In class Thursday, Rich Gordon spoke to us via teleconference about the exciting possibilities the Internet offers journalism. The entire point of the class has been to study how we can use computers and the Internet to enhance our reporting. In today's morning e-mail from Poynter, there was a link to a great investigative series from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that exemplifies how multimedia can enhance a story. The series looks at the number of fugitives nationwide who are free (and some of them still committing crimes) because states don't enter warrants into the FBI's fugitive database. The online version of the series is packaged together with breakouts of the data, a section on how the series was done, and videos and graphics. It also has an interesting feature that places pictures of some of the fugitives below a map of the U.S. that traces the path of each fugitive throughout the country. The content of the stories is fascinating (and scary), but the package is noteworthy because of how well it utilizes the types of tools newspapers are now embracing.
2 comments:
Thanks for the link! It's amazing to see how far the Internet has come to making news more interactive for readers. Who knew that one day you could visually track the footsteps of a fugitive? Also, seeing this story proves that investigative journalism will not die with newspapers --- it will just be repackaged in a new, multimedia format. And, by the looks of this story, it's going to be worth the transformation.
I agree. That was one thing I meant to mention, especially since I asked that question during the teleconference, but didn't. I don't know how this was packaged in the print edition, but the Internet version certainly adds way more to the story. I really liked it. I spent the morning looking through all the stories and graphics.
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