But do away with Soundslides awards

Posted on January 21, 2007 by Melissa Worden

I helped judge the ONA awards this year and was surprised to see so many Soundslides submissions (and I’m using Joe Weiss’ “brand name” product on purpose here).

Now here is where I may seem to contradict myself: Audio slideshows done well are a great asset to a newspaper’s site, but a Soundslides audio slideshow which is preformatted isn’t award-worthy content.*

It’s too easy to produce. It’s simply not innovative enough. To me, it’s the equivalent to giving a Pulitzer to a brief. It might be well written, informative, maybe even heart-tugging depending on what that brief is about. But award winning? Hardly.

* (Note: Taking several slideshows and adding them to a bigger project is something else entirely.)

Comments

3 Responses to “But do away with Soundslides awards”

angela on January 25th, 2007 1:57 pm

I also get annoyed with the generic look of soundslides projects. But I have to heartily disagree with this post. The thing that makes a slideshow successful has nothing to do with what the player LOOKS like. It’s the content of the story. Great pictures, great audio, edited together to create an amazing story. Let’s not “judge a book by it’s cover.”
Melissa Worden on January 25th, 2007 7:00 pm

Angela — I absolutely agree. This is a topic I want to tackle soon, too: It all comes down to journalism (so stay tuned!).

The beauty of soundslides is that it removes the technical barriers and allows us to produce journalism.

About 6 months ago, when I helped judge the ONA awards, I found that some of the entries lacked the depth to make it an amazing story. It was as if the creation of these slideshows was what was being submitted as award-worthy.

So, rereading my original post, I didn’t quite phrase it like that, did I?

I’ll amend it here to say: Soundslides alone shouldn’t win an award. Everyone now knows how easy it is to produce them. It’s the journalism behind it that should.

And yes, a good 2- to 3-minute presentation could be award worthy. But it’s gotta be damn good to compete with some of the more comprehensive packages sites are putting together.
angela on January 26th, 2007 11:06 am

I agree that some of those comprehensive packages are very awe inspiring. For contests, I can totally see how they’d win against a single soundslides project. Journalists are judging the contests, and journalists tend to look at stories different…With a more refined eye, and more patience.

But normal viewers might very well get more out of that single soundslides project, not the comprehensive mega-package. Web site viewers don’t have much time to spend on multimedia. A short, sweet, to-the-point story may hold their attention the whole time. A comprehensive package, no matter how well done, takes more time than a viewer feels that they have to waste.

But for journalism contests, it’s better to have a mega-package…

p.s. I like this blog…I added it to my feed reader. ;-)