Multimedia News Stories
Published by Emil Abraham,
Not all stories make good multimedia stories. The best multimedia stories are multi-dimensional.
They include action for video, a process that can be illustrated with a graphic (e.g., "how tornadoes form" or "how this new surgery works"), someone who can give some pithy quotes for video or audio, and/or strong emotions for still photos and audio.
Most multimedia stories require that the reporter go into the field to report the story face-to-face with sources, rather than doing a story entirely by telephone. To learn more about multimedia storytelling and get hands-on practice with creating video, photos, data visualizations and more, consider attending one of our workshops.
A multimedia story is some combination of text, still photographs, video clips, audio, graphics and interactivity presented on a Web site in a nonlinear format in which the information in each medium is complementary, not redundant.
Nonlinear means that rather than reading a rigidly structured single narrative, the user chooses how to navigate through the elements of a story. Not redundant means that rather than having a text version of a story accompanied by a video clip that essentially tells the same story, different parts of a story are told using different media. The key is using the media form – video, audio, photos, text, animation – that will present a segment of a story in the most compelling and informative way.
In the past, it was difficult to build a truly immersive multimedia story. Part of the problem has been internet bandwidth; another part has been the power of web browsers. A third part of the problem has been how hard it is to build visually interesting stories without the help — and expense — of developers and web designers.
In multimedia stories, media is fundamental to how the narrative is conceived and created.
This is unlike most web content, where media is typically included as an afterthought.
Multimedia journalism is the practice of contemporary journalism that distributes news content either using two or more media formats via the Internet, or disseminating news report via multiple media platforms.
Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information."
Professional experience and the literature suggest that new media technologies challenge one of the most fundamental ‘truths’ in journalism, namely: the professional journalist is the one who determines what publics see, hear and read about the world.
(Fulton, 1996; Singer, 1998)
The multimedia journalist has to make decisions about what kind of platforms to utilize when practicing his or her craft, and in the case of multimedia productions has to be able to oversee story ‘packages’ rather than repurposing single stories in multiple formats
Navigation structures
Linear:Users navigate sequentially, from one frame of information to another
Hierarchical:Users navigate along the branches of a tree structure that is shaped by the natural logic of the content
Nonlinear: Users navigate freely through the content of the project, unbound by predetmined routes
Composite: Users may navigate freely, but are occasionally constrained to linear presentations of movies or date.
