WHERE'S WALDO?

Online journalists now have a plethora of design and storytelling options. A sense of time and place can be conveyed via a slideshow and details can be expanded by including hyperlinks. Clearly the mastering, or at least the contemplation of inclusion, of such methods and new technologies is vital for those journalists who wish to keep up with current trends and consumer demands. But just as it is in print, a ‘sense of story’ remains integral to holding the reader’s attention and more importantly, successfully immersing them in the story’s ultimate purpose or point.

Journalist Regina McCombs contacted four television editors to harness opinion on the blurring of print and television elements in online journalism (http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=125795). As she talked to each of them, each brought up the importance of an issue that has relevance in all forms of storytelling; finding a ‘sense of pace’.

NBC News Editor John Hyjek refers to the use of multimedia elements such as slideshows, as needing to follow the ‘rule of waldo’. Waldo is a comic character created by Martin Handford which is hidden in each of his illustrations. "What happens when you find Waldo?”, asks Hyjek. “You turn the page, of course. You move on to the next illustration. In the same vein in video editing, the moment you glean the important information, it's time to move on to the next shot."

Jim Douglas, a former NPPA Photographer of the year, pointed out that importance of audio in a multimedia story. "The importance of sound is to bring the viewer a much more intimate sense of reality, to take the viewer where we went."

As journalism traverses the plains of technology, the balancing of successfully using multimedia tools to tell the story, as opposed to cluttering a story with their inclusion, will be one to follow with interest.