Flash Journalism

Thanyarat Doksone

Even though, according to the reading, slideshow is not entirely a new form of storytelling, I still think it is the most interesting approach that convergence journalism can freshly offer. I believe there are countless situations that a slideshow with photo and sound can portray the story in a more compelling fashion than what is seen as the most powerful medium like video. Last week I attended the CPOY judging in the Multimedia Project category from the first till the final round. The top award went to a student whose work was purely based on a photo&audio slideshow.

Also at the judging panel, I had to keep reminding myself that the competition was for students, since I would say most of the works might have been done by professionals. Interactive features, animated infographics, slideshows, texts and videos were incorporated into fine pieces of reporting. Nevertheless, many of those presentations did not make it to the final round for different reasons.

Appealing design can harm your web pages if the viewers are more interested in the design than the story itself. Seeking a unified theme in each project, the judges crossed out many entries whose stories were too broad. Repetition could hurt, too, in terms of the similar patterns used to present the characters in the story.

As extensive as the capabilities of multimedia can go, there is one important issue we have to keep in mind: what is it that we really want to present to the viewers?