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Even those new to journalism quickly learn that you can’t bring print material directly to the web. Nearly everyone can spot when you regurgitate print material in a blog, webcast, video, or slideshow.
It’s up to the saavy web journalist to repurpose, recreate, or simply start from scratch when creating for the web. So how do you choose a media for your message? Consider the strength of each medium.
Blogs are undeniably popular. Just about every journalist making the leap to the web begins by writing blogs. They’re not articles and they’re not op-ed pieces, but on many news sites, they’re a comfortable mix of conversational speech and news reporting.
Webcasts invites the audience to join you in listening in on a special interview or explore some minute portion of a larger topic. They’re kind of like the sidebar for the web. On an interview webcast, the subject often does most of the talking. For other podcasts, reporters talk about things they didn’t mention in their stories or even the background to their stories. One of my favorites is the How Stuff Works “Stuff You Should Know” webcast.
Slideshows are basic. Get the pictures, craft the cutlines, and post. Audio slideshows take this simple form to a whole new level. How? By combining all the power of pictures with a simple interview-style explanation, it reaches beyond the short two to three sentence explanations offered by the traditional slideshows. For example, you could interview a sculptor about a statue he is carving and combine it with pictures showing his weeks of progress. Suddenly, this familiar form seems more interesting.
Videos give you the opportunity to connect with your audience as a person. Consider this example:
Would you feel the same about the subject if he you could only hear his musical rendition of his cover letter in a webcast?
After one week, this video received close to 8,000 views on Youtube.com and its creator, Alec Biedrzycki, has been interviewed by CNN. Maybe this want-to-be marketer would consider a career as a web journalist?
July 25, 2009
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I'm wondering how we account for the same news story that we see online, on the evening news, and in the paper. Sure, they're covered differently, but the story's still the same. I think any medium can work with any "story." It just depends on what you do with it.
ReplyDeleteProper Proofreader, that's my point exactly. In the early days of online journalism, reporters read their articles as podcasts or used excerpts from their articles as blogs. But you'd never see a TV reporter reading directly from the daily newspaper, right? Instead, TV journalists use images and brief interview clips to tell their stories. It's because the medium is different.
ReplyDeleteAs an online journalist, you want to tailor the story to your specific medium. For example, you might report the facts in your print article, present an interview with a source as a podcast, and write a blog about how the story relates to other current events. In each medium, you're presenting a different take on the story.
Right. Each medium has its own strengths and weaknesses, its own style for which it's uniquely suited. Historically, it takes us a while to figure out how best to use any new technology. When movies were first invented, they simply reproduced the proscenium stage -- a play on film. It took film makers time to do with it what it does better, or at least differently, from the stage: closeups, odd angles, etc. Likewise, with the microphone, which was first set up in a studio to record everything from one position. Singers bellowed. Then someone figured out (I have a theory that "Whispering Jack," in the thirties was one of the first) that a singer could get a much more intimate sound by picking up the microphone, putting it close to his mouth, and modulating the voice. So it is with new media. Even now, we're finding more productive uses for Twitter than following a "star" stuck in a traffic jam.
ReplyDeleteI definitely would not feel the same about this very clever video if it was a simply something I was listening to; the best part was when his dad was smiling and pointing to the artwork. I am glad to hear that he got such a great response, at first I felt sad watching the video because it reminded me of how difficult it is for people to get jobs these days.
ReplyDeleteTrina: An interesting historical perspective on this topic. I hadn't thought about how much the techniques used in movies and with microphones has evolved since we first used this technology. I'm interested to see what we'll do with these web technologies in the future.
ReplyDeleteMemoirs of Meanness: This video does seem a sad reminder of the economic climate. I hope though, it also reflects people's renewed ingenuity!
Fascinating article. We are certainly living in interesting times- there are fundamental changes in how the written and spoken word are evolving through digital medium. I wonder how this will eventually shape our culture from a sociological perspective.
ReplyDeleteI had never really thought about this before, but what you said about newscasters not reading directly from the daily paper is a great, visual example.
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