A people torn

Posted on February 20, 2007 by Melissa Worden

Want to know how multimedia can be fully integrated in an online story? Take a look at this new package by StarTribune.com.

Mindy McAdams says:

“The design of this package — both visual and functional — is a milestone in multimedia journalism. It is the most successfully integrated online journalism package I have ever seen.”

Here, here.

It has a beautiful, clean, easy-to-navigate interface, and the content is DEEP here. Lots of audio, slideshows and video.

And I agree with Mindy that the best part of all is that the text integrated with the project. When going to go through all the effort to make a special design, why do sites using the usual nav for the stories? Not here. There’s no clicking away or pop-ups for the stories. (NOTE: A couple of sites are experimenting with this, too — RockyMountainNews.com with The Crossing and sptimes.com with 48 hours on the inside).

Hooray!

As a reader, I now can access the parts of the story the way they are best told: either as audio or stories or video, etc.

Again, I love looking at the producers of a project. A lot of players on this one, and it shows in the quality of the presentation. This obviously took a lot of coordination and time — I’m curious about how much time was reserved for/dedicated to the online presentation. Kudos go to:

Online producer: Regina McCombs
Reporter and audio: Sharon Schmickle
Photographer and audio: Jerry Holt
Online designers: Dave Braunger and Jamie Chismar
Audio producer and editor: J. Pinkley
Photo and audio editor: Vickie Kettlewell
Online projects editor: Robyn Dochterman
Online design editor: Jamie Hutt
Video: Regina McCombs
Monrovia video: Dr. Barret Fisher
Additional video editing: Vanessa Gertz
Copy editors: Jim Foti and Holly Collier
Research: Sandy Date and Roberta Hovde
Nation and world editor: Dave Peters
Print designer: Colleen Kelly
Newspaper projects editor: Laurie Hertzel

I predict this isn’t the last you’ll hear about this project, and I hope we’ll continue to see papers experimenting with the all-inclusive presentations.