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

Anthony Mayfield from iCrossing in his lecture ‘Journalism in the Age of Networks’ discussed the three ways a company can achieve online success. They must:

-         understand the networks within which they operate

-         be useful to them i.e. find the niche

-         and be live in their networks – putting out and receiving information

And from that I jump to YouTube. One of the biggest internet phenomena of the last few years and a platform that has in turn spawned other internet phenomena from laughing babies to ‘rickrolling’.

Many YouTube success stories are mind-boggling. People have risen from obscurity and forged a brand for themselves and from what… a few home videos.

What is shocking about YouTube is that if you look at the ‘top subscribers’ list the majority of it is comprised of people who were not famous before the site came along. The number one most subscribed channel of all time is ‘Fred’ - videos about a fictional six year old called Fred Fingelhorn with anger management issues and an alcoholic mother.

The boy behind the world-famous infant is Lucas Cruikshank a 15 year old from Nebraska. A 15 year old from Nebraska. It is hard to believe. Within two months of beginning his channel he had 250,000 subscribers. He now has 680,151.

Out of the first 20 most subscribed videos 16 are created by ‘ordinary’ people and only four by famous people like Miley Cyrus or companies like Universal Studios. Perhaps then the companies could learn a little about online success from your every day average Joes.

With this I turn to the case of Lauren Luke – one of the UK’s biggest YouTube success stories. She is the second most subscribed video in the UK beating the BBC and Leona Lewis’s channel – not bad for a shy, single mother from Southshields.

Her videos are makeup tutorials – an area in which she has no official training. Why then is she so successful?  

• Firstly, and of course, she is simply naturally talented. The content has to be top notch for a successful brand.
• Secondly, there is a lot of makeup advice online but little of it utilises the medium of film which is, of course, much more effective for makeup tutorials. Major sites like makeuptip have not yet harnessed the power of video.  
•  She performs live on camera and uploads the video without any editing and it is this rawness that I believe is key to her success. She is competing with makeup sites and professional videos where renowned makeup artists makeover models. She is, on the other hand, just a normal woman using affordable makeup and achievable effects. She appeals to all the other ‘normal’ women out there. It makes her tips more believable i.e.  if it can work on her it can work on me… 
• Of particular importance, she interacts with her followers. Her videos are always responses to ‘requests’ in messages on her wall from YouTubers addressing what ‘looks’ people want to see and she talks casually with the viewers throughout her videos.
• She is building up her brand – intentional or not. She has a facebook, myspace and twitter page. Following her fame she is now bringing out her own line of beauty products and is in talks with the Guardian over a beauty column, all the while of course asking users what they want to see her doing. 

She adheres to Anthony Mayfield’s principles and then goes beyond them. It is the ‘human factor’ that Anthony did not emphasise but I have no doubt he is completely aware of. After all, when he discussed the work iCrossing did with More Than insurance company he explained how they employed journalists to keep a blog of relevant news in order to connect with the general public. It benefited the company no end.

Ultimately what the company did was to extend a hand to its readers, person to person. This is what the successful YouTubers do – they are a new wave of celebrity that engages with their viewers on their level. With such close proximity they can understand exactly what their users want. They can read their audience like old friends. In the age of the ‘reader wants what the reader gets’, companies need to come close enough to hear the requests whispered in their ear.  

It is a trick that the bigger players are beginning to realise now. Enter:  the sudden rise of political YouTube channels like the UK Labour Party or BarackObama.com. Politicians can now pretend they are normal people like the rest of us.

Here are a few responses for magazine journalism students to what makes a successful YouTube video: 

Take Our Poll

Adam Tinworth proposed in his lecture that there are several stages a blog may pass through on its way to becoming a successful blog post. A blogger may begin simply with a link, he or she may then add a picture or video, then any of the above with context, then a discussion and perhaps further links or media, he or she will then partake in a ‘conversation’ consisting of not just of their opinion but other people’s too and finally will hope to receive feedback and be linked to so that the conversation can move forward.

I am trying out the theory so here is the evolution of a blog:

BLOG 1

Check out this article about cloning extinct animals, thought it was interesting.

BLOG 2

Check out this article about cloning extinct animals, thought it was interesting.

BLOG 3

Check out this article about cloning extinct animals, thought it was interesting.

This is the picture of a mouse which after being kept frozen for 16 years has now been successfully cloned by a Japanese team of scientists at the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan.

The mission has proved that it is in fact possible to clone animals from frozen tissue. It suggests that in the future, with further research, it may be possible to clone extinct animals such as those found buried in permafrost regions. Many news stories have touted the rise of the woolly mammoth once more…

Blog 4

 Check out this article about cloning extinct animals, thought it was interesting.

This is the picture of a mouse which after being kept frozen fro 16 years has now been successfully cloned by a Japanese team of scientists at the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan.

The mission has proved that it is in fact possible to clone animals from frozen tissue. It suggests that in the future, with further research, it may be possible to clone extinct animals such as those found buried in permafrost regions. Many news stories  have touted the rise of the wooly mammoth once more…

Previous clones used tissues taken from living animals or cells that have been carefully preserved. This new method which used cells from a frozen mouse is a rather more complicated process. Yet the project’s success has suggusted that long extinct species could undergo the same process. This is certainly not science fiction, not anymore, there is even a project underway to bring back the Tasmanian tiger. Have a look at this Youtube video taken from a documentary following a team of scientists trying to do just that.

The project currently lacks funding, but scientists are hopefully particularly as there is a well-preserved Tasmanian tiger pup in the Australian Museum.

Blog 5

 Check out this article about cloning extinct animals, thought it was interesting.

This is the picture of a mouse which after being kept frozen for 16 years has now been successfully cloned by a Japanese team of scientists at the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan.

The mission has proved that it is in fact possible to clone animals from frozen tissue. It suggests that in the future, with further research, it may be possible to clone extinct animals such as those found buried in permafrost regions. Many news stories have touted the rise of the woolly mammoth once more… 

Previous clones used tissues taken from living animals or cells that have been carefully preserved. This new method which used cells from a frozen mouse is a rather more complicated process. Yet the project’s success has suggusted that long extinct species could undergo the same process. This is certainly not science fiction, not anymore, there is even a project underway to bring back the Tasmanian tiger. Have a look at this Youtube video taken from a documentary following a team of scientists trying to do just that.

The project currently lacks funding, but scientists are hopefully particularly as there is a well-preserved Tasmanian tiger pup in the Australian Museum.

The new cloning issue like all other cloning issues is fraught with controversy. Cloning extinct species or cloning species on the brink of extinction could essentially eradicate ‘extinction’ altogether. Yet many have asked if there is any point to this? It would only sustain a small population of a species rather than tackle the wider problem of extinction which is caused by bigger issues like habitat loss and climate change. Cloning also bypasses sexual reproduction which gives a species the genetic variation that it needs.

This forum discusses the issue of cloning extinct animals. Many people pointed out the ‘unnatural’ element of what is being done – both scientifically and ethically. In terms of Darwin’s theory of natural selection adpatation and extinction have underpinned the development of all species on earth and so should we really mess with the process now? On the other hand, some people argue that species wiped out as a result of man’s actions rather than through natural selection in the wild should be given a second chance.

Matthew Yoemans in a lecture he gave discussed three new ‘powers’ that online news have over offline news. The third was: “The power to choose.” On the internet people can now choose what news they want to read, when they want to read it and how.  This new concept is driven in part by RSS feeds. I will let this video explain exactly what an RSS feed is because it can do it so much better than me:

Most newspaper or magazine websites now use RSS feeds so that readers can simply take what they want from the stories that day. The Telegraph has a vast 55 feeds altogether ranging from ‘top news’, to ‘gardening’, to ‘Chelsea‘ depending on your interest. Any feeds I subcsribe to can then be collated in a feed reader like Googlereader. Aggregators aggregated altogether…could life be easier?

Feeds are becoming ever more focused towards a readers needs to the extent that someone can now design and manage their own feeds using tools like Yahoo Pipes or Feed Rinse (check out this article praising the powers of Feed Rinse). They allow you to aggregate and filter web feeds, web pages and other services to match your exact needs. I can chisel down my already chisselled down information into the very shape I want.

The weird and wonderful world of Yahoo Pipes

RSS feeds mean that we no longer have to sift through an entire newspaper to find one story – the story comes to us. Yet as we celebrate this new age – the age where the power lies with the reader – we are reminded of how things used to be. We are told about the days when egotistical journalists felt that they knew best and would choose what news was worthy. Yet, I wonder if this relationship has not simply swung the other way? Narcissistic journalists have become narcissistic readers.

If you ask someone if they read the news and they reply ‘no’ then you might perhaps consider them ‘ignorant’ of the world’s events. If you ask someone if they read the news and they reply ‘only what I want to read’ would you still consider them ignorant?

With RSS feeds that can be tailored more and more tightly to a person’s interests there is the danger that his or her view of the world may become skewed. Do RSS feeds encourage us to see the world from only our own viewpoint? Someone who subscribes to only economic news feeds might have let the recent human rights crisis in Congo pass them by. In extreme cases those who already have narrow points of view may simply be able to reinforce these by ignoring the news they do not wish to hear.

Aleks Krotoski in her Guardian blog discusses the concept of virtual worlds – a place where everything is personalised and tailored to the user’s wants. For example, in an online world you can immediately identify those with the same interests and then interact with them. Yet she claims, “It’s at once exciting and sinister: more common ground from the get-go means getting down to business more quickly, but the  fine art of small talk becomes obsolete, as well as its welcome offshoot, discovering something new”. Her point is clearly relevant to the age of RSS feeds. Are we giving up the process of discovery? 

I am, however, never one to blame the tool. I am simply discussing the pros and cons. How a tool is used is always down to the individual and whilst feeds may help some readers ignore certain news they help others engage with news like never before offering a quick and easy service. In many ways RSS feeds also mean that a lot of news which may normally be ignored is now pushed to the forefront. For example charity websites which may have found it hard to project news specific to their field into the public domain can now use RSS feeds doing just that on their front pages.

The aggregator is certainly not going to go anywhere either – the RSS feed has become, in a short time, an integral part of online news and it’s what the reader wants and what the reader wants they are going to get. That’s just how it goes online.

Museums have always understood the power of multimedia storytelling. To interest an audience they cannot simply give us the facts, history must become a story. Some museums even allow people to enact the story for themselves – dressing up and pretending they really did go to that terrifying Victorian school.

I went down to an exhibition in Cardiff called “When we were young” to see what different multimedia it called upon to tell the stories. As I walked in I could hear the sounds of children playing in the schoolyard. Around the room were information boards coupled with cartoons and pictures and in other areas there were flip boards with questions on one side and answers on the other. It used objects to generate stories by placing the object next to a question like,  “What special day did Denise get this purse?” encouraging the reader to then find the answer in an ‘object file’. There were touch and feel draws, a play area and it even used videos from ‘Capture Wales’ with local residents telling stories about growing up in Cardiff.

Exhibits from "When we were young"

Where then does the online part come in? Well, if you want to see how the museum is evolving look to the internet. In my first blog I discussed the rise of Flash journalism, where multimedia in all of its wonderful formats are brought together to tell the story (or many stories) of a particular subject.

A flash project about Kurdistan uses many different types of media to portray the turbulent history of the country. It even has a story map compiled of different people’s stories each with their own personal layout and a section where people can identify and give information about anonymous pictures.

Whilst websites and traditional museums both harness the power of multi-media storytelling the web has even more to offer. It can reach out to a much wider audience and this audience does not simply visit the museum but participates in its creation. 

Kurdish culture has for decades been repressed and there is no national archive. The website provides a space that people have never had before where they can document, through multimedia stories, the history of Kurdistan. The people have now become the museum curators. The stories are more ours than ever and they have no limits. The website is borderless – it can be constantly added to and the story will continue to grow in all directions and from all points of view.

The multimedia storytelling experience is arguably more streamlined on the web too. Video, text, picture, sound can be brought together seamlessly and in ever more creative and artistic ways. However if you want that authentic moving dinosaur experience I would still advise you to go to a real museum…  

Alison Gow’s blog compares journalism using web 1.0 with web 2.0. Web 2.0 is comparable to marmite except rather than the love-hate combination it either terrifies or exhilarates the reader.

Discussion has raged since the lecture about this blog. Many feel that it is too much to ask of a journalist. Once a story has been written when is there possibly time to add links, geotagging, downloadable podcasts, timelines, twitter feeds, blog developments, blog feedback, youtube videos to an article? 

I believe that – love it or hate it – we should not fear it. The list of web 2.0 journalistic possibilities is seemingly endless but what is forgotten is that a story does not have to employ every tool. They simply offer the journalist more creative licence than ever – he or she can choose what tools might be appropriate for their story. The story will determine the appropriate form.

Many of these tools also facilitate a journalist rather than make their life harder. Take for example Gow’s list on researching a story. She is simply pointing out that the web is a new resource, a big melting pot of information that can be called upon at whim. A journalist can find experts, use feedback, blogs or online polls to help them. We are all guilty of over using the web because it is so incredibly useful. If anything we should not be complaining over having too many tools but trying to discipline ourselves to not use them all.

People have also been worrying that web 2.0 overloads the reader. It provides them with endless links and options until they feel ready to explode and simply turn to the trusty newspaper once more. The days of an easy life, they sigh.

Front page from Times Online website

I decided to test this theory. I looked at a a typical online newspaper, Times Online, to see how many of Alison’s web 2.0 tools it employs and whether it felt ‘overwhelming’. 

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1. The articles can be found through a search box on the site or through its archive section.

2. The home page has the main stories of the day but also offers the ‘most read’, ‘most commented’ and ‘most curious’ stories of the day.

3. Within a typical article there are few links embedded within the text itself but around the article using the page space there are many different kinds of link. For example around an article about the Royal Bank of Scotland there are links along top to other economic articles, within the piece there are ‘Related Links’, the right side bar has ‘Times Recommends” with more articles, a quote search from companies, a world market timeline, market watch, links to other areas such as technology and politics articles that may be relevant and finally a ‘need a lawyer box’ a lawyer matching service the Times has now evolved in these times of dire need.

4. The website uses pictures, slideshows and videos depending upon the story as well as a photo gallery area and Times Online TV.

5. Readers can ‘comment’ on any article written though with rare replies from the journalist who wrote the piece. There is also a feedback area which is currently asking users to comment on the new ‘look’ for the newspaper.

6. After reading the article the reader can then print it, email it or post it on delicious, yahoo, fark or digg.

7. If the reader decides they have enjoyed their reading experience and would like to see more they can use the many different kinds of RSS feeds, join the e newsletter, twitter feed, facebook group, flickr group, podcasts, and track back?

8. There is also an option to create your own profile where the site can be further tailored to your needs.

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There is, however, a lack of links to writers’ blogs despite the vast blog pool available. There does not appear to rough blog drafts of articles either or geotagging for the raw ‘in the process’ experience. There is also no online chat room.

However most of Gow’s web 2.0 boxes have been neatly ticked and yet when I access the Times Online website there is no confusion, there is no panic, no outrage. The site employs an effective interface. Everything seems to link seamlessly together and I can drift from page to page if I so wish, delving deeper into my topic of choice, or read the article and simply close the window.  I have the choice of a newspaper and the choice of the web at my fingertips. How far you wish to travel down the labyrinth is up to you.

A video that investigates the ‘battle’ between old and new media

The parents of a happy slapping victim in a video uploaded to YouTube spoke out about the corrupting influence of the internet. Her father even declared that, “MySpace is the Anti-Christ for children!” But to blame the web is like saying a park should be closed down because someone has been assaulted within its boundaries. 

This turns people’s attention to regulation. If it can’t be stopped then it can damn well be regulated – so the traditionalists might think. What should be regulated? How can it be regulated? Should regulation vary depending upon the website/country? The debate rages on.

To me, citizen journalism can be loosely separated into opinion and news-based output. Spaces where citizens can upload news content –‘at the scene’ videos and pictures or personal accounts – I believe should be regulated. Or you could end up with this kind of problem. We all have a responsibility to make sure that news comes as close to truth as possible.

Opinion, however, is an interpretation of what has happened and I don’t believe it can be or should be policed. Blogs and forums are at the heart of opinion-based journalism. While some may be filled with expert insight, others may be a series of lies. People should be encouraged to question everything they read. I don’t see how this is a bad lesson to learn. It’s also arguably easier to explore all sides of a story on the web than anywhere else…

What is often forgotten is that the web is alive. If something incorrect is published on the web then it’s likely to get caught out by the hundreds of other users who have expert knowledge over the topic in question. Jemima Kiss in her article, Citizen journalism: dealing with dinosaurs, recalls how Dan Rather lost his job at CBS after a story he broadcast about Bush’s war record was found to be incorrect by the internet-using public. To be exact, a group of right wing bloggers and an expert on typewriter fonts pointed out the mistake. Jeff Jarvis defends citizen journalism in his blog referring to this self-correcting nature of the web.

On the web, there is a wealth of expertise available in all sorts of subjects, from typewriter fonts to High School Musical (I personally would not mess with the latter). Professional journalists can use this expertise to help them or, God forbid, make them check their stories more thoroughly.

The internet is all of it – I hate to use the flower analogy again but, yes, it really is the mixed bouquet. I would rather be exposed to it all: opinon, user generated news, even happy slapping than to lose this new found freedom. We are not the ones with the real worries. It’s those places in the world that do not have an open debate, where free speech is not a given, that do. Groundviews, a Sri Lankan citizen journalism website, was launched in December 2006. In Sri Lanka, human rights have been bypassed for decades and such a site is seen as a gift loaded with democratic potential.

Rather than wasting our energy on internal discussions about citizen journalism we should be trying to expand what is a currently a very limited conversation. We need to be engaging with citizens in countries where freedom of speech is not taken for granted, encouraging those in our own country who aren’t partaking, tackling opposition to net neutrality and trying to provide laptops to the deprived (there are some who are trying). We need to stop whining and start looking at the bigger picture.