Thesis

My thesis the spring was on Multimedia Storytelling and its future, including data structuring.

The first part was just a look at what a multimedia story is:

A multimedia story is “…some combination of text, still photographs, video clips, audio, graphics and interactivity presented on a Web site in a nonlinear format in which the information in each medium is complementary, not redundant.” ("What is a Multimedia Story" by Jane Stevens)

Characteristics of a multimedia story include:
- User has the ability to navigate through the story
- Can include text, photos, video, audio, graphics and interactivity
- Can be adapted to different types of audiences
- Not all stories make good multimedia stories

It's important to know your viewers. Of online video audiences, there tend to be four groups:
- Content Explorers: Ages 35-54, are willing to watch programs on TV as much as online, tend to have incomes of more than $100,000
- On-Demanders: Ages 18-34, more likely to watch full-length videos online
- Sight & Sounders: Ages 55+, 1/3 of online video audience, but prefers TV
- Television Devotees: Skews towards women, would rather watch shows on TV but will use the Web to catch up on missed episodes
(Worden)

Online video viewers tend to head toward television-type videos. This doesn't mean that news organizations should ignore multimedia, but think about who their viewers are amongst the newspaper/online demographic and how to build presentations towards that audience. There is a tendency now to put together multimedia based on what is gathered and what can be done quickly. What if there is more pre-planning for how to present it to the particular audience?


Characteristics of good multimedia stories include:
- Are multidimensional
- Are best told by face-to-face reporting
- Are pre-planned (through preliminary interviews, storyboards and newsroom communication)
- Are linked to previous stories on the topic

There are many opinions as to the length that multimedia presentations should be. Many say less than 5 minutes, or less than 3 minutes, or if it's a slideshow with audio, around 2. In my opinion, it comes down to as long as they need to be. Joe Weiss, creator of Soundslides, commented on this in a http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifPoynter interview.

I think they key, number-one thing is that [most audio slideshows are] too long. ... They'll create a three-minute audio slideshow, and because it's three minutes long, they'll have to use so many photographs. Well, I'm sorry, there just aren't that many good photographs in your edit. National photographer-of-the-year portfolios can be 30 images, and you're telling me you have 30 images from that one news event you were at for two hours, ... it just doesn't make any sense. ... I think a lot of people are making them far too long.

They're not being respectful of the time commitment that their audience is giving them. The attention that someone gives you as a journalist online, that attention is currency.

I would say the second thing [after length] is that, visually ... they are applying the ideals of still, print picture editing, to online picture editing. Essentially, they're not shooting for the medium. There are images you can look at and say, that image does a great job of getting me from this image to the other image. Well, are picture editors, or photojournalists, trained to think about their photographs in that way, that this is a transition image? Are they even shooting those images? In most cases they're not.

If you have a really great image, leave it up there for a little longer. Find a way in the audio, so the audio supports that image, and then there should be times where there's an image that supports the audio. Those two things should exist in the same audio slideshow. ... I think a lot of people [think] ... an audio slideshow is just a vehicle for their photojournalism. And it isn't.

The most important thing is not your photojournalism. The most important thing is not your audio journalism. The most important thing, overall, above anything else, amen, to the end of it, is the story and how well you communicate that to the human being who's on the other side of that computer.

Brian Storm of MediaStorm spoke during his visit to Syracuse University just before judging the Alexia Foundation Competition. Many multimedia presentations produced by MediaStorm are 10+ minutes in length. More than 60% of videos are watched from beginning to end once they are started. Also, he commented on the idea that presentations should be broken up into chapters, saying that it is like asking someone to go click something else/watch something else, and they may not come back.

So there are some thoughts on the current state of multimedia storytelling.