How do we get to the x degree?

Posted on January 20, 2007 by Melissa Worden

For several years now, Web editors have identified the need for and the power of multimedia — packaging that incorporates interactive graphics, sound, photos and video and has the potential to create a powerful form of storytelling.

“Non-linear” is what we call it. But is that really what we’re doing?

Audio slideshows, for example, are quite popular on newspaper Web sites — thanks to Joe Weiss, who brought us Soundslides, and Mindy McAdams, who literally wrote the book on multimedia journalism. With Joe’s easy-to-use software we don’t need to even load Flash on our computers to produce a nice looking slideshow.

But is this non-linear?

Nope.

We’re still telling a story in a traditional style, it just happens to be displayed in photos and audio rather than text.

Same goes for video. And interactive graphics.

We need to reach the “x degree” where we tear apart the linear format we’re so used to following. Newspapers are in their infancy in exploring the true potential of the Web and how multimedia can change the way we publish and consume news. A truly non-linear format is just that — not linear. A choose-your-own adventure path of news consumption, let’s say.

A non-linear story uses the most appropriate tools at the most appropriate time. So perhaps instead of reading a story and seeing attachments, the reader starts with a video, reads some fact boxes, takes a closer look at photos, and downloads and audio piece to take with him or her to listen to on the go. And maybe none of these pieces are complete stories in of themselves. They’re pieces that make up a whole. News consumption becomes a multi-tasking process, as in The Washington Post’s Being a Black Man.

These thoughts are nothing new, I know. They’re dreams cited often by many Web journalists predicting the “paper of the future.” Of course, these ideas are impractical to implement on a site-wide level at this point — most paper don’t get nearly enough Web resources nor support from the print side for that valuable content.

But we CAN start experimenting with this new format in small projects. And then we might actually see some non-linear storytelling and get to that “x degree” that I think will push us into a whole new dimension of journalism.

Comments

2 Responses to “How do we get to the x degree?”

Mindy McAdams on January 23rd, 2007 3:20 pm

You are hitting the nail squarely on the head with this line of thought. It’s exactly what I’ve been writing about since Sunday, Jan. 21, in my blog.

How do we begin to think about a story so that we permit ourselves to present it in a usable nonlinear format?
Patrick Beeson on January 24th, 2007 4:34 pm

I too like where you’re going with this idea.

I think newspapers should stop trying to take the print model to the Web — yes, this means no more “stories” in the traditional sense of the word — it doesn’t work and will only degrade with time.

But by using the Web for what it can do best, newspapers can leverage their enormous news-gathering operations to produce content that will engage and attract users to a degree not possible in print.