Telling a story in a multimedia world Telling stories in a multi-platform world involves several choices. They won’t all apply to every story, but you should consider them with every story:
Consider the full package Consider all “layers” of your story package. Too many reporters play a passive role in the presentation of their stories. Then they complain about a fact box that was redundant, a headline that gives away the ending or a multimedia element that duplicates the story. Or they may complain when editors want to cut out a chunk of the story that doesn’t quite fit. Even though other professionals will complete the package, it’s your story and it will bear your name. Take an active role in the planning. Suggest a headline. Yours might not fit the design. Or a copy editor might improve on your idea, because the copy editor is more experienced at that difficult art. But suggesting a headline conveys to the editors what you think is most important (and writing the headline helps you focus, too). Raise photo, design, graphic, multimedia, interactive and database possibilities. Perhaps your story and the visual presentation would benefit from pulling out your explanation of a process and turning that into a graphic or sidebar. Or some important numbers that would bog down your prose might make an excellent graphic. The other professionals will not necessarily follow your ideas. The package benefits from the creativity of each of the journalists involved and from your active involvement. Consider the user. Consider what job this story is doing for the user. Are you amusing, informing, giving useful information? The job that the story does will often help you decide how to tell it. Also consider who your audience for the story is. These considerations about potential users will guide some of your decisions about how to tell the story. Be first with the news The ridiculous concerns about “scooping yourself” online have finally been put to rest in much of the newspaper industry. Before the Web, we had to concede an advantage to broadcast media in covering breaking news. Now we can and must own breaking news. It drives web traffic and it marks your organization as the place to turn for news. So reporters need to learn what to break online and how to write an unfolding story. Accuracy still rules. When you cover a breaking news story online, basic rules on accuracy and verification don’t waver. Your standard of completeness changes, but not your standard of accuracy. You can report a one-sentence bulletin that emergency crews are responding to a fire call at City Hall. You know that much for sure. You heard the call on a police scanner. Updates will present more facts as you verify them: It turned out to be a false alarm. Or a black cloud of smoke is rising from City Hall. File the news bulletins and updates however you can. A wireless-equipped laptop is the best tool for filing breaking news. But you can email or text-message from a phone or PDA or call an editor and dictate. Whatever your tools, whatever the situation, the reporter’s job is to get key facts online as soon as you can verify them. Tell the story. After you have filed the first few facts as bulletins and brief updates, consider a writethru for a significant story. This will give your web users an overview of the story and give you an early draft of your print version of the story. Consider multimedia Consider video. Video is especially important to young users who are enjoying video on YouTube and other Internet sites. You need to make it an important part of your storytelling toolbox. If you’re covering an event, video can almost always be part of the story package. If characters are telling you interesting stories, let them tell part of the story in their own voice on a video clip. How you handle video will depend on how your organization is staffing for multimedia: Giving video cameras to reporters or photographers or designating full-time videographers. Whatever the staffing responsibilities, you don’t have to shoot all the video yourself. More and more of life is captured on video. You can ask for official videos and home videos that will help you tell the story. Consider audio. Digital audio recorders let us capture the voices of your characters. Telling stories in audio form allows users to download them to iPods and listen to them as they travel or work. Again, you don’t have to gather all the audio yourself. Recordings of official meetings or emergency phone calls or police radio traffic can bring extra dimensions to a story. Consider slide shows. Slide shows let us tell stories in still photographs much more powerfully than the few photographs you have space for in your print edition. Consider sound slides. Sometimes a video of a character speaking is pretty static visually. Put that voice over a slide show relating to the story, and you have a strong storytelling tool. Consider virtual reality. If the place you are writing about is important, you can show it to the user in a detailed interactive way by shooting 360-degree photographs and editing them into a steerable virtual reality that lets the user see what the place really looks like. You can get the software to edit still photos into VR at download.com. Consider PowerPoints. Increasingly, the people we write about use PowerPoint slide shows to explain issues to their peers and staffs. We can use those same slide shows (or develop shows of our own) to explain the issues to our users. Keep in mind that most PowerPoints are accompanied by a person explaining the context of what you are seeing or connecting some dots. Consider whether you need some audio to accompany the slide show or some extra slides that provide that context or connection. Consider simulations. Many of your user grew up on video games. Your stories will be more meaningful online if you can offer simulations that help them try their skill at something you are writing about or use a game-like simulation to experience it more richly. You may not have to produce the simulations yourself. If the military or a contractor uses a simulation for a topic you’re writing about, see if you can get something to use online to help tell the story. Consider animations. Computer animations can illustrate processes, such as how a new weapon or industrial process will work. Again, you don’t have to produce the animations yourself. But if you can obtain an animation, it would enhance the multimedia presentation of your story. Consider source documents. Source documents let your audience dig into a story as deeply as they want. Some will be satisfied with your quote or two from the report or the indictment. Others will want to read the full document themselves. Whether as pdfs of paper documents or as links to online documents, add credibility and depth to your stories by adding the source documents. Don’t just do this with official documents. Love letters, old newspaper clippings and private journals can add depth and credibility to your stories as well. Consider your archives. Many stories are really just chapters. Give your stories context by providing links to previous stories on this issue or related topics. Consider interactivity You can turn your user into a participant by making your story interactive. You can do this on at least four levels:
Consider crowd-sourcing. Crowd-sourcing helps you connect with participants who know what you’re trying to find out in your reporting. You use your web edition to connect with people who know something about the topic you’re writing about. Sometimes you will need to word the invitation carefully, so you’re not passing along rumors or tipping off competition. But you invite your users to tell you what they know. Crowd-sourcing can help you connect with confidential sources or obtain official documents in an investigation. Crowd-sourcing can provide quick answers on a breaking news story. Crowd-sourcing can gather stories for a light feature. You can use the product of crowd-sourcing in multiple ways:
Consider a wiki or discussion thread. If you’re covering an event or issue, you could invite participants to tell their own story – either as a standalone or to supplement your own coverage – either as a wiki that each user adds to and edits what has been written before or as a discussion forum, where each contribution adds to what has come before. Consider a live online chat. Either the reporter or a source (or both) could make your story interactive by doing a live online chat with your audience. Consider databases and calculators. Users can personalize your stories when you provide databases that allow them to find the information that applies most closely to them. For instance, if the city approves an increase in property taxes, an online calculator can help each user decide how much his own increase will be. Or if you’re writing about falling test scores in schools, a database can allow users to find the numbers for their own children’s schools. Interactive maps are an effective database. The user can click on her neighborhood and get the information that means the most to her. Consider discussion forums. If you’ve produced a good story, it should draw reaction from your audience. By establishing a forum for discussion, you allow the audience to consider the story with their opinions, experiences and questions. This may generate tips for follow-up stories. Or it may be a discussion that deepens the experience, however long it lasts. Consider polls. A poll lets the audience participate in the story by adding their opinions. Be careful not to present an online poll as scientific. It measures passion more than it measures opinion. Consider alternate story forms Many stories or parts of stories are told most effectively in forms other than the traditional string of paragraphs. Consider whether all or part of your story should be told in the forms described below. An alternate story form can be a sidebar to a main story in the traditional paragraph format. Or the alternate form can become the story, either as a standalone or with the string of paragraphs as the sidebar. Consider whether your story would work best as a grid, graphic, board game, timeline, list, series of vignettes, quiz or some other alternate form. Information layers Timelines. A timeline places a specific event or series of events in context with other events. This can be simple text or you can turn it into a graphic or perhaps illustrate with photos of some of the events. You can combine a timeline with a map, showing how an event unfolded through space and time. An online timeline can be interactive, with extra layers of information at points on the timeline as you click on them or roll your cursor over them. Chronologies. A chronology details how an event unfolded. A chronology can be all text or can tie into a map or diagram that explains key steps. If you don’t have a map or diagram, photos of key people or events might enhance the chronology. Again, you can make an interactive chronology online that includes layered information. Glossaries. A glossary explains terminology relating to a particular issue. This doesn’t absolve the writer from explaining some terms in context in the story, but gives an opportunity for more detailed definitions. Again, visual elements can be part of a graphic, with photos or drawings of some of the words defined. As with other layers, an online glossary can be interactive – click on the word and you get the definition, illustration, etc. Use-It Boxes. Pull out useful information for the reader into a box that attracts the eye quickly. This may be something the user will be looking for later when she returns to the story. Use-it’s, also called go-and-do boxes, might have date and time of an event, ticket price, location, a phone number for more information, how to make donations, how to volunteer, who can participate, web sites, etc. Consider how the user might act in response to your story. If you write a story that moves the user to act, put the information that tells her how to act in one place that’s easy to find. What’s-next box. Especially in a running story, consider a box telling the audience what to expect next. This is essential in a series. Tables, charts and graphs. If you have more than two related numbers, consider presenting them in a table, chart or graph. Numbers almost always work better in one of these formats than in prose. The more numbers you use, the more important that you simplify them in one of these forms. Again, you can make these interactive online. Statistics. Does your story include statistical information that can be presented in an understandable typographical table as a separate element, such as a box score? Databases. Consider whether the story should include a searchable database online, allowing the user to find the information that helps her personalize the story and find the most meaningful information to her. A database can be a onetime feature that accompanies the story or it can become part of the “evergreen” content that increases your web site’s value. Sometimes you can program a database so it updates automatically as new information is posted online elsewhere. Cast of characters. If the story involves several people, consider a separate element with mug shots of the characters and thumbnail sketches. This can be simple biographical information or it can include fun facts that don’t really fit into the narrative but add to the character development of the total package. This is another element that can be interactive online. Bio box. If you’re writing about a particular newsmaker, consider a box with some basic information – age, education, occupation, family and perhaps a fun fact or two. With both the bio box and the cast of characters, some overlap with the story is inevitable and desirable. But exact duplication is a waste of your space and the user’s time. Make the bio box or cast of characters mostly new information. Mug shots or even a wide candid shot add to a cast of characters or a bio box. (A note about the “boxes” referred to here: Whether you actually box them with a border is a matter of design style for your paper. If the borders of your box are white space, call them windows or breakouts if you prefer. Or make up your own terminology that works for your staff.) The online bio box can include links to video or slide shows about the newsmaker. Fact boxes. Sometimes, especially with a complicated story, a fact box summarizing key points is helpful to the reader. By the numbers. You can bring several disparate facts about a story together in an easy and eye-catching way in a “by the numbers” box that features the numbers in large type and explains them in smaller type. Comparisons. These can be informative, comparing features of an existing law with a pending bill, or humorous, listing what’s in and what’s out. You can do a comparison as simple text side-by-side in two columns. But some photos or other art will make it more appealing. Again, the online comparison can be interactive, with layers that provide greater depth. Grids. A grid can relate facts in multiple ways, either as a comparison or to tell stories of multiple events in parallel fashion. For instance, you can recount turn-of-the-screw meetings in grid fashion, with a different column for each board or commission and with rows identifying name of the board, actions taken and what’s next. Grids are great for comparisons when you have more than two items being compared or more than two ways of comparing items. Lists. Lists almost always work better as a separate element, even if it’s just text, than in the prose of a story. Pull quotes. Does a particular quote seem to sum up the story? Consider highlighting it in a box, perhaps with a photo of the speaker. Pull quotes often are just design devices. Use them for more than just breaking up the type. Find the quote that helps summarize or tell the story. The online version of the pull-quote can be an audio clip. Fresh quotes. Don’t just highlight duplicated quotes that you pull from the story. You might present some quotes – either from characters in the story or person-in-the-street quotes from a news event – that stand on their own, giving the reader another layer of the story. These can run with or without photos of the speakers. You can also use quotes – fresh or from the story – as reefers. Rails and strips. You can pull a mix of these different elements together in a vertical rail or a horizontal strip that will help frame your package and give the browsing reader several layers to draw her into the story. In the online presentation, a rail can have links that allow the user to choose where to go more deeply into the story. Sidebars. Remember the old standby of sidebars. You can use a sidebar for any of a variety of reasons: Perhaps the information would disrupt the flow of the main story. Or maybe it would get lost in the main story and really deserves its own headline. A sidebar doesn’t have to be displayed as a story. Consider whether it would work in one of these other formats discussed here, such as a fact box or a Q&A. Q&A’s . Some information works better in question-and-answer format than in a string of paragraphs. Visual layers Staff photographs. Can your staff shoot pictures of the people, places and events of your story? How can photos help tell the story? How can they draw the user's attention to the story? Plan early with the photo staff. Don’t be bashful about making suggestions, but respect the professional skill of the photographer to come up with better ideas than you might suggest. Official photographs. If you can’t shoot live photographs, seek official photographs of some of the people you are writing about. Archival photographs. Check your files, paper and electronic, for historical photographs that may tell part of the story. Donated photographs. Ask the characters you interview for photographs they have taken that might show events or places where you were not present. Seek candid photographs and mug shots of dead or missing people you write about. Seek youthful photographs of people you write about, if your story will deal with that period in their lives. User-contributed photographs. Does the story present an opportunity to seek photographs from the audience that will help tell the story? Users can help tell the story in print or online in lots of ways. If you are covering a spot-news event that happened before your staff could reach the scene, you can ask online whether any users shot timely photos. If you are covering a communitywide event such as a storm or a big event such as a parade or festival, users can add their pictures to your staff’s professional photography. Illustrations. A staff photographer or artist might be able to create an effective illustration to help tell the story and attract the eye. Or a character might be able to provide illustrations done by others. Artist’s renderings. When your community is planning a new building or project, the architect, engineer or developer usually can provide an illustration showing how it will look when finished. Maps. A simple locator map might help the user understand where an event took place. Or a complex map might show how and where an event unfolded. Diagrams. If the user might wonder “how did that happen?” or “how does that work?” consider a diagram to provide a clearer answer than you can in prose. Again, you can produce a staff-generated diagram or you might come across a diagram in your reporting that you can use with permission and credit.
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