Golden Gates: The San Francisco Chronicle’s Multimedia Package
The San Francisco Chronicle's newspaper's front page
The San Francisco Chronicle‘s website is partnered up with SFGate.com, which is the city’s main website for local news and features. The site is broken up into it’s two halves, as there is a side-bar on the left side indicating the SFGate.com section, while the main block of the page looks reminiscent of the city’s newspaper.
Looking over at the left-hand side, under the subhead: News & Features, is where we can see in tiny type, the multimedia sections of the site: Audio Slide show, Video Reports and Photo Gallery. From first glance, these sections are almost hidden on the page, due to the tiny type and being not a prominent feature on the Chronicle’s main page. It gives the impression that the Chronicle doesn’t consider the multimedia a huge part of their forte, as you almost have to do some looking to find these sections.
Aside from that fact, what do these sections have to offer individually? Let’s take a look-see…
SF Chronicle’s photo gallery is quite extensive as it features photos spanning from classic photos (The 1906 earthquake photos) to current event photos (President Obama’s Inauguration photos). It’s not organized by year, or by category, which would be helpful as there is a bit of scrolling to be done. It’s organized in a simple way, with the featured photos at the top, and the rest below it. I had some trouble with viewing the older photo galleries as there was an “server error” but I was able to view the featured photo galleries. The galleries are laid out nicely and the pictures are in large high resolution with explanatory captions. There are also sound clips embedded on each picture that deliver more information about the pictures.
The video section of the Chronicle’s site is also a simple and organized page. There is a main video where on the right side are the featured videos for different sub-topics. There are some nice navigational tabs, that display different subjects such as news, food and entertainment, and once clicked, you can see videos for those topics. The videos are of good quality and the sound in them is audible. The videos are filmed like documentaries, some without commentary. The video I viewed was about the opening of the Bay Bridge. It was somewhat boring as there wasn’t any commentary and it just showed bird’s eye views of the bridge and also took us into the car of a possible reporter as they made their way onto the bridge. The film was professionally done, but there was a “so what?” quality to the point of the video’s existence. The video about San Francisco’s hospice was better executed as there was commentary that wrapped around a better story. The video section does do the site justice, though it seems a little too simple to be the site’s main attraction.
The audio slideshow’s seems like a new feature for the site as there are only two featured, and once again, I had difficulty viewing them as there was another “server error”. Hmm… So I couldn’t actually view these slideshows due to this error, which is a little disappointing.
Aside from some “service errors”, The San Francisco Chronicle’s website does in fact have a well put together multimedia package. Yet, from the first look, the package is probably just in the warming-up stages, as there isn’t a lot of videos, photos and audio slideshows to view and the layouts of all three are simple and a little boring. Yet, the simplicity is welcomed with this package, as they give a break from the usual news website multimedia packages, which can sometimes be bogged down with too much visual eye candy that can rot your patience.
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Excellent job! Love the use of the thumbnails, and “chunking” the copy.