Multimedia? Sure. But you still need a nut graf
This Washington Post feature just won a Society of New Design award. The interactive is awfully pretty, but awfully slow to tell its story.
Even 21st-century stories need a nut graf. The text story nailed it: 30,000 refugees who relied on U.N. food are now cut off from any aid.
You have to dig into the feature to get that same key fact. The multimedia transports you to Darfur but the rich design offers no clue about why or how the crisis is expanding. (Sand and trees?) The pretty panoramas are clumsy to navigate and the beautiful videos are slow-paced: You have to really want to watch them. Readers who want to learn the latest in Darfur will spend many minutes.
One video does scream out — literally. The potent shots of a wailing baby and the roofless thatch house he lives in (”Feeding Baby Izzedine”) say what the rest of the piece should have.
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I reject Tom Giratikanon’s trite editorial: “…what the rest of the piece should have.”
Journalism begins with facts, and TG didn’t choose to observe them.
Facts: This piece was attractive, as are those people. Their beauty was as important as their suffering. We are told constantly that such people live in hell, but it is rarely brought home so convincingly that they are just as beautiful and human as our families are.
A nut graf was implicit throughout. Giratikanon’s impatient egotism prevented him from seeing facts.
John Kelly
March 22, 2008 at 2:52 pm