on the (con)verge

Featured on theage.com.au, Gangland is a comprehensive and well packaged multimedia story. I guess this story caught my attention the most because it has a certain authority about it. For someone that does not know all that much about the underworld scene, it is a one-stop-shop for everything I wanted to find out about the killings, the suspects, the police investigation.

The site is easy enough to navigate around as it is broken up into five major topics and then further subcategorised. There is also a menu tab on all of the slides that allows users to go back to the Home page – a really important feature so as to not feel lost and trapped in too deep on the site.

Photos and audio commentary featured prominently within the story. More text could have been inserted to supplement the audio – whilst John Silvester is an excellent narrator/journalist, sometimes you just want to go at your own speed and process the information visually. It also would have helped those who are hearing impaired or do not have audio resources on their computer.

All in all, the story (thanks to its narrator/reporter) has a certain credibility about it, that gives it a news documentary feel. The gangland murders have been a long-winded issue in the media for years, so this package brought all those pieces of the puzzle together in a simplified format. It saved me the time and effort of having to find all this information myself, and for that I am most appreciative.

Interactivity is paramount to engaging an audience. Interactivity online should be more than clicking your mouse on a picture or a highlighted word. In my opinion, an interactive narrative, makes you feel like you’re in it. You become so immersed in the story but are able to exercise full control when choosing the path of your adventure. A good narrative should stimulate most of your senses.

interactivenarratives.org provides visitors with a more holistic view of a topic compared to a newspaper article or even an online story . Hence, the site is most useful for when there is an eagerness to learn rather than to simply be informed.

Most of the narratives are not particularly wordy – those that are seem to be less effective in allowing visitors to interact with it. That said, the site is testimony to the fact that interactivity can be packaged and re-packaged in many forms.

The multimedia journalists featured on the site have had to ascertain the most effective way to tell their story to their desired audience. It is not so much the content that proves interesting when watching the videos, but more so deciphering why the journalists have chosen to tell their story a particular way – ie. using photos instead of words, or a 3-D game instead of a video.

The NASA Missions is one of my favourites – possibly because there is lots of fun and games to be had, you even get to assemble space vehicles! (Yes, it’s hard to believe I’m 21 and will be graduating in six weeks.) It is so great because it ties in everything you want to know about the moon and you can tailor your experience on the site to skip the stuff that is not of interest to you.

A narrative can come in many different shapes and sizes but at the end of the day, for a narrative to be effective online, it should harness multimedia tools and utilise them to the best of its creative ability.

Text. Check. Graphics. Check. Photos, audio, video, user interaction. Check, check, check and…check. Gone are the days when journalists would get the scoop, write their story and file it away. Now stories must be packaged into a multimedia box complete with all the aforementioned features. Granted, journalists will be working more collaboratively with their colleagues to get the job done, but they will still need to know the basics in using these online media types.

It’s not only how to use these tools but when to use them that proves vital in effectively telling a story and attracting traffic to a site. This can seem a bit daunting for those of us who are not comfortable using all these technologies and would prefer the simplicity of a run-of-the-mill word processor. But by embracing multimedia we are able to engage audiences like never before and create a more fulfilling online experience – and let’s face it, who would say no to that?

I guess instead of thinking what words best convey the story, we need to be thinking ‘do words best convey this story and if not, what medium does?’

If using video, it is important to grasp the concept of sequencing, as Colin Mulvany stresses in his blog, Mastering Multimedia. Just like every word should serve a purpose in any news story, every frame in a video should be there to help move the story along. Sequencing is basically a form of editing that ‘compresses time’ within a video story. Real-time is not required in video, audiences have been conditioned to fill-in the space from one frame to another without having to see everything that has occurred in between. For example, we know that a shot of a sun rising signifies a new day without having to watch the character sleep for eight hours.

Being a ‘word person’ as Mulvany aptly puts it, it’s quite difficult for me to fully comprehend sequencing, when to shoot a tight/medium/long shot and even where to point the camera. Lucky I’m doing this subject…

Below is the Yahoo!7 video Anton, David and I attempted to edit into (to no avail!).  Even though the videos were unable to be seamlessly edited as we planned, watch them both and you’ll get the idea..

Our take on it:

Yes, I do love Kochie and am not ashamed to admit it!

Whilst newspapers can no longer exist without an online counterpart, online news sites can flourish even in the absence of a print partner, illustrated by the launching of brisbanetimes.com.au. Online journalism has catapulted over print and raced to the finish line with print holding on for dear life to its friend (or foe?), in hopes that it too can gain a spot on the podium.

As the 2007 Australian Press Council Report points out, it is not enough for an online news site to merely be a web-based version of a hard-copy newspaper. It must embrace multi-layered platforms that combine audio, visual and text as well as encourage instantaneous feedback whilst staying true to its print affiliate.

Online news sites bring to the forefront issues surrounding blogging and online forums – proving to be a means by which readers can shed their opinion and be newsmakers as well as provide a critical tool for journalists to ascertain what readers want and what they don’t want.

It is imperative for journalists of the future to be trained and skilled in producing content for both print and online. Online journalism is different from writing for print, primarily because the audience is different. As a web visitor and as a reader of newspapers, we come to expect a variation in style. Because of the abundance of information online amd the short attention spans of web users, journalists must recognise this through the way they write.

Sometimes it is not just the way a story is written that must change, but the types of stories themselves may vary. The Age proper is markedly different from the age.com.au in terms of content in a bid to attract a new readership. With more Paris Hilton and less Palestine, Fairfax has a serious dilemma on its hands and must find the balance between representing its print version online without losing out on its online market share. This may explain the recent sacking of Fairfax staff from the paper, but there also needs to be a new policy in place that bridges the disparity between old and new media.

This series of essays explores the significant shift in power away from the media magnates to the masses. Is this shift an illusion or a very real consequence of the blogging phenomenon that has hijacked and threatened to kill traditional media? More importantly, what does this mean for the future of journalism, especially quality journalism?

On one side of the debate are those that believe blogging brings with it the end of quality journalism – no more investigative reporting, accuracy and objectivity. In its place will be up-to-the-minute news that is both easily accessible and highly interactive.

The other side is more optimistic. Blogging means more engagement with the once passive consumer, improving the quality of journalism by encouraging journalists – professionals and otherwise – to be more responsible reporters of the news and give life to an array of angles and opinions.

Both camps acknowledge that the blogging revolution has and will continue to change journalism practices and subsequently make for a more ‘free press’, as the balance pf power shifts from journalists to me and you. This seismic shift will inevitably contribute to a change in the wider social and political landscape and at the same time is shaped by the society’s change in values and expectations towards greater democracy and greater choice.

It is somewhat fatalistic to assume that blogging will mark the death of quality journalism – there will always be a place for it. Ultimately, in news we seek both accuracy and speed and will not (for long, anyway) accept a breaking story written five minutes after the incident that sacrifices an accurate reporting of the facts.

In addition, professional journalists will not be replaced by citizen journalists. The difference between them being that professional journalists are obligated to be truthful and objective (although this is questionable). As the number of blogs grows exponentially, people will revert to professional journalists and news organisations that have a reliable reputation as their primary source of information.

That said, professional journalists cannot afford to ignore the new producers of content and must work collaboratively with them to produce quality reporting and a more participatory framework.

Unfortunately, however, it seems that blogging technologies and online media will bring about the demise of print journalism. Growing up wanting to be a newspaper reporter, to have my name immortilised in print, and now watching as that dream slowly fades along with newspaper sales, is quite disheartening. But this reading (and the recent happenings at The Age) highlights that the new media players will be those who can adapt to new media technologies and harness the power of the blog.

Hey everyone!

So here’s a bit about me:

Currently in the second semester of my Postrgad Dip in Media & Comm. Completed my degree in Media & Comm. at Swinburne in ‘07, majoring in Sociology.

I would love to write – and get paid for it.

The thought of leaving uni and getting into the real workforce leaves me terrified, yet excited.

I dislike getting older. I’m not 21. Just 20 again.

I am addicted to the internet and you can constantly find me on messenger/facebook/youtube.

After holidaying in Vietnam & Thailand at the start of the year I was struck down with the travel bug. I can’t wait to go to the U.S in November and be a tourist all over again.

My strengths/skills are in researching and writing.  I also know some HTML and basic web designing stuff.

This semester I would like to learn more about online video production and editing.