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Jonah Steinhart

Cool New Publishing Tools - 106 views

started by Jonah Steinhart on 14 Feb 13
  • Jonah Steinhart
    #1 Jonah Steinhart on 14 Feb 13
     
    With the continuing growth of both the Tam News staff and new, inexpensive web publishing technologies, we have a lot of options for how we want to build out our multi-media platform. Please use this topic thread to post examples of new stuff you might want to try on tam news.org.

    For example, this pretty much blew me away. Play around with it a bit.

    http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek

    What do you think?

    Update: "Snow Fall" just won a Pulitzer.
    http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/new-york-times-digital-snowfall-feature-wins-pulitzer/s2/a552683/
  • liz archer
    #3 liz archer on 25 Feb 13
     
    ^ agreed. I think that having technology like this would be an excellent choice for our online website, it would give visuals that could additionally help the reader understand and comprehend what they are reading. Like Miles said, live footage for sports games, like football and soccer, would help us reiterate key plays or injuries that took place in the games. We could also interview students so we could get people giving quotes, face to face.
  • Max Bayer
    #4 Max Bayer on 25 Feb 13
     
    I think this could be really great in sports because the brief writers and multimedia people could work together so the writer could mention a play in the game and a clip of the play could be shown on the right. Also, their could be quotes from post game interviews in the brief along with full length interview clips available on the right.
  • Krissy Powers
    #8 Krissy Powers on 19 Mar 13
     
    I agree that the add ons on the article enhanced the story, making you feel part of the experience. One of the add ons I really enjoyed but I know many other people had mixed feelings about was the sound bite of the 911 call. When we went over it in class we didn't really know the context, we just played it and waited to see what it would be. When I heard it I could feel the emotion of both the caller and the Ski Patrol, and without even reading the story I understood either where it was going and the devastation of the avalanche. Even without reading the story you could tell what was happening, and how many traumatizing experiences the avalanche caused. On a different note everything interactive or as an add on was easy to locate and fun to use. Even without reading any of the story and just clicking on these I felt that I knew what was happening, that I didn't necessarily have to read the story to feel like I was experiencing it. I think this would be a good tool to use because often times looking at a story, especially online, people don't read it, they just look at pictures or videos. Using this idea on the Tam News might compel more readers to look at the stories and be easier to understand.
  • Sam Allen
    #11 Sam Allen on 19 Mar 13
     
    I agree that most of the added pictures and videos really helps the reader understand the story better, as it allows the reader to picture the story. However, I think that some of it was unnecessary. For example, they would give background information on whatever source they were using, but would sometimes have slideshows depicting parts of the sources' life, and it ended up distracting me from the story a little bit. I think that if the Tam news incorporated this into the website, we would to balance it out, and just have enough pictures and videos to capture the reader's attention.Finally, on the 911 calls, I thought that it was another one of those completely unnecessary things they incorporated in the article. However, whether it's beneficial or not depends on the type of person who's reading the article. I can imagine some people viewing that as a total invasion of privacy while others feel that it helped them understand the story and captivated them even more.
  • Nate Vogel
    #12 Nate Vogel on 19 Mar 13
     
    One problem with this multimedia approach for articles is that people with low bandwidth/high latency will be waiting a while for the page to load, and might encounter problems with certain parts of the page. However, it's a great idea and a really good way to get the reader engaged, especially teenagers who might not be as interested in reading a really long article but would watch a video or look at some photos instead.
  • Markita Schulman
    #13 Markita Schulman on 19 Mar 13
     
    I thought that the inclusion of some of the multimedia components in this article took away from the overall credibility of the story, because it was such an obvious attempt to gain more views by sensationalizing a serious issue. I didn't think that the audio of the 911 call should be included, not because I was particularly offended or alarmed by it but because it seemed to me to accomplish nothing in terms of furthering the actual story, instead turning the whole thing into an action movie and not a piece of journalism. If the author and publisher's goal was to get people who would not read a plain print story to read this, they may have accomplished that, but I think using the sensitive multimedia like the 911 call in this particular case was a bit of a cop-out.
  • jake izola-henry
    #14 jake izola-henry on 19 Mar 13
     
    Engaging, insightful, and awesome!
  • Emma Shields
    #16 Emma Shields on 19 Mar 13
     
    I agree that this made the story much more engaging and helped me understand the avalanche as well as the emotions of the skiers. I thought the 911 call showed how devastating the accident was. This technology makes the story more alive. We should definitely try to do this, especially because this is such a technology driven world more people are reading things on their iPads then the newspaper.
  • Jackie O'Boyle
    #17 Jackie O'Boyle on 19 Mar 13
     
    I agree with Dom ^ completely. I think that adding all the extra bits and pieces to the article helped make the article engaging the whole time. But I also agree that it may not work on all computers and that is a down side.
  • Cody Duane-McGlashan
    #21 Cody Duane-McGlashan on 25 Mar 13
     
    After reading the Walmart Bribes article I am convinced that the amount of corruption that isn't reported on is huge. It seems like huge corporations like Wal Mart can almost always get away with changing the rules, and Mexico is a place where these sort of things are commonplace. Newspapers spend so much time reporting on the drug wars in Mexico that corruption, even on a huge scale, can go under the radar. The environment along with people living in these areas are harmed but the money keeps flowing. The layout broke up the copious text with photos and maps of the areas in question, and it seemed like a less overwhelming version of the avalanche article.
  • Morgana Sidhom
    #24 Morgana Sidhom on 28 Mar 13
     
    I think this really enhances the reader's experience. Not only does it cater to every aspect of the reader's learning experience, but makes it more entertaining to get engrossed in. Some aspects of the format raise questions on whether it is sensationalistic such as when they offer the recoding of the 911 call. Some may argue that it is just there shock value and may be offensive to the people involved in the ordeal. I believe that the option should be given to the audience, with fair warning of its content, because it is an integral component of the auditory aspect of the experience. It also plays an immense role in the reader's intimation with the piece, and allows the reporting to resonate a little more with the audience. In the end I think it elevates the audience's identification with the article, which is purely good journalism. This type of piece is very difficult to pull off because it requires the reporter to cover all his/her bases, and most definitely calls for a sort of journalism a-team that could deal with the technological pieces of the report. If our website was to pull it off, I think we'd need a team of people who are proficient with certain programs that are similar to those used on the production of 'Snow,' and have to divide up the writing and tasks to designated areas of the effort. This type of piece would also be one that could be more than a month in the making so we'd have to start planning soon if we hope to publish a piece like this before the end of the semester.
  • Emma Talkoff
    #25 Emma Talkoff on 31 Mar 13
     
    I think multimedia or interactive elements would definitely be a good way for The Tam News to expand, especially because we're in a kind of unique position where many of our readers are part of our stories. So if we have a feature that quotes or focuses on some students, maybe the online version of the feature could include photo galleries of pictures from students, or audio/video from them. If we advertise this in the print magazine it could drive more traffic to the site. Although "Snow Fall" includes a lot of high-tech features (or so they seem to me), I think we could enhance online stories and interest readers fairly easily with simpler multimedia efforts. Certainly having these added features would encourage readers to stick with wordier pieces; the interesting but long election feature comes to mind-if we had had some interactive info graphics or pictures/videos of student opinions online, students might have been more engaged.
  • Maile Resta
    #27 Maile Resta on 01 Apr 13
     
    I thought this article was outstanding. The add ons and all the new technology really made it more interesting. The videos made it seem extremely real. After I read it I told my dad we should get gps trackers for when we go skiing! A downside of this could be that it doesn't work with every computer but besides that it is great. If we could use this advance technology in our own online newspaper, then I think kids would be far more interested in reading the whole story!!

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