Telling stories with pictures

‘A picture is worth 1000 words.’ At least that’s how the saying goes. So how many words does a video say; or stills plus voiceover; or interactive clickable maps containing video, pictures and audio? It all depends what you’re trying to say I guess. Journalists are in the business of telling stories and, more often than not, telling them efficiently. So anything that says 1000 words while keeping me in my word count sounds like a good idea to me.

It would seem that the best, and most obvious, application of multi-media is for human interest stories or to give a personal angle to universal issues. All this week BBC Breakfast's Richard Westcott has been running reports on how the credit crunch has hit real people. This has been done in a pretty traditional way. I can't help but think that they've missed a trick here. This is an ideal opportunity to get people involved in the reporting of their stories. Instead they remain the subject rather than the creator of their own news.

It seems there is a real lesson about the difference between timeliness and topicality here. Many of the times when users create their own stories with big media it's relegated to either stories that aren't time sensitive or soft stories which may not even fall into the category of news. While working with citizens to tell their own stories is unlikely to be able to cover breaking events, it could be used to deal with harder issues which are still relevant in the here and now.

There would be huge scope for a series of citizen generated stories to move into an online environment after its 1 week run. People will still undoubtedly have stories to tell and I suspect there will still be people willing to listen. The recession is not about to disappear tomorrow. It'd offer a new perspective on a series of events that has, so far, been focused very much on the elites of bankers, politicians and big businessmen.

Could we not have a patchwork of storytelling from everyone else affected by it? Would that not be an interesting angle and perhaps it would tell that story in a more effective way than traditional talking heads ever could.

Just because we are not in the business of writing history does not mean we cannot help people document it. Westcott's reports will most probably be consigned to the archives in future years. If the public had ownership is it not possible they would create a documentation that's timeless?

The Revolution Will Not Be Blogged

Is the idea of networked journalism really so different? Has it not always been the case that “professional journalists” have sought to maintain a set of contacts in their given specialism? Have these contacts not always informed the journalist's reports as either source, specialist or outspoken viewer? Sure the internet has made this process more fluid and we now have an instant means of reply, (which we did not have before) our networks of contacts are now bigger, more global, but it’s still just people that are typing those tweets to you.

Fact is that journalist have always needed participation of other people in order to report news. We have always needed to know how houses were blown away; what it felt like to lose a son or where those pesky kids really went in their bus at the weekends. We’ve also always had the means to listen back through the traditional means of communication.

So what’s changed? Well the speed with which all these stages can take place seems to be a key factor. We are writing news not history here, by the time the mail bags get heavy enough with reaction a story may well have run it’s course. In the net age however people demand up to the minute information and so we need to give them up to the minute reporting. One of the only ways to do this is to have big, mobile, communicative networks of people. This means the information more and more has to come from those individuals with the shortest time lag between them and events. That, more often than not, is the public. Consumers demand it and so journalists must supply it, this much is clear.

Not so clear however is how, if at all, the public should be involved in the editorial process. Do they decide what they want to see. Well I’m fairly sure they do this already, by not reading the stuff they don’t want to. Could they suggest story ideas, like on spot.us? I’m pretty sure they already do that as well, isn’t that what comments sections are for? If journalists just aren’t paying attention that’s a different matter. They already write up their own stories on blogs, so what is the role of the professional in this exchange?

It seems professionals are destined to be the dispensers of the seal of approval or the teachers in a new age of journalism as a collaborative classroom. Our role is to facilitate the telling of people’s stories in an accurate, articulate and informed way. That to me doesn’t sound far from what has been going on for years, it’s just we may not always be doing the telling anymore.

Can web 2.0 win the US Election?

There is much to be said for and against the democratic potential of web 2.0. Now the masses own the means of productions what’s to stop them really taking over? The potential is clear but the situation is unprecedented, so it’s not possible to be sure how it’ll affect things.

There is however a very important political event on the horizon and its interesting to note how the world of web 2.0 is going to play it’s part. The US election seems to generate just as many blog posts as the impending recession (possibly because no-one really understands the latter). The two candidates seem to suffer quite a gap in their use of this medium. Obama has substantial list of web 2.0 applications on his FrontPage to engage supporters with. McCain’s site, by comparison, does link out to Facebook but seems to have little else, even though he does have a Twitter account (which I have found) and a MySpace page (which I haven’t). This is not to say they don’t exist but it does make it difficult to see them as part of a joined-up campaign. McCain even seems to be taking on these established names at their own game with McCainSpace. Here you can share opinions, post videos and watch his campaign adverts. It seems unlikely to me that this would attract a wider audience in the way the MyFace complex would, but it may galvanise his present supporter base.

The number of supporters that they attract online is also vastly different. The numbers of supporters on their respective face book profiles differ so radically I have to question their accuracy. Their Twitter accounts are less marked by Obama still has nearly 50 times more followers. Unfortunately membership numbers for McCainSpace don’t seem to be published.

So it looks like a landslide for Obama. Maybe he can just sit back with a G ’n’ T until November 4th. However some polls have them as close as four points apart. This serves to highlight how web 2.0 is not yet functioning as the engine of democracy which it has the potential to be. McCain has focused on traditional media and it arguably has done him little harm. Obama on the other hand has a strong web 2.0 presence which may be (at the risk of confusing correlation and cause) a decisive factor in his popularity amongst younger voters, who are more likely to be engaged in it’s applications.

There are other factors concerning the socio-political breakdown of web users; the suitability of the web as a forum for meaningful discussion and it’s increased compartmentalisation, than there is room for here. However the numbers do a lot of the talking for themselves. Web 2.0 will not decide this election, but it is still evolving and it’s importance may well grow to a point where no candidate will be able to ignore it.