A session at the ONA conference on the potential of multimedia starts off with Brian Dumbar from Nasa. This might sound like an unusual choice, but as Dumbar says, the site sees itself as Nasa’s internal news wire.
The site heavily uses multimedia to explain what Nasa is doing and make it accessible to a wider audience. Dumbar is spending his time clicking around the site, showing off stuff. But watching someone else click around a website makes for a dull presentation.
One interesting nugget to emerge – huge interest in the streaming of Nasa events which are not covered by TV news. But little interest in the podcasts, some getting less than 1,000 downloads per week.
What does this tell us? People like seeing images of space, rather than hearing about space.
Grassroots journalism
Next up a complete shift – Sara Stuteville from the CommonLanguage project. The site was set up by graduates frustrated at international news coverage.
Their aim is to cover unreported stories, looking at some of the positive things happening globally and what Stuteville calls “humane reporting.”
There are three of them who run the website, reporting in the field with a laptop, a cellphone and operating out of net cafes. The cost for a month’s worth of stories – $20,000.
For them, it is able using new tools to improve inclusivity, increase transparency but not to overwhelm the audience with multimedia.
And in defense of the younger generation “we still care about content, about good information,” says Stuteville.
Multimedia lessons
Switching tracks to mainstream media with Emily Murphy of the Atlanta Journal-Consitution.
She explains that multimedia proposals need to address five questions before they are commissioned:
- Does it have an audience and who is it?
- Will it generate traffic?
- Does it provide a service to the reader?
- Will it have a long shelf life?
- Do you have the resources?
What doesn’t work, says Murphy – too much text, clunky graphics, poor navigation, which contribute to a bad user experience.
Web shells
Web consultant Jane Stevens outlines her five characteristics that make the web distinct. It is:
- Solution-oriented
- Participatory
- Interactive
- Continuous
- Contextual
As an example, she cites the BBC News website in-depth on Iraq.
Stevens says the site tells you not just the news of the day but also answers all questions that might arise. In other words, the context you need to understand the news, presented in a web shell that is easy to navigate. And compared to, say the New York Times, free and not behind a firewall.
As Stevens asks; “Which one would you bookmark?”
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