_talk_mcgrath


((For info on taping guidelines, check out:
http://www.rcfp.org/taping/ ))

To see some of David's blogs from Baghdad, check out:
http://onthescene.blogs.foxnews.com/author/baghdadbureau/ ))