What a Concept!

Northeastern University Journalism Professor Bill Kirtz covered the recent Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism in Boston for Poynter. The article is a great round up of the conference with some good tips on narrative journalism but the thing that makes me so happy about the article, is the focus on content over presentation, a concept I thought was nearly lost in today's world of video and multimedia. This is the section that will probably have me posting on HappyJournalist.com pretty soon:

"It's Just a Platform"

New York Times multimedia editor Andrew DeVigal called new media "just a platform. Story and story-telling hasn't changed." He said that because audio storytelling is the "low hanging fruit" of multimedia, many news organizations are now producing slideshows and photo galleries on a regular basis.

The easiest route is adding audio to a story tied to great narration, he said, noting that The New York Times put together an eyewitness account of Benazir Bhutto's assassination -- a photographer's voice describing his pictures -- within a few hours.

Since only 20 percent of The New Yorker's online readers subscribe, the magazine's multimedia editor, Matt Dellinger, called multimedia a great way to "extend our brand." Material is easy to find, he said, such as archival films of conductors used to enhance an article on symphony orchestras. He and other speakers noted that using subjects' own voices, like soldiers reading from their Iraq journals, is another quick way to dramatize a story. Dellinger said each non-print element "has to have its own narrative integrity. It has to add value and be complete in and ... of itself."

If multimedia is just "bells and whistles," don't use it, said Laura Ruel, assistant professor of visual communication and multimedia at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and project leader for Poynter's Eyetrack III research. Ruel said good multimedia storytelling shouldn't distract from the story. Use audio and video only when appropriate; not every story is worth telling with multimedia. And make sure users can find their way around the site.

I think this is fantastic! I have a solemn confession to make. If I'm on a newspaper's Web site, and there is a link to a video, 99 percent of the time I won't click on it because I have a crappy old computer that runs slower than cold molasses when I try to play video and it's just not worth it to me unless the content is there. Yes, we all need to know how to be multimedia journalists but I truly believe that overdoing it is just as bad as not doing it at all.

It all comes down to this editing and filtering thing I was ranting about in an earlier post. It's the job of the newspapers to present real, interesting news to readers that showcases the news in the clearest, most informative way possible. Throwing every kind of presentation we can at a reader at every opportunity I think only distracts from truly good journalism.