Multimedia and the news

I've heard many times that multimedia -- audio, video, photography and slideshows that combine all three -- are the future of journalism. I don't doubt that. But personally, I still prefer written journalism. When I'm browsing the news, if a story has a video or audio component, I'm likely to skip it. I'm not sure why. Maybe it feels like more of a time commitment to me. With a video or audio clip, I have to listen or watch for as long as the producer wants me to, and I get the information in the order they want me to. With a written article, I can browse through it at my own pace. I can read some, stop, go do something else, and come back and read the rest. Or, if I'm only mildly interested in the subject, I can skim the article and read only parts of it.

Although I'm a bit unenthusiastic about multimedia journalism, I do realize its importance and the opportunities it holds. But I also think it has a long way to go before it can stand on its own and replace print journalism. Right now, most examples I saw of multimedia journalism functioned as supplements to print articles.

For example, this article in the New York Times explores how technology affects our brains and attention spans. The article includes a video produced by the author, as well as a series of videos made by readers who were asked to devise their own challenges of going without technology for a certain period of time. Although all the videos were interesting, they acted more as illustrations to the main story than stories in their own right. I think if someone were to watch only some of the videos without reading the article, they would have missed out on part of the story.

This article in the New York Times about a lesbian couple who chose to formalize their relationship with a "domestic partnership event" also added a video to coverage of the story. In this case, I think the video is more useful, because it shows an emotional event in order to personalize a subject that is often considered a political debate. But again, I felt like the video was a supplement to the article. I watched the video first, but I didn't feel like I understood the full story until I read the article.

I think this video and article from the Wall Street Journal, about a restaurant with goats that live on the roof, come closer to telling the same story equally in two different formats. (The WSJ probably had the same idea, because unlike the other examples I found, the video doesn't include a link to the written story; I had to search for it separately.) The video seems more like a broadcast news segment than an online slideshow or video, which might be why it's more effective at getting the story across. I'm still glad to be able to read the print story, but I thought the video was also well made, and for this particular story, it definitely added something to the story to see the goats on the roof of the restaurant.