Try this exercise. On a slow news day (that was a joke), take an hour and hit the street with your video camera. Put together an old-school, man – or woman – on the street interview video. Choose a question to ask three or four people at your local mall or post office to find out what the peeps in your community have to say about the big news of the day.

Allow about an hour to interview and capture the video and then about an hour to edit it together. Use iMovie, Windows Movie Maker or whatever program you use. Keep it simple. Stay away from fancy effects and don’t overreach for production value. Think about what the people you interview are saying and try to let their voices come through.

I set out one day at lunch and talked to three folks on the University of Nevada campus about the news. After all, That’s what I’m here to talk about. The question was simple: Where do you get your news and why? Easy stuff. The answers didn’t surprise me. I slapped it together in Movie Maker in about 35 minutes. The edits are a little rough and the camera framing a little loose, but it's good 'nuff.

The man on the street interview is an old radio standard format. It's a good way to find out what real people are thinking. Hope you like it. We can all do this kind of thing in our newsrooms. I will hop on it as a regular Web feature when I get back to Joplin. It’s a just another way to engage our communities. We all need to redouble our efforts at that.