Four Articles

Online Storytelling Forms


"Online is about showing, telling, demonstrating and interacting."
I think I’m really lucky Journalism student to be living in this very era where new opportunities are opening up through the Internet. It was just fascinating to read about the different forms of online journalism.

I found these principles helpful:
Use print to explain. Use multimedia to show. Use interactives to demonstrate and engage.

It’s just amazing what Journalists can do with a single digital camera (it doesn’t even have to be some high-tech camcorder). Also, I liked “clickable interactives,” even though the Market Map was sort of confusing.

The article made the point that slide shows are not just random pics thrown next to each other, but they are a means of telling a cohesive story.

I’m a bit confused about what interactive webcasts are. I open all the links, but none of them worked, so I didn’t really see an example of that kind of video.

Oh, and the multimedia interactives: I just loved them! Especially the one about U Street. I just liked the design and the content and that I could choose whether I want to listen to the audio commentary or not. That piece was just fascinating, and the thing is, I could also go out and do something similar! Awesome!



What Journalism Can’t Do


This article was really interesting. I think it’s rather sad that people are numb to massive suffering.

Suddenly, Youssif, the boy who was set on fire, came into my mind. When I first saw his story, how he was set on fire, and how his face was damaged, I was deeply touched. He is the face of the Iraqi children who are affected by the terror surrounding them.

As human beings, I think it’s easier to sympathize with an individual, than to understand what the big concepts and statistics mean, and how they affect people.



Teaching Online Journalism


In this article, there were a couple things that just hit me. Here they are:

1. I should always find a new angle, something that answers my questions. I think this means that I have to treat the audience as intelligent human beings. If I think that I know everything about the topic because I have reported on it earlier, that doesn’t mean that the audience is totally ignorant and so I have to report on the basic things. The questions I find interesting may be the ones that the readers find interesting, too. Of course, I have to include fundamental stuff to make sure that even a 3 year old understands the big picture. It’s kind of hard to produce a piece that’s equally interesting to all sorts of people.

2. When working with audio or video, it’s basically the footage that decides the focus of the story. This is frightening. If I don’t have the appropriate visuals to back up my story, there’s very little I can do…


3. Making a connection between the video and the viewer’s real life is important. The other day, I was watching one of Travis Fox’s videos made in Aceh, Indonesia. The video was about people living in tents for a year then, after the Tsunami destroyed their homes and flooded their villages. For the first sight, I couldn’t relate to those people, because they are so far from me. But then I saw a footage showing the tents while the rain was just pouring (it was the monsoon season). I imagined what it would be like to live in a tent set up on mud and rain puddles. Suddenly, I felt a lot more empathy towards those people. It was just a 10-second part of the clip, but after it I understood why they want to live in houses so desperately.



You Must Be Streaming


Newspapers with good online videos rock!
While CNN.com offers good video and not-so-good articles, NYT.com offers good video with outstanding articles. Honestly, I prefer both. CNN is easy to read and gives the basic information on issues. The NYT, however, is really fancy and in-depth, but it needs a lot of attention. But if I were to choose which one to work for, I think I’d go with the NYT, provided that I’m given a camcorder.

It’s so true that documentaries are good on the web. When I was younger, I wanted to be a filmmaker, and I seriously considered shooting documentaries. The reality is much more dramatic than fiction.

Also, the videos shot for the web are a lot more realistic than the ones made in studios with sets and stuff. I’m wondering if this will change the TV landscape. Will people want to see gigantic sets in the future? Or will they prefer a more realistic, down to earth representation of news? We’ll see…

And I loved Travis Fox saying, “If a reporter wants to be on camera, that’s probably a good reason not to put him on camera.”