Today, I’m turning over my blog to a guest blogger.

Jackie Hai, is a freelance videographer and Web designer who will graduate next month with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and philosophy from UMass Amherst. She blogs at Convergence Commons about the changing role of the media. Her blog is among the many in my Google reader, and I’d suggest you put her blog in yours, too.

Jackie Hai

Here is her post on breaking into online video journalism without breaking the bank.

These days, it’s no longer enough for newspapers to shovel stories online from their print edition and call it a day.  More and more newsrooms are now making forays into producing videos for the Web to meet the demand for multimedia journalism.

Here are some simple ways to add video to your news Web site, ranging from straightforward story packages to interactive discussions and live streams, at little to no cost.

You’ll notice that all of the suggestions below are with third-party hosting companies. There’s a reason for that. The best third-party hosts are free (many have paid subscription options with additional features you can grow into), and come with a lot of benefits:

• Outsourced storage and bandwidth. They take the load of storing and delivering video off your own server, so your site won’t get bogged down.

• Automatic conversion. They’ll automatically convert your videos to Flash from whatever format you originally uploaded it in.

• Accessibility. Because of the ubiquity of Flash, your videos are guaranteed to play across a wide range of platforms and browsers

• Existing community of users. Your videos have the potential to gain additional exposure outside your core audience and attract new visitors to your site.

So with all the options out there, which service should you choose? Actually, the answer depends on what style of video journalism you’re going for.

Vimeo
Ideal for: Interviews, documentary-style videos
File limits: Up to 500MB total per week
Paid options: Vimeo Plus for $59.95/year

Vimeo is a solid general-purpose host for video storytelling. Geared toward independent filmmakers and producers, its features are a cut above average video sharing sites. It has high-quality playback, HD video uploads and a gorgeous embedded video player that scales smoothly to any size.

The 500MB/week upload limit is unlikely to cause problems if you’re just starting out and only uploading a few videos a week. If your volume does grow beyond that, upgrading to Vimeo Plus is not too costly and comes with some extra perks, such as unlimited HD embedding and more player customization controls.

YouTube
Ideal for: Vlogs, short clips
File limits: Up to 1GB or 10 minutes per video

YouTube has recently jumped on the HD bandwagon, but that feature is still under development and not guaranteed to work all the time. Instead, YouTube’s greatest strength still lies in hosting vlogs and short clips — the former because its ability to post video responses encourages conversation and the latter because of the potential for such videos to go viral with the site’s huge user base.

Blip.tv
Ideal for: Series, episodic videos
File limits: Up to 1GB per video, but 100MB or less recommended
Paid options: Pro account for $8/month

As the domain suffix suggests, Blip.tv is made for television producers interested in creating shows with online distribution. While it is possible to upload stand-alone videos on Blip.tv, the site really becomes useful when you have a series of episodes around a particular theme (e.g. a weekly movie review, an investigative series, etc.) that you want to publish on a regular basis.

Videos can be syndicated as well as played from an embeddable browser that lists all episodes on the side. A pro account lets you upload longer videos and set a publishing schedule ahead of time.

Seesmic
Ideal for: Interactive video discussions, MOTS/vox pop interviews
File limits: Unspecified, but ideally under two minutes.

Take the asynchronous interactivity of YouTube’s video responses, combine it with the immediacy of Twitter, and you have Seesmic: the new kid on the block, but already making waves with its potential for innovative uses.

Seesmic comes with the Disqus commenting system, which enables readers to post video comments on your site by recording straight from webcam. You can also get creative and use Seesmic to host a Web 2.0 version of the classic man-on-the-street type of interview — just record your question as the conversation starter and upload your gathered clips as responses. Here’s an example of this in action.

Mogulus/UStream
Ideal for: Live webcasts, streaming events
File limits: 500kbps bit rate for streaming, 700MB for video uploads (Mogulus)

With broadband Internet access becoming more widespread, streaming live video over the Web at decent quality is now possible. Consider using live streams to host webcasts (with an expert panel, say) on your site, or to broadcast local events to an online audience.

At this point, two live streaming services are at the head of the pack: Mogulus and UStream. Robin Good at WebTVwire writes about which may be a better fit for you. The short version: Mogulus is good for professional-looking productions involving multiple cameras, titles and graphics, while UStream is the simpler option for rapid launches and impromptu events.

So there you have it: a diverse roundup of free to low-cost solutions you can start trying out immediately. And if you’re using online video in a creative way, let us know in the comments!

When I started blogging two years ago, I had this very low-tech, inefficient and almost useless way of keeping track of the blogs and news stories I want to read regularly and the posts or stories I wanted to blog about.

I’d “favorite place” all the blogs  or news Web sites I was interested in. This started out OK, but then the list grew into hundreds, and it ceased to be favorites. It turned into “every blog I might like to read someday.” I was overwhelmed and found myself forgetting to check the blogs I really wanted to read.

Then if I came along a post or news story I wanted to blog about, I’d copy the URL from my browser, pop it into an e-mail to myself and type “blog this” in the subject line. Then I’d e-mail myself, and these e-mails for the most part would be come the worst kind of spam. I was spamming myself and pretty much never looking at these items. I’d stick them in a “blog this” folder in my work e-mail program, which has an auto-purge. Often, they’d be purged before I’d ever do anything with the items.

Don’t do this. I repeat. Don’t do this.

Then I found a better way that I wanted to share because I think it can help  journalist bloggers or any bloggers  for that matter.

I use two simple-to-use, free tools: Google Reader and Delicious.

Here’s the scenario I’m trying to address. If you’re a smart beatblogger, you’ll be reading a dozen or so blogs weekly in your niche. And, of course, because you’re a smart journalist, you’re also reading sites such as The New York Times, Huffington Post, the Drudge Report.

This is an RSS feed icon; click on it on a blog to subscribe to the RSS feed of that blog. One you click, you'll get directions on what to do.

Google Reader

But how do you remember to read these sites or where to reach them? You subscribe to their RSS feeds through Google Reader. (Don’t know what an RSS feed is, read this.) Google Reader isn’t the only way to read your RSS feeds, but it’s how I do it, so it’s the only way I can recommend.

You sign up for a free Google account, and then you subscribe to the blogs you want to read by clicking on the little icon that says RSS feed on those blogs. You end up with essentially a headline of all the blog posts from the blogs you want to read. (You can add to or trim this list at will.)

You also can sort your blogs by topic (I have techie blogs, journo blogs, friends’ blogs and mommy blogs as my categories, but you can make up ones that suit your beat and your life.) I check mine pretty much every day, but if I miss a day — it’s waiting for me. You can even set it up, so that it will only show headlines of posts you have not read yet, which I find useful.

(Want to use Google Reader like a rock star, read this tips from Mashable.)

Google Reader enables you to quickly scan the blogs you like, see if there’s anything you want to comment on, blog about, tweet, or save as a Delicious bookmark. (Again, Delicious isn’t the only way to do this, but it’s the route I use, so I recommend it.)

Delicious

I find Delicious useful because I often come across a story or blog post at a time when I can’t blog about it. In a perfect world, I’d blog everything immediately, but as I often say, “This world is hardly perfect. ” Sometimes, we’re on deadline or need to rush out to cover a story or have to head into a staff meeting.

That’s where Delicious comes in. You sign up for a free account, and then when you want to remember a post for later, you “bookmark” it by sticking the URL of the blog post or news story as a bookmark on your Delicious page. It essentially works just like the low-tech bookmark, sticking a piece of paper in an actual book, but it’s virtual.

You have the option of writing a bit about the site or blog post your just bookmarked and tagging it with keywords. This is a good idea because it will help jog your memory when you go to write about it, and it will help other people who come across your bookmarks know why the post or story you marked is worth reading. (You can read my bookmarks here to get a sense of what I’m talking about.)

Delicious also offers some more cool features:

• You can see how many other people have bookmarked the sites/blog posts you have and find out who they are, or at least what their Delicious name is and find their profile.
• You can search by keyword for bookmarks that might interest you.
• You can also remind yourself of what you wanted to do with the bookmark. (I type USED if I’ve already blogged about the item, for example.)
• You can delete bookmarks when you’re done with them or save them. I save things like directions on how to set up an e-mail subscription on my blog. I might need it again, or a friend might.

If you want to try Delicious, here’s a step-by-step guide to begin.

All this organization helps you as a blogger because you can save time and focus. And that helps you spend your time on your real goal:  writing good content.

I’d love to hear what tools and bookmarking sites you find useful.