Mixing Media

What happens when a radio journalist changes his story for the internet? It becomes the most emailed story on NPR.

Quote :

Recently, one of his stories about a man who photographs rural landscapes from a small airplane became the most e-mailed story on NPR for 48 straight hours. It was on the top-10-stories list for a week. That's hard to do in this fast-changing online news world. Stories rarely hang on a top-10 list for a week.

What's more, it was not a story that was unique for its audio, but for the photographs that Howard included in the story. He turned to multimedia storytelling in an attempt to give listeners a reason to experience the story a new way online that is different from the radio experience.

Read/experience the story here
Read the Poynter reaction (quoted above)

Multimedia doesn't have to be high-tech to catch readers' interest, but it does had to remember its place. A slide show was just what the doctor ordered. Despite radio-journalist father, this version of the story knows that its an internet delivery, not radio, and uses visual media correspondingly.

What's the moral of the story? Use the medium most suited to the story... Don't go the route of multimedia just to be up-to-date. Listen to the story; it’ll tell you what it needs.