Multimedia Storytelling

Posted byJeanetteAbrahamsenPosted inUncategorized

New technology is allowing journalists to tell stories in memorable new ways. Multimedia storytelling is an immersive and interactive tool to give your audience control over which mediums they prefer. Some stories let audiences pick if they’d rather listen to audio, watch video, look at an infographic or read text. When audiences experience stories using several of their senses, they are more likely to be emotionally affected, and more likely to remember the message.

Let’s take a look at a few examples of how journalists combined different mediums to tell impactful stories.

Samuel Granados, Zoeann Murphy and Kevin Schaul talk about The Washington Post’s two 2017 Digital Storytelling Contest winning pieces of work; A New Age of Walls (Innovative Storytelling, first prize) and The Waypoint (Innovative Storytelling, second prize).

Experience The Waypoint: washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/lesbos/

Read more about The Waypoint at worldpressphoto.org/collection/multimedia/2017/innovative-storytelling/the-waypoint

Experience A New Age of Walls: worldpressphoto.org/collection/multimedia/2017/innovative-storytelling/a-new-age-of-walls

Read more about A New Age of Walls at worldpressphoto.org/collection/multimedia/2017/innovative-storytelling/a-new-age-of-walls

Find out more about World Press Photo: worldpressphoto.org/about/mission

The New York Times was recognized for their multimedia story “Snow Fall.” A lot has changed since 2012, but the story was pretty revolutionary at the time. It combined videos, photos, maps, audio, graphics and a tremendous amount of text. It also got millions of views in just a few weeks.

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Al Tompkins created this video to show how the Las Vegas Sun told the story of hospital errors.

Two more examples of multimedia storytelling:

Multimedia Tutorial

All students at the University of South Florida have free access to full Lynda.com courses. I encourage you to refer to the full courses. Some of the tutorials in this lecture show you key pieces of multimedia tutorials from Lynda.

You can use these tools on their own, but they become more powerful when used together on a website you can build on WordPress. Storify is a more simple, user-friendly digital storytelling tool so you may want to start there. But don’t be afraid to start your own WordPress website. There are lots of free templates that will make it easier even if you aren’t comfortable coding HTML. Just make sure you know if you’re using WordPress.org or WordPress.com. You can also subscribe to a business plan that gives you more plugin and template options for your multimedia site.

Videolicious

Canva

Adobe Audition

Audacity

YouTube Audio Library

Embedding Video & Audio in WordPress

Adobe Premiere Pro

There are many more video editing tutorials here. Here’s a beginner tutorial:

Additional Tools:

Published by JeanetteAbrahamsen

I am an instructional designer and TV news instructor at the University of South Florida. My passion for innovating learning led me to pursue my PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in Instructional Technology. I love creating media to enhance eLearning and foster online engagement. I teach students to create multimedia stories for broadcast, web and social media platforms. I lead the Florida Focus class where students produce daily news shows that air on Tampa's PBS station. My reporting classes collaborated with Tampa's NPR station to produce award-winning stories. I am an Emmy Award-winning journalist. I produced thousands of hours of TV news in some of America's largest media markets at Tampa's NBC station, San Diego's ABC station and the San Diego Union-Tribune. I also produced immersive 360-degree virtual tours at the University of South Florida and reported for Hashtag Our Stories.

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