The Future of Storytelling in the Digital Age: Strategic Thinking for Online Journalism

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The Future of Storytelling in the Digital Age
Strategic Thinking for Online Journalism

• Nora Paul
• Institute for New Media Studies
• University of Minnesota

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Without tradition,

• art

----news

• is a flock of sheep without
• a shepherd.
• Without innovation, it is a corpse.
• Winston Churchill

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New News Experience

• New relationships with readers
• New community communication spaces
• New context and links to material
• New story forms using multiple media

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The vision for digital newscirca 1995

• Storytelling forms, unique to online, will be
  created
• The news audience will be active partners in news
  creation

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Current Practices

• Homepage Research
• Relationship Less than 1/3 had open content
• Action 90 percent of homepages were static
• Media Over half of the sites were single medium
  (print only)

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Experimentation in New Forms

• FROM
• Explaining
• Informing
• Episodic
• Read
• Newsprint Style

• TO
• Experiencing
• Inviting Opinions
• Encyclopedic
• Hear / See
• Creative Navigation

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From Explaining To Experiencing

• Baggage Screener MSNBC
• Voting Machines Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel
• Bacterial ID Lab Hughes Medical Institute

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From Informing To Inviting Opinion

• Waterfront Renaissance Everett Herald
• Ax and Tax Seattle Times
• Responses

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From Episodic To Encyclopedic

• Traffic Seattle Post Intelligencer
• Kansas Legislature Lawrence Journal World
• Minnesota Troops St. Cloud Times

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From Read To Hear / See

• Touching Hearts Durham Herald Sun
• U Street in Focus Washington Post
• Against Their Will Winston-Salem Journal

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From Newsprint Navigation To Creative
Navigation

• Drogas El Mundo, Spain
• Gene Therapy / Cloning BBC
• Small Plane / Big Planet Christian Science
• 
  Monitor

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Interesting new forms

• but are they effective?

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So many terms, so little clarity
Hypertext

• Interactive

Multimedia
Multi-nodal
Experiential
Immersive
Non-linear
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Elements of Digital Story Telling

• I. Media
• II. Action
• III. Relationship
• IV. Context
• V. Communication

Content movement
User Action
Content
User
gt
API ROCKS RESTON, Va. The API is a great place
to learn, says all.
A.N. Speech
APIi map
?
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Elements and Examples

• Element I Media
• Multiple Media Shakespeare Behind Bars
• Multimedia The Big Picture Iraq
• Element II Action
• Dynamic / Passive Interactive Obits
• Dynamic / Active Guantanamo

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Elements and Examples

• Element III Relationship / Linearity
• Collision Course
• Element III Relationship / Customization
• Hurricane Archive
• Element III Relationship / Calculation
• Your Inner Republican
• Element IV Relationship / Manipulation
• Hurricane Maker
• Element V Relationship / Appendage
• St. Cloud Comments

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Elements and Examples

• Element IV Context
• Element V - Communication

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Effects Testing

• Testing for flow between different styles of
  news infographics

Zoom graphic Dynamic / active Non-linear Multipl
e media ltNYTimes.comgt
3D graphic Dynamic / active Manipulable Multiple
media ltCNN.comgt
Baseball card Static / passive Multiple
media ltCNN.comgt
Animated graphic Dynamic / passive to Dynamic /
active, Non-linear, Multimedia ltUSAToday.comgt
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Results?
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• The ultimate reason that newspapers will prevail
  in the Information Age is that they are better
  than anyone else at collecting, editing,
  filtering, and presenting real information.
• George Gilder

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• People are forming strong emotional bonds to
  online content the way they do to print content.
  But as for finding the right model to exploit
  that bond, the jury is very much still out.
• Michael Zimbalist, Online Publishers Association

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