Storytelling remains the same, the medium changes dramatically
That is how I would summarize the results of The New York Times’ experimental work in what is called Custom Times, a project carried out with Harvard University, through the Nieman Journalism Lab.
First, I have to admit that I am totally impressed by the title of the young people presenting the videos below. They are the Times’ Creative Technologists, a title that carries with it a tremendous amount of pressure, I am sure. To be creative and to be technical at the same time, and to have the eyes of an entire industry looking at what you do. Tall order.
However, once you watch these videos, you realize that two themes emerge:
1. Storytelling—-it is all about the story you bring into people’s living rooms. Nothing new about that. Whether it is an interview with an author, or an explanation of a scientific topic (turtles in this case), one sees the development of a story. What is different is that a multi-media approach prevails here. One can go from video to animated graphic, to reading. It is here that a major shift takes place. As one of the creative technologists explains: “The Times is text driven, so we see emphasis on text. For the Custom Times we try to reverse the paradigm and see how we can convey the essence of the story, but not necessarily using just long texts.” This brings you to the next point.
2. Layering—-For years, we have worked with editors to facilitate what I call “layering”, supporting the storytelling process with information boxes, sidebar stories, elements that reinforce the main thrust of a story. In the Custom Times we see here, the user has the ability to click forward and backward and, for example, interrupt video to read a secondary element, then click back into a video mode.
What is new is how the information is delivered; the storytelling and layering methodology that we have practice for a long time remains intact. I like that. It reinforces what I have written about repeatedly here: we are storytellers, and there is no better time to be a storyteller.
Custom Times shows us that the ways to tell stories have become better and more varied.
For an example of storytelling and multimedia at The New York Times:
Today’s NYT carries a story about fashion photographer Richard Avedon: How Avedon Blurred His Own Image
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TheMarioBlog posting #261