Multimedia journalism

Analysis of 2009 Carnegie-Knight journalism sites

I was recently asked to be a part of the 2009-2010 News21 project at UNC. Funded by Carnegie and Knight, this initiative worked with eight participating Universities to push the barrier in terms of multimedia storytelling on a wide range of topics. I finally got the time to look through each project at length, and am excited to hear what you think about my analysis on these inspirational projects.

Arizona State | Latino America
Multimedia blogger Adam Westbrook spoke highly of this site’s innovative multimedia scrollbar component, stating that “it is certainly easy to use and gives a much more integrated way of experiencing multimedia.” I had to disagree on that one, because I felt that the integration of the text and media elements was clunky, and there was no indication of how the floating media related to the visible section of text.

They do get credit for attempting a lot of different ways to tell stories, as seen in “Fighting Battles” story and “The Virgin of Guadalupe.” On their “Experiments in Innovation” blog, it mentioned that the producer of the latter story “wanted to let viewers skip to any part of the story they wanted to at any time. She proposed providing only the barest form of linear structure — in the form of three main ‘pods’ with branching ’subpods.’”

Berkeley | Intersections
I was immediately drawn to the “City Lab” in this project. Coined as a “database created by and for reporters,” producers have gathered and displayed demographic data about 65 cities. The data is elegantly displayed in a clean interface with a corresponding map of the area. The user can compare several cities against one another, or click on individual data points to learn when the data was uploaded and from where.

Students also utilized Vuvox galleries, interactive panoramas, and data visualizations to effectively tell different stories. I particularly enjoyed the stop-motion illustration video visualizing the “New Time Square.”

The site overall is clean, easily navigable, and user friendly. While I didn’t understand the difference between each subheading, I am assuming that “51st & Telegraph” makes sense to Californians …

Maryland | The New Voters
I was initially attracted to the “innovative video tag player” that was promoted on the main screen. I really like the idea of using tags to facilitate quick information retrieval. However, I have to admit that I was bummed to see that they paid USA Today producer Kristen Novak to build the player for them. Novak is extremely talented, so of course she could produce an interactive video console … but isn’t the point of this student-led initiative so that students can attempt these projects, rather than relying on industry professionals to do the work for them?

I liked that each section had a designed section front, but I quickly noticed that the audio clips for each quote were broken because if I clicked it multiple times, multiple clips played over one another without a close button. My initial reaction was to close the browser tab which is never good …

North Carolina | Powering a Nation
I have written several posts about this project as I watched it unfold while I was working in Honduras. “UNC tackles After Effects for News21 promotional video” featured a Q&A with producer Ashley Zammitt who produced the motion graphic. Back in June, I showed you a sneak peek of their site after they launched a beta version with production blogs.

I am working during the school year to maintain this site, and I know a majority of the students that worked on this project. However biased I may be, I still think they did a tremendous job. I also really appreciate their customized video player and search text feature. I am curious how users perceived the graphics … did the simplistic interfaces get the point across more effectively, or was the user left wanting more? For instance, after looking at “Coal plants in Meigs County,” I definitely wasn’t satisfied. Show me pictures of the existing plants, help me visualize a megawatt unit and describe what the heck that means …

Northwestern | Young Urban Adults and the New America
This site stayed on the “safe” side of reporting. While the stories were good and the content was interesting, I didn’t come across any innovative features or interactive applications, which was a bummer especially since this site is about the plugged-in-and-tuned-out generation in which we live.

In particular, I would have loved to interact with more statistics on the “Coming out atheist” story, as there are currently only two print graphics embedded in the text story and I can barely even read the call-out text.

I liked the silhouetted group beneath the opening graphic, and I almost didn’t realize that it was a navigation option. I don’t think this mattered though since they have a main navigation at the top with a list of the stories below. However, clicking on the “Identity” tab at the top brings me to a different area than clicking on the “Identity” silhouette, so that makes me wonder if people are missing content by choosing one or the other.

Southern California | Southwestern Shifts
Upon arriving at the opening screen, I wondered what the significance was of the blue, yellow, green, and red push pins. If it was to organize the stories by categories, shouldn’t it have told me which each color represents? Without this knowledge, I blindly selected a story to enter the site.

While reading several of the text stories, I noticed blatant character issues such as the sentence below that really hindered the stories:

““The volume forecast really dropped a lot in the US. In other regions, in the rest of Americas and in China, it’s still very healthy,” says Sheu.”

I also wish they would have utilized more space to give hierarchy to their navigation. Currently, it is a small thumbnail scroller of stories, but the user cannot distinguish one topic from another without more context.

It seems that Syracuse and Columbia have not launched their sites yet. Syracuse does have a beta site up that promotes a contest they are running which sounds pretty cool. I’d be interested to hear if anyone has entered it yet …

OK, now it’s your turn: Which site was your favorite and why? After seeing these sites, do you think this initiative has helped promote innovation in Universities across the nation?

Other posts that might interest you:

• UNC launches News21 multimedia project
• A critique of Columbia’s 2008 masters projects
• UNC tackles After Effects for News21 promotional video

© 11 October 2009 Innovative Interactivity.