Wise advice from Mark Stencel

Providing a consistent and successful multimedia news package takes effort, and skill. Mark Stencel, director of digital news for NPR  has both of these qualities. Sitting down with students, Stencels presentation of a multimedia piece involving the emotional story of an US veteran with extreme posttraumatic stress disorder. The multimedia package, which includes a four-minute video, an audio piece on NPR’s All Things Considered, and a text piece. All three elements made this package complete, but Stencel urged us to look beyond the content.

“What is different between the video piece and the audio?” Stencel asked.

While this might seem like an obvious question, Stencel encouraged us to use our multimedia minds. What Stencel has experienced by working in such places as NPR and from reporting for most of his adult life was how the audience reacts to a certain piece. NPR has done wonders with incorporating video, audio and text into one package, yet every facet of the package is different. In my opinion, the video seemed to be the most dramatic of all the pieces but that was because it was visually stimulating. If I’m sitting in the car listening to All Things Considered I’m going to get a different message from the same story. The reason for this is because certain things need to be conveyed over the radio that can’t be conveyed over video, and vice versa. When writing for radio, you are writing for the ear, when shooting video, you are shooting for the eye. Both of these senses need to be stimulated differently and that requires knowledge of your audience.

Stencel had a simple message for us aspiring students: to be valuable you must know all facets of multimedia. This could not be truer today.

“While the industry is still changing people who are valued the most are those with skills in every area.” Stencel says.

As the director of NPR news, whose been everywhere from Raleigh-Durham to Washington D.C, you take his advice, no matter what it is.

As a student it was beneficial for me to listen to Stencel, he is in a very high position in the media world. The difference between Stencel's presentation and the previous students who have sat down with our class was this: he has actually made a difference in the media world on a much larger scale. While Athas and McGuinness were both successful members of the media world but they are young. I value the experience and wisdom that Stencel brings to the table when he speaks about multimedia. His advice to students seems to have a little more meaning. Athas and McGuinness seem almost too relatable to us young students, there is a reason that Stencel is the director of digital news and is responsible for one of the largest news packages in the multimedia world. Stencel knows, and has been exposed everything that digital news has to offer, and he is caught up in the ever changing landscape of media. I believe his messages and advice he gave to us in class are invaluable.