A timeline of polls (that doesn’t make me yawn)
Posted on January 3, 2008
I like this interactive by USATODAY.com, which shows how voter response has evolved since January 2007 in national and state polls.
Here are the results for 146 polls (nationally) so far for Democrat candidates:
And the results for 148 polls (nationally) so far for Republican candidates:
My only gripe: The number and variety of polls appears to be comprehensive, but I can’t tell if these are ALL the polls or a select group of polls. I wish there was an explainer to confirm my guess.
Otherwise, I find the interface quite easy to use and understand after just a quick glance.
A bad photo gallery idea
Posted on September 19, 2007
So when you’re sitting in that editorial meeting, thinking of ways to make your charts, fact boxes, etc., interactive, please keep in mind this piece by CNN as a sample of what NOT to do.
I know I don’t have to explain why.
But it’s a great example to show your newsroom the importance of choosing the best media/storytelling form for your content.
At least they didn’t hide the captions automatically on load.
Serving the reader
Posted on August 29, 2007
The New York Times has a special section devoted to the U.S. Open, complete with:
>> Stories (of course)
>> A blog
>> Photo galleries (tennis makes for some funny looking moments in time, doesn’t it?)
>> Men and women’s scoreboards, which include links to player stats
>> Two videos so far (In the Shadow of the U.S. Open and Life on the Pro Circuit)
>> And much multimedia.
The videos are somewhat interesting, but at 5 minutes, I think they’re too long. (I started to get bored at 1:45/2 minutes.)
I was so glad to see a handful of interactive graphics and database multimedia:
>> Interactive brackets. The men and women’s matchups also include links to stories and other interactives
>> An interactive timeline of Serena Williams’s professional career. This graphic shows her rise to the top 20, her fall in 2006 and her comeback in 2007.
>> An interactive look at court types. In The Master of Clay Takes Aim at the Fast Courts, readers get a look at Rafael Nadal’s approach on three of the game’s surfaces.
I was reminded of Nora Paul’s talk about interactive graphics at the Multimedia New Producers Workshop when I saw this piece. Should we have to click a “next”? Paul posited that forcing readers to always take an action rather than sitting back and viewing the interactive could possibly annoy them.
Could be true in some cases, I agree. However here there’s a lot of information to digest, and I think breaking it up in chunks helps the reader. I almost wish I had more opportunities to click around and interact.
I also really like the 3D graphics used here with the tennis ball and the different turfs. The surfaces of the courts look quite realistic and it makes the interactive much more interesting too look at.
>> An interactive audio graphic. How do you beat Roger Federer? NYTimes.com asked friends, tennis players, coaches and the chair of the American Board of Sports Psychology for their theories. This is a great idea, and I think the presentation is nicely done with the large photo. I just wish they had a counter on the audio clips.
>> And a map, which is not interactive. This is a missed opportunity. Why not put it in Google maps or something like it so I can get personalized directions, find other areas of interest and print out larger views as needed?
Note: The headline is a groaner, I know. But I couldn’t resist.
LA homicides in 2007
Posted on August 12, 2007
Los Angeles has endured it’s share of violence. Seriously, it’s a tough city whose paper has to devote a daily blog to homicides, which is turning out to be an effective way of presenting their story that’s too big to fit in print.
The list represents an effort to provide comprehensive coverage of all homicides that occur in Los Angeles County. Overwhelmed by the sheer volume, the Los Angeles Times, like other major media organizations, covers only a fraction of the more than 1,000 murders in Los Angeles County each year. Many violent deaths become, in essence, private homicides — catastrophic on a small scale, invisible on a broader one.
Recently, they added an interactive map to better visually tell the story. The Baltimore Sun put together a similar map last month, but the Times’ version shows what you can do by adding more resources to the presentation.
The Times has integrated theirs with a bar graphic, photos, reader comments, a list of the deceased, and a search box. This is really impressive. I particularly like the photos and ability to leave comments. The editors have taken a stat-heavy, impersonal presentation (the map alone) and instantly have created an emotional link with the reader.
Here’s a sample comment posted by J.Henn that illustrates best what I mean:
Being a former LAPD officer I’ve been to more homicide scenes than I care to count. But seeing all these PEOPLE murdered is quite shocking,all these lives taken in a few short weeks. All these victims families devastated, in the blink of an eye. GOD bless the Victims and their Loved ones, and take vengeance on the ignorant murderers.
Another thing I like about this interactive: Readers can access the information in many ways, without the whole package seeming too repetitive. You can sort by date and then filter that information by age/ethnicity/gender/etc. Or you can search on your own. Once you get your data, you can click on the map and get the information. Or you can click on the name from a list.
Credits: Jill Leovy, a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, writes the blog. I don’t know if she created the interactive, too. No credits are listed on that page.
Local sites covering national events
Posted on August 3, 2007
Ryan Sholin recently wrote about how niche coverage can help your site.
“Be specific,” he says.
And I agree. Finding that niche market will make your site invaluable to your readers.
So, then, how do you handle a national-interest story that may have nothing to do with your readers’ daily lives? The Minneapolis bridge collapse is a horrible tragedy and obviously an important story to cover (the Virgina Tech shootings, as well), but where should local news sites draw the line at how much they play up the coverage?
Yesterday afternoon, I took a quick glance at how some Florida news sites (at least 1,300 miles away) were covering the story. The St. Petersburg Times devoted the top half of their page to the event, complete with graphics, video and a condolence book. The Orlando Sentinel had similar coverage. What about smaller papers? Well, The Lakeland Ledger and The Bradenton Herald did the same, too. Most were reporting the latest developments of Wednesday night’s news, not even localizing the story.
This morning, they all still were reporting the Minneapolis event, but many have finally have added in the “could this happen in Florida” angle. By this afternoon, the news has moved to a smaller mention, if any, on the most of the fronts (but not all), which leads me to believe that the public isn’t interested in this story from their local paper.
On one hand, this kind of news coverage enables the country to rally together and sympathize with our fellow Americans during tragic events. On the other hand, news Web sites have to be careful not to pick up the bad habits 24-hour national cable TV stations, which, in my opinion, are guilty of overplaying stories for ratings and to fill news holes. In doing so, local news sites are not being specific and run a risk of devaluing their importance and expertise.
Why would readers go to a local site to read AP content they could find at any other site, especially when they could go to a national news site or — even better — the local paper of the city in which the event happened to get the most up-to-date news?
Are readers really going to go to a Florida or Arizona or Oregon news Web site to find out the latest about a bridge collapse in Minneapolis?
No. They’re smarter than that. And many, unfortunately, by day two have experienced story fatigue.
Give them the credit they deserve and provide them with the latest news in their community. That’s why they’re going to your local site.
OK, so back to multimedia storytelling … regardless of my critique on how the story is played, there’s some excellent coverage out there.
Going straight to the source, the Minneapolis papers got specific and obviously busted their butts publishing interactive content. They both have boxes highlighting all their multimedia content right on the homefronts.
>> StarTribune.com has video, audio and staff and user-submitted photos of the event.
>> TwinCities.com (Pioneer Press) has audio slideshows, video, photo galleries and a user-submitted photo page (although it doesn’t have many entries at this time)
>> Other papers are creating excellent packages, too. Danny Sanchez put together a helpful roundup of interactive coverage. And Mindy McAdams highlights some more samples and a New York Times piece .
Voyeurism is addictive
Posted on July 31, 2007
I can’t play video games. Don’t get me wrong, I have good hand-eye coordination and excelled at Doom back in the day.
No, I can’t play because I become this couch-zombie game addict who rarely blinks. Really, my eyes become so dry they hurt! (The Wii, I can do, however, because I’m movin’ around. Swinging my arms wildly trying to beat my opponent at boxing; well, I *have* to blink during all that commotion.)
Besides, I just don’t have time for that stuff, anyway. I already spend too many hours on the computer reading blogs and the latest on multimedia and journalism.
But I’ve been administering the eye drops because last weekend, I have to admit, I caught a “video game” bug and spent a little longer than I’d like to admit playing: The HBO Voyeur Project, which is a series of multimedia stories that revolve around the theme of voyeuerism. “See what people do when they think no one is watching …”
It takes some time to download, but it was worth it because right off the bat, I was wowed with the Flash design and presentation. Watching the scenes in the first apartment building was jaw-dropping enough, then I realized there’s a whole city to explore. Each building (four at this point, but they may add more) and unit with its own storyline.
Aside from the Flash aspect, how can we apply this example to journalism?
>> This is non-linear storytelling. The user must choose their own route through the presentation.
Sure, it’s entertainment, and we wouldn’t *necessarily* tell a news story in this fashion. But you *could* use this technique to reenact the scene of a crime or to create a more visually interesting interactive timeline.
>> The story is told on several platforms. This isn’t where the presentation ends or begins.
“The Project includes the main website, HBO On Demand and HBO Mobile exclusive content, MySpace pages for the characters from the stories, supporting websites, and additional content for those willing to follow the breadcrumbs or “artifacts” hidden in the other media. Clues /discussion about voyeur artifacts found at the promotional blog http://www.thestorygetsdeeper.com. The project was estimated to have cost between $7 and $10 million dollars, and took about a year to create.”
>> The content and presentation is addictive. The site is set up to draw you in, and it encourages you to stay and explore it. (Don’t forget that Nielsen will count only unique users and time spent instead of page views.)
Baltimore homicides in 2007
Posted on July 20, 2007
The Baltimore Sun put this map together as a part of their Confronting Crime series.
What an effective way to illustrate this series. You can search their interactive database of homicides so far this year, and click on a point to see who was killed where.
They say a picture is worth 1,000 words: Try a search for all blacks in all of 2007, then compare that map to all whites in all of 2007.
Holy crap.
Credits: Data compiled by Sun reporter Gus Sentementes using information from the City of Baltimore. Baltimoresun.com designer Stephen Mekosh produced the Google Map mashup.
UPDATE: I made a typo in the headline that was completely unintentional. It’s now fixed.
Making baby the high-tech way
Posted on July 20, 2007
OK, so not every project can be an advanced, fully-integrated, multimedia project. We just don’t have the resources to do that. And not every project warrants it.
So when you’re strapped for time but still want to make an interesting presentation, just jazz up your print graphic into an interactive like this example on MSNBC.
It’s a wee bit more involved than posting a link to a 2-D graphic, but it’s a whole lot more interesting to view. Each step (aside from the last frame) is a graphic that zooms in with a next button. They just made it look pur-ty.
Harry Potter and the Prarie Hallows
Posted on July 12, 2007
I came across this cute, cute site tonight (via the Digital Edge), put together by the News-Gazette in Champaign, Ill., which counts down to the release of Harry Potter’s newest movie and book, both happening this month.
The design is very nice and quite a departure from the News-Gazette’s main site. One of their goals, according to Digital Edge, is to appeal to a younger audience, and I think the look and feel works for a pre-teen through adult (not so much for the younger readers, though).
The site is full of interactive goodies, including trivia, polls, forums, a calendar of local Harry Potter-related events, and a spell feature where readers can create their own spells, guess what other spells do and comment on them. Another cute feature: Send a friend a “howler,” which mimics the reprimanding audio-telegram that Hogwarts students receive from their parents.
Two things that would make this site even better:
>> The blog hasn’t been updated since July 5 — I want to read about the movie’s opening night reactions.
>> And I want even more reader interaction.
There’s a photo gallery, but I’d love to see a way for readers to upload their own pictures.
And on the In the News page, local Harry Potter Club members put together a video newscast, with their own commercials. It’s cute (a little hard to hear at times, and it is what it is: you’re watching a kids’ play), but it’s a great addition to this niche site. It’d be even better if other readers could upload their own videos.
Baghdad Tour
Posted on July 9, 2007
“Baghdad Tour,” part of Washingtonpost.com’s “America at War” series, shows readers what it’s like to patrol the streets of Baghdad via five video vignettes (the longest is 3:19) and a video introduction.
I love that this is map-based so I better understand where these locations are and in relation to each other. Each of the videos is quite interesting to watch (you can resize them to be bigger, too), and I appreciate being able to see each of these snippets of their lives — some shot/edited in an intimate way, such as the home-movie quality of Camp Victory.
One nitpick: All the text at the beginning of the video is mostly repeated underneath it when on the smaller size setting. Too many words. I’d rather see the text to the bottom/side of the video only.
Credits: Reporting by Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post; video editing by Jonathan Forsythe and Chet Rhodes, washingtonpost.com; design and production by Nelson Hsu, washingtonpost.com.
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