"Where we are right now is almost a perfect analogy to the early days of television where all they could think about was filming radio shows. Publishers haven’t really taken advantage of that fact, and not all print media should be in multimedia form. There’s still a place for print. The toaster over didn’t replace the toaster." -Jim Gaines, 2009
What we'll be talking about: the pros and cons of multimedia storytelling in magazines and what they mean to nonfiction writers.
Definition: Multimedia storytelling
We define multimedia storytelling as a marriage of narrative text and other media, such as:
- Photography (Example: "Happy Valley, Utah" from Time)
- Videography (Example: "SoLost" from Oxford American)
- Audio (Example: "The Mexican Girl" by Jack Kerouac, The Paris Review)
- Graphics (Example:"Geotagging the Tourists" from New York magazine)
- Other interactive elements such as Kindle and Twitter
What are the pros?
Tim talks about all the good things.
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- Obvious aesthetic enhancements
- Nonlinear storytelling
- Collaboration
- May open up more opportunities for publication: Consider this tidbit: According to the Newspaper Association of America, mobile page views for news websites and apps are up 65% compared to a year ago.
According to a recent study conducted by Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI), The Associated Press, Online Publishers Association and Google’s AdMob:
- more than 25-million iPads and an estimated 5-million competing media tablets are in use globally. The Online Publishers Association (OPA) estimates that 23% of the U.S. Internet population, ages 8-64, will own or use a media tablet by early 2012. That represents an estimated 54-million U.S. consumers.
- Most analysts are now forecasting that as many as 120-million iPads and 40-million other media tablets will be in use globally by the end of 2012. They also expect that by then more than 5,000 news apps along with several hundred thousand other apps will be available to use on media tablets.
“I don’t know one person operating at a high level who is an independent one-man band who is telling the kind of stories that you could tell in a collaborative environment. There’s just no way. In every project we do, several people collaborate to make that story happen: the designer, the producer, the executive producer, and the journalist who covered the story in the first place. What we’re trying to create are universal stories that are not perishable. That’s the core element of our strategy.” - Brian Storm, president of MediaStorm, a production studio publishes multimedia social documentary projects. (In an interview with Melissa Ludtke in Nieman Reports.)
What are the cons?
Laura talks about all the bad things.
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- Potential for a lack of control
- Loss of textual importance
- Devaluation of unprinted work
- Loss of gigs due to lack of applicable skill
- Server costs
- Strain of switching media
Taking a closer look with case studies:
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"The Shrine Down the Hall" photographed by Ashley Gilbertson, and related links
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“Lebrew Jones and The Death of Micki Hall” by Chrisine Young of The Times Herald-Record
and “The Places We Live” by Jonas Bendiksen of Magnum Photos
And now to take a minute to make this all about us:
The Fort Colins Rabbit:
Outlet magazine:
In conclusion: Why does this matter to you?
Tim talks about the writer's choice between embracing or rejecting multimedia storytelling
Laura talks about some ways to make the best of the multimedia movement
Want more info? Check out Campfire Journalism, a useful blog by Mark Berkey-Gerard, who teaches multimedia storytelling at Rowan University.
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