Flash Journalism – from all angles…
You only have to look at the Turner nominees this year to see that artists are going to ever more bizarre lengths to “capture” modern existence. Cathy Wilkes’s creation involves a female mannequin sitting on a toilet, near a checkout counter with pieces of wood and horseshoes drooping from her face… Is the simple painting no longer enough? Apparently not. Perhaps Wilkes believes that life has simply become too complicated for a straightforward narrative. Journalism would certainly agree now that it’s harnessed the power of web 2.0. Is the simple morning paper no longer enough? Apparently not…
Newspaper Out Flash In
Online journalism no longer follows the linear narrative of print. It has embraced the age of multi-media. It will now attack all your senses from all angles with pictures, video, text, audio, forums, chat, links, widgets, feeds, games… anything that can be used to tell the story. Yet Flash programming goes even further. It is redefining the concept of narrative entirely.
Jim Ray, a producer on the broadband team at MSNBC.com, explains that Flash allows them to, “put together audio, video, still pictures and text in a single format and put it out as an executable file. There’s not much else that really allows us to do that across platforms.” Flash, however, cannot be summed up so easily. It needs to be experienced. It is an experience – that’s the entire point.
HERE’S A FEW EXAMPLES SO YOU CAN DO JUST THAT:
- The Washington Post website utilisesd Flash in its coverage of the 2002 Area Sniper Shootings:
It is composed of an interactive map with individual markers for each victim that can be clicked on. Fourteen deaths. No matter how many times I say this in my head it never has the same impact as this visual alternative. A click reveals something not usually exposed in such a case – the faces of each victim, their details, the location of their death and the circumstances. Perhaps the Washington Post felt the story needed to be told in a new way. If you compare it to your average news story on the same subject the difference is marked: story 1, story 2, story 3.
- 360° an exploration of the American criminal justice system:
The name says it all. There does not need to be a traditional ‘angle’ behind a story, Flash means it can be approached from any, even every, angle and beyond this can show how each angle interacts. A 360° degree view you might even say…
Within the site you can follow the stories of multiple individuals from criminals to correctional officers, parole officers, judges and the victims. I clicked into the story of Cristabel who at fifteen took a razor blade to a rival classmate’s face and received six and a half years at Rhode Island Training School for Youth. I could see a video of her prison cell, hear her audio diary, listen to views of others involved in her case (including the victim) and then leave my own comments.
The site hopes that it can break barriers between different groups in society and Flash means that you can literally do just this – in only a click you can jump from person to person across cultural, racial and gender divides and learn about each. Human sympathy can be more easily tapped into – or at least this is the hope.
FLASH BENEFITS DO NOT STOP THERE, IT HAS OTHERS
1. Journalists can find the form that fits the story.
2. The users meanwhile are able to choose how they want to experience the story.
3. A Flash website itself can continue to develop. Today’s news is not thrown away but remains in a constant state of evolution.
After several hours of clicking my way through a maze of websites I do begin to wonder if there can ever be too much information. Mark Adams, a multimedia producer, pinpoints a potential drawback, “It’s easy to put too much in there and overwhelm folks”. However a topic like the American Justice System is overwhelming. Isn’t it? Flash at least gives this information structure and a interface for users to seamlessly click their way through.
It’s hard to imagine what forms Flash will take over the next few years. Visions of ‘Second Life’ meets ‘online journalism’ come to mind – walking around in a virtual news world and clicking on the Houses of Parliament to see what’s going on there…joining live protests…finding my avatar the right outfit… it could all just be a few years away.
I did my own little Flash project based on an article that I wrote using Vuvox . In comparison to the above sites it is very simplistic, a mix of audio and visual information, but I recommend Vuvox for those wanting to try out Flash for themselves.
Carrot Mashup
