Ch-Ch-Changes: How Multimedia Storytelling Is Changing The Face Of Journalism
Multimedia storytelling is giving journalism a face-lift by providing more outlets to give further dimensions to a story. The boom of such multimedia enhancements like podcasts and media sites like, YouTube have made it possible for journalists to extend the story into further discovery for their readers. Integrating these web advancements into a webpage gives the story a certain flair, a flair that keeps readers attracted to the webpage as a whole. Since readers of blogs and websites like something quick and easy to digest, audio and video have become an enhancement over text.
For newspapers, it has become the way to extend readers interest beyond the paper pages and into interactivity. When newspapers decided to put their paper pages online, their purpose was to keep the journalistic quality intact but give their readers another outpost to go deeper into their news as well as produce the news as quickly as it is happening. This is where forums/message boards come into play as another form of multimedia that adds to a webpage, giving it interactivity between readers of the paper/site. Interactivity is the core value of what multimedia storytelling is, as it takes the concept of kindergarten class “Show n’ Tell” and gives it a sleeker “adult” edge. YouTube, blogs, podcasts and the like are really just a technological show n’ tells, where information is shared to a wide-eyed and eager audience.
From personal experience on my own blog, I have found adding multimedia to it has improved the look and feel of the site. As I run a music blog, streaming audio and video are sort of essential to the blog, because you can’t really feel the music unless you hear it or even see it. In my short blogging span, I’ve noticed that the sites that failed, were the ones that were too wordy, without a picture or a video in sight. Adding multimedia such as video and audio, have given each post that is crafted a whole new feel than just reading a stream of text. It also has helped break up blocks of text into chunks, which proves to be easier for my readers to soak in, especially if they just want to read one segment of the post and not the full length of it. Not to mention, audio, photos and video makes your site/blog look less boring and gives it its own personality which will drive readers to its URL.
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You’re right on point! You’re going to increase a readers’ engagement by adding the visual and interactive elements. You have first hand experience. As journalists, we have to look at how we look at these tools as ways to get more readers excited about what we’re doing.