News about News: Still Read News? Experience Them!!!

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Saturday, January 26, 2008

Still Read News? Experience Them!!!

The media industry has been undergoing a series of revolutionary changes for the past decade due to the advent of digital era. The changes centered on the hardware of news - how news are produced and distributed. We do not have to wait for prime time news programs or morning papers delivered. Whenever you go online, news are there waiting for you.

But what happened to the software - news stories. Compared to the changes in the way news are produced, delivered and consumed, news themselves are far from being revolutionized. Many online stories still have the traditional paper story format of “a text + a photo” even though such digital media as video, audio, 3D animation, computer graphics and etc are available. It seems that we have been using digital hardware with analogue software.

Digital storytelling or multimedia storytelling is what I think needs more attention from journalists. So, what is it? Here is an example of using diverse media for one story by a US news site, Recordnet.com. The news company based in Stockton, California, sent a reporter and photographer along as illegal immigrants from a village in southern Mexico returned home after picking tomatoes in the fields of San Joaquin County for two years. The five-part series, “And a song shall carry them home,” followed their journey with more than words and photos. A series of videos, photo galleries, an interactive map and a podcast help tell the story.

Not just read or watch, but experience the multimedia story of “And a song shall carry them home”.

And have a look at this annual report on American journalism, The State of the News Media 2007, to get a hint on how major news websites are evaluated in terms of multimedia storytelling.

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