Multimedia journalism

Exploring Soul – Ohio University’s 2010 Soul of Athens

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An impressive array of student-run multimedia projects have hit the internet in recent years and one of the most well-known is Ohio University’s Soul of Athens. Now in its fourth year, the 2010 iteration has recently been released and (II) asked me to take a look.

Wanting to know more about the project I started a conversation with Stan Alost, Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Visual Communications program at OU.

Stan runs the Soul of Athens “company,” a word they use for a specific purpose that I’ll get into later.

First a little background. Soul began in 2007 with an insanely talented group that included Zach Wise, Chad A. Stevens, Bob Sacha, Bruce Strong and many others. That first project set the parameters of finding stories that worked within certain themes, and illuminated certain aspects of the Athens Ohio community.

That idea has continued, but the management and creation of the project has evolved. Current students must apply to be a part of what is now a 10-week, variable credit class, and they are chosen based on the skill sets they can bring and for those they would like to work on during the project.

Once the course begins Alost said, “we quit calling it a class and talk instead of the media company we have created. Then we focus on creating, designing and producing another publication from scratch in less than 10 weeks. Our goal is to provide students with a chance to practice what we preach, to provide a model for the industry, to push the envelope of communication and to serve our community.”

This struck me as one of the most interesting aspects of the Soul project. Ohio University (and others) have recognized the big role that small publications play in this changing media environment. Small, collaborative groups that leverage teamwork and creativity are an increasingly viable model for journalism (see ProPubilica, MediaStorm, Duck Rabbit, etc). In replicating that environment OU has created a course that will better prepare their students for life outside of academia.

The creative environment of this project sounds like a collaborative dream. Students pitch stories to one another, work individually or with teams on those stories and discuss design and web development issues over weekly meetings. Discussions range from user interface and coding issues to ethics and content ideas.

“We empower students and it is wonderful to see them step up and wrestle with the real world,” Alost said.

That wrestling develops into a massive project with dozens of stories wrapped within many thousands of lines of code. The organization of the project has always been a challenge for Soul, and this year’s team worked out a simple and elegant solution.

In years past the site was launched with each theme given a prominent position on the landing page. The user would then parse through each category looking for a story. It worked for sure, but the amount of content could at times be overwhelming.

This year the Soul team decided on a staggered launch of the site, choosing to release each theme in two week intervals. The most recent theme is the default landing page, and all previous themes are given a link in the menu bar. Each page is given a color scheme that helps distinguish it from the others, and I found the overall look and feel to be much simpler and easier to digest.

With this new design certain stories are given prominence as “Featured Projects,” and I appreciated that they decided to more actively curate their work. Additionally, the team decided to make use of some of the interactive qualities of a .pdf, and have included magazine-style downloadable layouts of their projects that leverage print, graphic design, photography and, in some cases, video. It’s an interesting option that will hopefully better incorporate print journalism into this largely visual project.

Social networking is given its due with the capability of “liking” or commenting via Facebook. Twitter makes an appearance via a continually updating feed of tweets about Athens, Ohio. Surprisingly, there is no direct way of sharing a project, either by providing a link or an embed code. While it’s simple enough to copy the url, I think making it easy for the user to share such wonderful content is important.

Those projects are wrapped in a player that, with a quick check of the code, have the ability to work on both mobile and desktop browsers. As an iPad owner, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this accessibility.

In general I appreciated the layout and simplicity of the new design, and furthermore the level of care and attention that this group of students has taken in creating a truly important archive of stories. At its heart, this project is about the small community of Athens, Ohio, and it has additionally become a vessel for students to experience an increasingly relevant model of journalism. Both are lofty and important goals, and I hope to see this project continue to develop over the course of many years to come.

The most recent edition of the Soul project, titled “Experience,” was released today.

Here are some of my favorite projects from the 2010 Soul of Athens project:

• What You Have
• Wee Wrestling
• The Walls Speak

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About the author: Currently the Director of Multimedia at the Maine Media Workshops and Maine Media College, Tim McLaughlin is a photographer, multimedia documentarian and educator located in Rockport, ME. Originally from Louisville KY., Tim has his masters of fine arts from the University of Florida and a bachelors from Centre College, but owes a great deal to the two years he spent at Western Kentucky University. Tim has worked with MediaStorm, the Eddie Adams Workshop, the Rocky Mountain News, the Mountain Workshops and most recently shot a film for the Rotterdam Film Festival.

Other posts that might interest you:

• UNC launches latest multimedia project, “Living Galapagos”
• Introducing Honduras and the Hidden Hunger
• University of Miami students personify United Nations Millennium Development Goals in documentary project “My Story, My Goal”

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