In a fast paced world, where people want news in small, easy digestable chunks, I worry about the art of storytelling.
I love stories. As an only child, imagination was my lifeline. I still find nothing better than reading or listening to a story and picturing the whole thing in my head. Its rather fulfilling.
I therefore find the concept of multimedia storytelling immensely exciting. I love being creative. Even more, I love creating stories, its why I want to be a journalist. I love to talk about things and be talked at. I think thats called discussion. But I want to read every book and see every picture and I want to know how other people see things and why its different. Most importantly, I want everything I do, every story I tell to mean something to someone.
But, in a world where people want fast, hard-hitting news in a flash, or at specific times to suit busy lifestyles, do people really have time for stories anymore? As I said, I find the concept brilliant, but does it really have a place in the world of journalism, and if so, I'm afraid I fail to see where. This is what these guys think . . . :
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=p_JsoL7b96E
Stories are meant to be enjoyable. They are for those people who actually afford to take the time to sit and read. Who reads anymore? Even with multimedia storytelling, we are reviving an old tradition but in a brand new technical way. Lets face it, the only people who probably now sit down to a story are the old or the young, and neither of those groups fall into my category of being technologically advanced. Either I'm stereotyping, or I'm being incredibly judgemental.
Lets then take the position of stories in print journalism. Especially the Daily Mail. I love the section in the Daily Mail, after all the news headlines where you come to some kind of scandal, incident, or the incredibly thrilling double life of some age old celebrity. I LOVE them. I am that person who takes the time to flick through the paper just to get to these pages and sit there for however long it takes me to read the entire thing. I love the research that goes into it, and the personal approach. But this is just a double page spread inside a 95-page paper.
More to the point, its in a paper. Lets narrow it down even more, aside from its place in journalism, where will the multimedia story fit into the world of print, however effective the online accompaniment is.
Are people really going to log on and set their RSS feeds to the latest story posted by myself or a colleague? I doubt anyone has the time for stories anymore and it saddens me. Does anyone really care about anyone else's sentimental recollections anymore? Do we have time to? Lets see shall we . . . I hope I'm proved wrong.
1 comment:
Liz, a good point but take this wider.
Does it have to be a sentimental story - when on one level it is actually a multimedia feature form.
Lots of features are first person about people who are experiencing issues - so we could then help to develop it that way.
Another point is we could set up a sibling site that could host a storytelling community, we could then reverse publish the best onto our site - and share any features that we may be doing back with the community.
In its purest form, I agree it can be difficult to see how it would fit in, but there are different ways to use this.
What sort of feature would you want to see in this format?
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