Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Year in review, using multimedia storytelling tools

The "year in review" is a staple story of the news business. In the world of online journalism, it's also an opportunity to create a more rich, multimedia experience that includes text, audio/video and images from the big stories of the year.

Not long ago, only those with HTML and Flash coding skills were able to create high-end multimedia presentations. I've blogged before about one of my favorite examples, the Star Tribune's multimedia recap of "13 seconds in August", the story of the Minneapolis bridge collapse. The project is beautifully done. However, it took four months to create, and the most powerful elements required coding skills far beyond those of the typical journalist.

Barely more than a year later, much has changed. Web sites like widgetbox.com make it easy to create and embed widgets on a web site without any coding skills. And web sites have sprung up that enable non-techies to create multimedia content - for free - and embed that content.

Here is the Year in Review multimedia show I build for kgw.com in Portland using the free 'collage' feature on vuvox.com. The entire Year in Review page can be found at kgw.com.

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