Friday Roundup: TBD uses Storify, Eddie Adams Workshop produces 10 multimedia stories, AARP publishes touching video on Alzheimer's
TBD tells the story of nightclub death with Storify
Last Thursday night, a man was beaten to death outside the Washington, D.C., nightclub DC9. D.C. local news site TBD decided to tell the story in a non-conventional way: by using Storify, a new service that allows users to turn social media into “compelling stories.”
“That seemed like a good tool for it,” said Mandy Jenkins, TBD’s social media producer who curated the DC9 story. “I really wanted a good excuse to use it. It seemed like the perfect project.”
The DC9 story was perfect for Storify because of there were lots of people with information discussing the situation on social networks, Jenkins said.
“There were so many different sources talking about it,” she said. “Everyone had different facts.”
Jenkins sees the tool as useful for reporters, as well as Web producers.
“I think it could be very useful for reporters who are out, live tweeting events, trying to get reaction quotes,” she said.
Jenkins offers up more uses for Storify on her blog, Zombie Journalism.
— Ethan Klapper
(Disclosure: Ethan Klapper runs a site that is part of TBD’s Community Network. However, this site was not involved in any of the DC9 reporting.)
Multimedia from Eddie Adams XXIII
Two weekends ago, 100 students (and recent graduates) and 100 professionals swarmed Jeffersonville, N.Y., for an intensive four-day workshop of photography and multimedia. Otherwise known as Barnstorm, the Eddie Adams Workshop was founded 23 years ago by — you guessed it — Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Eddie Adams.
The workshop, which is tuition-free, partners budding visual journalists with experienced photographers, editors and researchers to form 10 themed teams. While nine of a team’s members pursue smaller, independent projects related to their teams’ themes, the remaining team member is assigned to work with a producer and create a multimedia project.
McKenna Ewen, who was one of the multimedia producers this year at Eddie Adams, explains:
To help assemble the story, each student worked with a producer from the multimedia team, a group of multimedia professionals coached by Brian Storm and Rich Beckman.
On the first day, the students and multimedia producers spent about six hours in the field. The teams worked together to produce in-depth, narrative stories that focused the strengths of each medium. The multimedia producers would sort through the raw material, look for any holes in the stories, then send the students back into the field the following day. On the second day, the multimedia producers spent one more late night editing in Final Cut Pro, and the projects were ready to go.
It was inspiring to see the type of narrative stories that students were able to produce in such a limited amount of time. Many of these students arrived at the workshop without a lot of multimedia experience, but they left having produced a collection of impressive multimedia stories.
Take a look at the multimedia produced by this year’s Barnstorm class, recently made available on Vimeo:
–Â Chris Dunn
What? AARP? Yes, keep reading.
This week’s multimedia piece comes from an unlikely source: AARP. The organization, which has a lifestyle magazine and a news site, does interesting work as producers of original, high-quality content. Based on a series of questions on a recent Spot.Us survey, it would appear that AARP wants to be do a better job of covering issues that are important to their members.
Richard Koci Hernandez (@koci) describes the video best: Simple. Powerful.
Called “Losing Ground,” the video depicts through polaroid photos and audio the challenges one wife faces in caring for her husband Mike, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. It was produced by Brian Dawson, Brad Horn, Matt Slaby of LUCEO Images and Tyler Strickland.
There are so many small details that make this video tug at your heart: The opening audio with Mike and the interviewer’s unedited interaction; the series of photo overlays that coincide with the story being told by Caroline; the sighs and sniffles; the sounds of the church-goers praying.
The one element of this video that I wouldn’t recommend to a traditional media outlet is the instrumental music. The video would have been just as powerful (if not moreso) without it — but hey, it is AARP, after all. They’re allowed to imply editorial bias through music.
But enough of my blabbering. Watch it for yourself and read the text, which is equally as touching:
