Thinking beyond text and images

When the motion picture camera was first invented in the late 1800’s (Louis Le Prince’s design in 1888 was probably the first), people were instantly fascinated with its ability to capture and reproduce exactly the scenes of reality.

It wasn’t until Georges Méliès kicked off Science-Fiction films with A Trip to the Moon that people began to really explore the idea of representing things in film that were not reality. Before 1902, filmmakers had failed to recognize that this new medium could be used to create a completely convincing alternate reality.

Once again we are encountering an entirely new medium, and we have yet to figure out the possibilities it creates. The internet is ideal for displaying text and pictures. It’s also ideal for displaying video. It’s also ideal for interactive, user-prompted interfaces.

Classically, a newspaper has confined itself to what paper as a medium will support: text and images. There’s not much sense in a newspaper putting together an audio program because you can’t just plug headphones into the print edition that shows up on your doorstep.

But the internet changes all of that. Suddenly newspapers have a delivery medium that supports all kinds of content¹, and this means that we should start seeing the news presented in ways that take advantage of these new capabilities.

This means stepping away from convention and reconsidering the way reporting is presented.

Let’s use the recent shooting at Seattle’s Folklife Festival as an example. What you see is a photo (with a caption) followed by about 16 paragraphs of text.

Is this really the best way to present the story? Why isn’t this picture interactive? The story could be incorporated into the picture using text and audio, almost like an adventure game.

What if, when I hovered my mouse over the suspect in the picture, it did Something Like But Much Better Than (SLBMBT) this:

Or maybe it would have an audio button that would prompt a relevant quote or audio clip for a given portion of the image. Or maybe both.

The point is that newspapers need to start thinking beyond text and images when presenting the news.

The internet, mobile phones, the Amazon Kindle—these are all new mediums that support multiple forms of content. And newspapers would be wise to take advantage of them all.

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1. This means that newspapers are going to be competing directly with CNN and NPR. The sooner they figure this out, the bigger the lead they can grab while the Big Boys are looking the other direction. ↩