The final panel of the day at the International Online Journalism Symposium at UT Austin in Texas looked at visual and multimedia story-telling on the web.

María Teresa Ronderos, Editor of Semana.com from Colombia showed some of the site’s impressive work in using multimedia to explore and explain different types of stories.

Semana.com put together an in-depth on the FARC rebels. It also sought to use multimedia to explain complex issues, such as a in-depth on paramilitary involvement in politics.

Ronderos also showed how Semana used multimedia to bring to life dry statistics about the number of people living on the streets of Bogota.

The site is also experimenting with using multimedia as profile pieces, where users click on the different parts of the body to learn different things about a person. Or using multimedia to reflect geographical information.

For her, this reporting rivals the traditional long-form print in-depth report.  Multimedia can make a difficult story accessible and journalists have to choose what works best in what medium.

Ronderos said we are creating new narratives, but, in her words, we are still in the stone ages.