With most forms of communication media converging rapidly with the Internet and updates in technology: blogging, vlogging, podcasts to name a few recently born vagaries- the whole ‘multimedia journalism’ rage has found a new place in the industry.
Everything is moving online, and although I doubt hardcopy newspapers and magazines will ever become extinct, being able to use sound and images along with words is a skill we all need to start harnessing – or atleast be familiar with to stay in the loop.
On that thought – here’s an interesting article I picked up today on Poynter where expert video and sound editors offer their thoughts and advice to multimedia journalists about effective storytelling with new tools.
Even if you are not into multimedia writing – there are some key points you can pick up from this for your own writing style.
When a your words can paint a picture that comes to life when the reader reads, you’ve got a killer of a story.
Here is some advice I picked up from this article:
– Find the right pace for your story – the moment you have given the important information, it’s time to move on to the next piece of information.
-Fight the urge to linger on about what you are writing because you love it, it’s egotistical to be sitting on that info instead of moving the emotion of a story forward.
-Part of the power and intimacy of still image is the silence, choose to spend time with it. (wrt the photos you take to accompany your story)
-The reader should leave your story feeling like there’s closure — a beginning, middle and end.
-It’s easy to get carried away and ‘over do’ an article. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you have to do it. Keep it simple.
-The most important thing in your article is getting the story to happen in viewers’ minds.
Now for those who want to read the article in it’s original context of multimedia journalism – check it out here.
(PS – Sorry to be missing in action for a while. Back and rocking now, stay tuned!)