Multimedia and online journalism seminar

There is much talk now about multimedia, and any news website which doesn't incorporate multimedia, and lots of it, is seen as backward and resistant to change. It seems that in the rush to be seen as new and current and up-to-date and in a desperate attempt to make newspaper websites profitable, some sites are using multimedia for the sake of using multimedia.

The Guardian website has a lot of audio and video and picture slideshows, but I wonder how much is actually worth uploading.

Many of the videos have shots that wouldn't make it on the broadcast news, or the camera is shaky or there are zooms in or out. Other videos are very brief, a few seconds of landscape shots with some titles added in. Some don't even have those captions, and seem to be completely pointless, other than to prove to the world that the Guardian knows how to upload videos.

I'm sure there are other newspapers guilty of this, but the Guardian happened to spring to mind. I find it very off-putting, not knowing when I click on a video whether it's worth the effort, or whether it'll be worthless.

Too many newspapers are focusing on quantity over quality when it comes to incorporating multimedia into their sites.

I spotted this a while ago, when Jeff Jarvis tweeted about it.

I thought it was interesting in light of what Denis wrote about MoJos, or mobile journalist, and how dependent on expensive equipment they were.

It also ties in to what I said during the presentation, about how journalists are expected to do more work for the same amount of money (or less, in some cases) as they were paid before multimedia became hugely important.

I seriously doubt Geoff Patton is being paid more money for producing video and photographs, although he is doing a second person's job. He may have it handy thanks to the "perp cam" but he also has to edit twice as much, and possibly upload it all to the web as well, and we must remember that there are many journalists who cannot afford equipment like the perp cam.

CONVERGENCE
The new buzz word in journalism, it is becoming the norm for journalists to write copy, record footage and audio and do live link ups. The internet is providing the platform for all forms of media to come together.

TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
It means that new technology will drive change. When television matured it sidelined print journalism. The arguments against is that it: “reduces time for journalists to think, reflect, evaluate, shape, craft and contextualise the news” (David Halberstam) The counterpoint is that this theory doesn't allow for the free will of either the journalist or society.

Alter's 1991 comment on the television coverage on the Gulf war:
“did nothing to speed the flow of real informationIs this the case with new moo journalism?”

Is it better journalism or is it even as good as journalism of decades past?

The argument is that mojos are too busy with getting a right camera angle or looking at the levels to actually report the story properly

They are becoming "a mere pipeline for a public relations feed rather than a critical analyst with the time to pause, reflect and add layers of context to the story"