Multimedia journalism

Social videography – the future of short-term multimedia?

Admittedly, the majority of projects I highlight on II are long-term multimedia projects. However, that does not imply that good multimedia takes weeks to produce.

In this changing environment, it is crucial that producers are capable of turning around stories on a daily basis for our news-hungry users. We all know Flash interactives are extremely time consuming, so are videos the best option for short-term multimedia?

Alexandra Wharton, Vice President of Marketing and Community at Newsy.com, wrote me an email talking about the importance of short-term multimedia.

“While I do not question the value and craft of long-form multimedia, I would love to see more outlets focus on creating regular short-form multimedia that is equally accessible on the television and computer as it is on the iPhone. As print news audiences continue to decline while the blogosphere grows exponentially it is Newsy’s brand of curated multimedia [that] is a sustainable model for the future of journalism and it should be examined with equal attention as long-form multimedia journalism.”

Will Sullivan of Journerdism.com recently pointed out some startling statistics about video consumption that signal the strong future of video journalism. Furthermore, Angela Grant of NewsVideographer.com has also been pointing out recent online video studies.

From these studies we know that users are increasingly wanting videos, and we know that videos take less time to produce than interactive graphics, audio slide shows and other multimedia packages. But, an important question is whether users are strictly interested in watching videos on social networking sites.

Colin Mulvany of MasteringMultimedia wrote a recent post titled, “Leveraging social media to gain video page views.” In it, he discusses ways to promote videos on news sites using social media to make the pageviews match the effort that went into producing the video.

For any journalist who has produced videos and watched the dwindling numbers, this is an all too familiar feeling: “A common complaint I hear from other video producers is that their news and feature videos are not getting the page views they had hoped for. I too, have struggled with this since I started posting video stories on my newspaper’s Web site five years ago,” Mulvany blogged.

The New York Times published an article on Sunday, “Now on YouTube – Local News,” about local news organizations posting videos on YouTube and sharing the profit revenue.

“To date, nearly 200 news outlets have signed up with YouTube to post news packages and split the revenue from the advertisements that appear with them. In addition, Google searches now show YouTube videos alongside news articles, helping the videos reach a wider audience.”

Regardless what format you consider short-term multimedia, everyone seems to be in agreement that daily turn-around visuals are what keeps the boat afloat. From the sampling of sources listed above, I would argue that videography is the answer for sustainable short-term multimedia. Furthermore, video journalists need to utilize YouTube, Vimeo and other social media sites to secure this growing community of video enthusiasts.

For even more insight into this topic, here is a sampling of what my followers on Twitter had to say:

Mindy McAdams from Teaching Online Journalism commented about the importance of factoring in the ratio of the project’s shelf life to the production time when deciding on a short-term project. The majority of videos out there, regardless of storyline, pass this test.

Flash developer Jason Tucker also brought up a great point: “Short-term multimedia projects help fund long-term multimedia projects. And if scalable, they can be used for breaking news.”

Lastly, MNN multimedia producer Nick Scott probably said it best:

“They keep the likes of you and I employed!”

Other posts that might interest you:

• Five tips for emerging video journalists
• Preston Gannaway documents albinism in “Chosen Ones”
• Wall Street Journal launches multimedia report in advance of Myanmar’s election

© 2012 Innovative Interactivity (II).
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