CBS 19 and Tyler Morning Telegraph Join Forces

The Tyler Morning Telegraph is forming an alliance with television station KYTX CBS 19 to form a news alliance.  The motto of the alliance is “More people in more places.”  The two organizations believe the alliance will allow them to better cover news in East Texas.

At both the Tyler Morning Telegraph’s website and CBS 19′s website, the story is a prominent feature.  Both pages on both websites feature multimedia elements.  The newspaper’s story contains a large article that contains a picture of the new “news team,” a text article (containing no links) and two videos.  One video is extremely poorly made by broadcast standards.  It features two talking heads of the “powers that be” at both the newspaper and the tv station.  However, the framing was terrible on one, while the audio and overall production value was not very good on either interview.  However, the raw quality of the video did give a sort of authenticity to the footage.  This is because there is no reporter track, just minimal graphics and two interviews.   The other video on the page is a video from CBS 19′s website.  The video is of a package the news network did on the subject.

Over at CBS 19′s website, naturally they are a bit more technological in their approach.  But not by leaps and bounds.  In addition to the main text article, the site has links to two video’s on the subject.  One is the CBS 19 anchors discussing the partnership, and the other is a more up-to-date video of the anchors leading the newscast with the story.  Also on CBS 19′s page are two related stories you can click on.  One links to the Tyler Paper’s web coverage, and the other is an article called “What ‘Total Team Coverage’ Will Mean For You.” That article is a recap of the alliance.

Overall, a fairly nice job on these multimedia stories.  However, there appeared to have been a sort of “ribbon cutting” event where the partnership was announced.  I think there should have been a slide show of some sort with photos from this event.  They also could have included a poll asking consumers what they thought of the alliance.

Hope In Chicago After Tragedy

Last month, the brutal beating of a young student in Chicago set off a nationwide cry to reduce youth violence.  The death of honor student Derrion Albert was recorded with a cell phone video camera near Christian Fenger Academy High School.

President Obama has dispatched two members of his cabinet to Chicago; Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.  The message Obama is trying to convey is that adults should take responsibility for the devaluing of life by young people.

Chicago is not the only place where this has occurred recently.  According to Duncan in a letter published in the Chicago Tribune, Four students have been killed in Tulsa, just this year.  Philadelphia, Seattle, Miami, and many others have also seen a surge in school violence in recent weeks.

Duncan says that money alone will never solve this problem.  “This is the time to look in our collective mirror and ask wheter we like what we see or whether we can do better together,” Duncan said.

Storytelling For A New Age

“Multimedia storytelling” is a growing trend that is making journalism much more interesting in our very visual world.  Even television newscasts have advanced visually to almost cinematic proportions.  The days of watching an anchor read the news while a superimposed OTS hangs overhead — are over.  Granted, this is still being done but at a much more advanced and visual level.  Nowadays when you watch any decent newscast, the storytelling format is completely varied and pleasing to the eye.  Newscasts are filled from start to finish with extremely colorful HD graphics that weave in and out of the frame, keeping the audience’s attention fixed on the programming.  Almost every other story is delivered by an anchor in front of a flat screen monitor as opposed to the desk.  The anchors use the monitors to illustrate their stories, make their points, and pitch to live shots of reporters in the field.  There is no longer a dull moment in a newscast.  Multimedia storytelling is mainly done on the web as one of the many extensions of the new direction seen in television news.  Now it seems as if newspaper, television, and radio can all be combined into one effective presentation within an online media site.  A story about late night host David Letterman might have text, a slide show of Letterman throughout the years, and video of the host’s televised apologies this past week.  When all wrapped up into a neat online package of information, multimedia storytelling can be very effective in this new age.  Much like all of the other technology these days, we must embrace it or we shall surely sink.

Crowdsourcing Is An Inevitability

“Crowdsourcing” is a term coined by Wired magazine’s Jeff Howe in 2006.  Just like many other brand new concepts involving the internet, crowdsourcing is a little hard to grasp its full implications.  The simple definition is that it takes a task usually performed by one individual and “puts  it out there” for the world to tackle.  Craig’s List is a good example.  This concept is also a lot like open-source software.  My beliefs on this concept are much like my beliefs on many other new technological concepts.  The technology will not go away.  It will change many, many times, but it will not go away.  The idea of buying music digitally is not going away.  The music industry freaked out for a few years, but now are trying to change the way the industry works and are successfully finding new methods of revenue.  Vinyl albums, anyone?  Crowdsourcing is also a “power to the people” kind of concept.  The internet has allowed the individual to take charge of things they had never had control of before and now crowdsourcing is one of the many logical extensions of that.  So what the business world has to do in order to survive, is embrace crowdsourcing.  If they embrace it instead of attacking it, crowdsourcing could end up being a much more efficient system.