Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism
Provenance: local PDF book. Used for the research-to-script chapter: verification, transparency, and the difference between evidence and assertion.
Source Ledger
Every live chapter claim traces to a screened source. Shaky material gets held, marked, or dropped.
TL;DR
- Used sources are separated from screened sources.
- The broken EPUB was excluded.
- Generic YouTube-growth material was dropped.
- Forum additions are marked anecdotal in-page.
- Completion pass added story, logistics, and distribution sources.
Used Sources
Live Bibliography
Tim Harrower, Inside Reporting
Provenance: local PDF book. Used for claim-checking habits: names, titles, numbers, disputed facts, sourcing, and attribution before copy lock.
Irving Fang, Writing Broadcast News: Shorter, Sharper, Stronger
Provenance: local PDF book. Used for lead-ins, teases, writing for the ear, attribution discipline, and "read aloud" rewrite standards.
Don Hewitt, Tell Me a Story: Fifty Years and 60 Minutes in Television
Provenance: local PDF book. Used for 60 Minutes story discipline, audio-first editing, household distraction, and cadence notes.
James R. Alburger, The Art of Voice Acting
Provenance: local PDF book. Used for voiceover intent, breath, emphasis, posture, pre-sentence setup, and performance notes for self-directed recording.
Kevin Allocca, Videocracy
Provenance: local PDF book. Used for YouTube analytics context, watch time vs. view count, and explainer-title curiosity framing.
Mark Bergen, Like, Comment, Subscribe
Provenance: local PDF book. Used for the clickbait-to-watch-time history and why deceptive titles or thumbnails fail the viewer.
Derek Thompson, Hit Makers
Provenance: local PDF book. Used for the familiar-surprise/MAYA frame and headline-as-audience-promise logic.
Reuters Institute, Digital News Report 2025
Provenance: local PDF report. Used for platform-news context: YouTube news use, social video growth, and creator attention.
YouTube Help, "Measure key moments for audience retention"
Provenance: official YouTube support page. Used for the 30-second intro retention definition and interpretation of spikes, dips, and intro weakness.
YouTube Help, "Impressions & click-through-rate FAQs"
Provenance: official YouTube support page. Used for the distribution chapter: CTR context, traffic-source caution, the 2%-10% CTR range note, avoiding early decisions, and clickbait diagnosis with average view duration.
YouTube Blog, Cristos Goodrow, "On YouTube's recommendation system"
Provenance: official YouTube engineering/product blog. Used for the 2012 watch-time shift and the role of clicks, watch time, surveys, likes, and shares.
YouTube Help, "A/B test titles and thumbnails"
Provenance: official YouTube support page. Used for the distribution chapter: up to three title/thumbnail variants, highest-watch-time selection, test-stopping behavior, eligibility cautions, and completion timing.
Nancy Duarte, slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations
Provenance: local PDF in ~/Documents/Books/____Writing. Used for visual-proof discipline: data cards and motion graphics should reinforce the spoken argument, not compete with it.
Glen Weldon, NPR's Podcast Start Up Guide
Provenance: local EPUB in ~/Documents/Books/Glen Weldon. Used for sound-collection credibility, read-aloud script checks, breath marking, and voiceover pacing.
Steve Kaplan, The Hidden Tools of Comedy
Provenance: local EPUB in ~/Documents/Books/Steve Kaplan. Used for the Straight Line / Wavy Line model as a way to make jokes reveal perception gaps instead of decorate claims.
The West Wing Script Book and The West Wing Official Companion
Provenance: local PDFs in ~/Documents/Books/____Writing. Used for cadence, teaser structure, act movement, and dialogue-as-music notes.
Joseph V. Mascelli, The Five C's of Cinematography
Provenance: local PDF in ~/Documents/Books/____Writing. Used for shot grammar, continuity, cutaways, close-ups, and sequence thinking in the visual and edit chapters.
Iain Anderson, Final Cut Pro Efficient Editing
Provenance: local PDF in ~/Documents/Books/____Writing. Used for staged small-team post workflow: organizing, rough cut, trimming, audio sweetening, titles, export, and archive.
Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style
Provenance: local PDF in ~/Documents/Books/____Writing. Used for the research-to-script clarity warning: the curse of knowledge and the need to build bridges for the viewer.
YouTube Help, "Recommended upload encoding settings"
Provenance: official YouTube support page. Used for upload specs in Sound & Finish: container, codec, progressive scan, frame rate, audio sample rate, bitrate references, aspect ratio, and BT.709 SDR color.
Frame.io, Jonny Elwyn, "The 3 Principles Behind a Story-Driven PBS Documentary"
Provenance: operator interview with FRONTLINE editor Steve Audette. Used for case-file and edit-grammar material on character-driven narrative, story boxes, cutting off-line scenes, and getting large subjects down to time.
PBS FRONTLINE, The Man Who Knew
Provenance: official episode page. Used as primary episode context for the FRONTLINE case file and to verify the production title around the Audette interview.
Pew Research Center, "What drove spike in public comments on net neutrality? Likely, a comedian"
Provenance: Pew analysis. Used for the Last Week Tonight case file: FCC comment counts before and after the sketch, correlation caution, cable-news comparison, and template-comment context.
Nieman Lab, Christine Schmidt, "How Vox's Borders series is humanizing the map"
Provenance: journalism-industry reporting with operator details. Used for the Vox Borders case file and visual-system chapter: local source networks, structured callouts, and map reporting.
r/NewTubers, "Audience Retention first 30 secs to 1 min"
Provenance: public Reddit forum thread. Used only as a marked Forum Note about creator experience with early drop-off, preview-first openings, and removing greetings.
r/editors, "First time editing documentary"
Provenance: public editor-forum thread. Used only as a marked Forum Note about documentary structure, narration risk, visual mapping, and discarding beloved sequences.
r/editors, "Documentary editors: how do you deal with the thinking before the timeline phase?"
Provenance: public editor-forum thread. Used only as a marked Forum Note about paper cuts, dialogue usability, story holes, and planning before the edit.
r/FindVideoEditors, "[HIRING] YouTube Video Editor (Documentary Style, Long-Term)"
Provenance: public niche hiring thread. Used only as a marked operator-market signal about VO-matched visuals, clean pacing, and avoiding random stock footage.
r/VideoEditing, "What are the best export settings for YouTube?"
Provenance: public video-editing forum thread. Used only as a marked Forum Note about user experience around high-quality upload files; official YouTube documentation remains the spec authority.
Reset
Books supplied craft. YouTube supplied platform mechanics. Operator interviews supplied case patterns. Forum notes supplied friction, and are marked as anecdotal.
Local Library
Screened Manifest
| File | Status | Editorial Use |
|---|---|---|
| The Content Trap - Bharat Anand | Held | Distribution strategy; screened, but official YouTube docs were cleaner for the current platform chapter. |
| Tell Me a Story - Don Hewitt | Used | 60 Minutes craft, audio, story mix, delivery. |
| The Powers That Be - David Halberstam | Held | Media power history; too broad for the current craft entries. |
| Inside Reporting - Tim Harrower | Used | Claim checking, attribution, source skepticism, and newsroom accuracy habits. |
| Digital News Report 2025 - Reuters Institute | Used | Audience context for YouTube news and social video. |
| Videocracy - Kevin Allocca | Used | YouTube analytics, audience curiosity, explainer logic. |
| Hit Makers - Derek Thompson | Used | Familiar surprise, headline promise, audience psychology. |
| Amusing Ourselves to Death - Neil Postman | Held | Useful for later media-form critique, not operational enough for the current manual. |
| Writing Broadcast News - Irving Fang | Used | Lead-ins, teases, voiceover, source discipline. |
| The Elements of Journalism - Kovach and Rosenstiel | Used | Verification, transparency, and research-to-script ethics. |
| Like, Comment, Subscribe - Mark Bergen | Used | YouTube metric history and clickbait failure mode. |
| Manufacturing Consent - Herman and Chomsky | Held | Episode-theme source, not production-craft source. |
| Crushing YouTube - Joseph Hogue | Dropped | Generic growth-guide material; below the quality bar for claims. |
| The Art of Voice Acting - James R. Alburger | Used | Voiceover intent, breath, emphasis, posture, and self-directed performance. |
| The Business of Television - Ken Basin | Held | Business context; not operational enough for the solo logistics chapter. |
| Considering Aaron Sorkin - Thomas Fahy, editor | Held | Possible voice case note; not a craft foundation. |
| Make Noise EPUB | Excluded | Local file is an HTML error stub, not an EPUB. |
Wider Books Pass
Newly Surfaced Craft Sources
After the dedicated YouTube and broadcast shelf, the wider ~/Documents/Books library was screened by filename, table of contents, and targeted text search. These are the sources worth carrying into the live Almanac.
| Source | Status | Editorial Use |
|---|---|---|
| Nancy Duarte, slide:ology | Used | Visual System; data cards, storyboards, and avoiding text-heavy "slideuments." |
| Glen Weldon, NPR's Podcast Start Up Guide | Used | Voice, sound, room tone, script read-aloud checks, and production checklists. |
| Joseph V. Mascelli, The Five C's of Cinematography | Used | Coverage, continuity, cutaways, close-ups, and shooting with editorial needs in mind. |
| Iain Anderson, Final Cut Pro Efficient Editing | Used | Small-team edit workflow: metadata, keywording, favorites, rough cut, cutaways, audio sweetening, export. |
| Steve Kaplan, The Hidden Tools of Comedy | Used | Comedy as perception gap: useful for John Oliver-style jokes that expose a system. |
| The West Wing Script Book and The West Wing Official Companion | Used | Sorkin cadence, teaser structure, act movement, and dialogue-as-music notes. |
| Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style | Used | Research-to-script clarity, curse of knowledge, and coherence checks. |
| Mehdi Hasan, Win Every Argument | Held lightly | Question pressure and rhetorical sequencing; useful only if it stays journalistic. |
| Dan Carlin, The End Is Always Near and Hardcore History audio | Held | Long-form historical cadence reference, not a production-method source. |
| Digital Cinematography and Directing; American Accent Training | Needs OCR/manual review | PDF text extraction returned empty; potentially useful but not claim-safe yet. |
Project Context
Blindspot Documents
The Blindspot Binder
Provenance: local Chaos Console page. Used for channel promise, production constraints, packaging-first workflow, voice rules, and cross-linking.
Blindspot Year 1 Roadmap
Provenance: local Markdown in ~/Documents/The Blindspot/Business Plan. Used for cadence, first-upload risks, and avoiding over-polish.
Blindspot Telehealth Script v1
Provenance: local Markdown brief. Used as a production-context example for cold-open structure and benchmark-video notes.
Episode 1 VO Connected Prose
Provenance: local Markdown script. Used for Blindspot tone calibration: sober historical narration with operational compression.
Web Supplement
Web Sources Kept Narrow
Web research happened after the local shelf and Binder were screened. No Medium summaries, SEO listicles, or generic creator advice made it into the live chapters.
The completion pass added only sources with operator or platform value: YouTube Help for retention, CTR, title/thumbnail tests, and export specs; YouTube's recommendation-system blog; Frame.io's Steve Audette interview for FRONTLINE editing; Pew's Oliver analysis for civic-impact caution; and Nieman Lab's Vox Borders reporting for local-source visual systems.
The user-supplied reference video, Camp 14: The Most Horrible Place in North Korea, is used as cadence and edit-rhythm reference only. It is not used as a factual source for Almanac claims.