Readers of The Montreal Gazette can enjoy a curated tablet edition of the newspaper each evening. It is a good way to show what the tablet can offer in terms of user experience, allowing journalists and designers to present stories through the lens of multimedia.
Last Friday, the Gazette's tablet edition provided us with a perfect example of how to incorporate video, audio, archive photos and a strong narrative to tell a story.
In this case, the Gazette did special coverage remembering a massacre of 14 engineering students that took place 25 years ago.
If you are a student of tablet storytelling, this is a must see. A highlight for me was the first person account of Gazette reporters who covered the story then, telling us what they remembered of that tragic day.
We take pride in seeing this great coverage for the Gazette's tablet edition, as we have continued to work with the Postmedia group in creating the concept of digital first for the titles in the group.
For Catherine Wallace, executive producer, this story resonated personally.
“The École Polytechnique massacre changed us all — I was the city assignment editor when it happened, and I remember completely the blow I felt when I heard for the first time that evening that only women had been killed and the killer had said “You're all feminists!” — and we wanted this package to be worthy.”
How the story came to be
I asked Catherine how the story came to be:
“This was a project that involved a lot of people on different platforms. The story package was organized by features editor Louise Solomita, who made sure from the beginning that multimedia was part of the planning. She also made sure the stories were finished in time for everyone to think about presentation, and I know you know how important that is. Louise involved the tablet and the web in her discussions from the beginning, and of course Michelle Richardson, the managing editor, was working with her.”
The role of video
Video plays a key role in this story, and Catherine tells me that it was the photo editor, Marcos Townsend, who has worked closely with the tablet edition since its beginnings, who managed to break up long videos into smaller segments.
“Everyone on the tablet team took part in discussing the package; we talk a bit every day about interactivity and display and audio and video and what's working well,” Catherine said.
Differences between print and digital versions of story
I also asked Catherine how the printed version of the story differed from that one we saw on the tablet:
‘We made the project different on the tablet from print and web and here are some specifics,” she said.
“The video on the cover — a “living still”. It didn't have quite the impact we wanted so we tried slowing the motion and that added the remembering tone we wanted; and that led to the headline.
“The inside section cover with the audio of women's voices over the scrolling names: that was a concept early on. Louise made sure reporters were getting audio, and Andy Riga on the tablet team lapped the voices (he is our audio/video execution guy, learning as he goes); designer Susan Ferguson did the name scroll using Edge.
About the storytelling
“The story of the lives changed and bonds formed: we were handed on a silver platter a beautiful story, beautiful photos, beautiful video. Susan did the design, coming up with the idea of insetting the video into the photos in those great white frames. We were looking for a way to use those videos, as well as the ones on the feminism story, in small frames so they wouldn't make our edition too heavy for downloading.”
About the one-person videos
“We knew we wanted to use the one-person videos full frame, because of the weight of what the people were saying, and Andy made the introduction words work so we could use autoplay.
– Designer Jeanine Lee was given the concept for the timeline in the first screen of the story about police tactics, and came up with this execution.
“Susan came up with the concept and execution of the photos of the 14 women and their profiles.
The Montreal Gazette tablet team
The full tablet team is:
Catherine Wallace, executive producer
Walter Buchignani, production editor and producer
Evangeline Sadler, producer
Andy Riga, producer
Susan Ferguson, designer
Jeanine Lee, designer
Dawn Lemieux, designer
Previously about The Montreal Gazette
https://www.garciamedia.com/blog/montreal_gazette_new_look_new_digital_strategytablet_first