Great Documentary from Frontline

I happened upon this Frontline documentary on Monday night when I got home. It traces the Iraq war from the beginning up until 2006 or 2007 (I can't remember which). It was called Bush's War. It was incredibly disturbing. What the administration thought they could do and how it spiraled out of control really puts the whole situation in a different light. The thing that was very cool was that they have all the complete interviews on their website and all kinds of other features that they kept promoting during and after the documentary. Also, you can watch the whole thing on line. I haven't had a chance to explore the website, but I thought it was a good example of broadcast taking advantage of multimedia.

Following Helen O'Neill's story...

I just did a Google News search and found one site that packaged the story with many related stories -- many were on your idea list from last night. So my first contribution to this "sighting collection" is from ABC News.The Guardian merely carried her story. And we had such high hopes!

Interesting way to display photos at the Charlotte Observer.

WOAI in San Antonio just shoveled three stories onto a Web page, one on top of another.

Sadly, a paper in Hays, Kansas, didn't even bother with a headline:

Grad student's video ruffles Edwards campaign feathers

UNC masters student Carla Babb produced a video for a campus TV broadcast as well as for an MTV contest, for which she uploaded it to YouTube. In the video, she interviewed Edwards campaign workers and others about Edwards' choice of HQ location -- in a lovely, upscale, area of Chapel Hill. Did it conflict with his goal of representing the poor and disenfranchised? she asked. After the video was seen on YouTube, a campaign rep called her and asked her to take it down. Babb referred the spokeswoman to Charlie Tuggle, the UNC prof who oversees the newscast and who is her adviser. Tuggle refused. He reported that the campaign threatened to cut off student access to Edwards news. A campaign spokeswoman says this has gotten silly but had no comment on Tuggle's allegations. Since then, the story has bloomed in distribution and the video is approaching 100,000 views at this writing. The NYTimes, Washpost, AP, News&Observer and a host of other sites have done stories on it. What do you think?

What are Santa Ana winds?

This is pretty much what I'd call a video version of a print infobox.

Oakland Tribune leads ONA awards

From OJR: The Oakland Tribune was the only multiple winner in the 2007 Online Journalism Awards, presented this evening in Toronto by the Online News Association and the USC Annenberg School for Communication. The Tribune collected the Knight Foundation Award for Public Service for its feature Not Just a Number on homicide in Oakland. The Tribune also won the award for Service Journalism (small traffic sites) for the same feature.
This year's general excellence winners were USA Today (large), The Denver Post (medium) and the Ventura County Star (small).

Other winners:
Outstanding Use of Digital Media, small: Wisconsin State Journal, Hip Hop 101
Outstanding Use of Digital Media, large: Discovery Channel, Everest Beyond the Limit
Beat reporting, small: Florida Today, Space Beat
Beat reporting, large: Wired.com
Breaking News, small: The Roanoke Times
Breaking News, large: Associated Press
Investigative journalism, large: ABC News, Brian Ross Investigates: "The Mark Foley Investigation"
Investigative Journalism, small: Center for Investigative Reporting, Danger On Your Plate
Service journalism, large: Toronto Star
Specialty Journalism, large: Livescience.com
Specialty Journalism, small: Council on Foreign Relations
Commentary, small: Wild Bill, NewWest.net
Commentary, medium: Walt Handelsman, Newsday
Commentary, large: William Saletan, Slate
Student Journalism: Border Beat (University of Arizona) and Our Tahoe (University of Nevada, Reno) [tie]

'Hear you are'

[murmur]is a collection of audio stories about specific geographic locations. They are available on a Web site, but more interestingly, they are also available in designated places at the sites themselves. In situ, interested murmurers can call a posted mobile cell number and hear the recording. Online, there are maps of several Toronto areas (one of these is above). On the maps are circles indicating the story locations. They are, of course, clickable to bring up the audio. I'm thinking of lots of applications for something like this... FYI: I was reminded of this project by Danny Sanchez' Journalistopia blog, which has been covering the ONA conference this past week (sob -- I couldn't go this year because of other commitments so I'm living vicariously).

A Kentucky mother's struggle through drug court

Al Tompkins, of Poynter, has a full writeup of a weeklong project by the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader that will, in his words, "consume 18 inside pages, 15 minutes of online multimedia and more than 130 photos." Tompkins explores how the project came together -- it took four years.

del.icio.us SNDies 2007

Okay, if you can figure out what that means, you're definitely in the right class. Joe Weiss, who created Soundslides and helped revolutionize journalism, was a judge in the most recent multimedia competition run by the Society for News Design (hence: the SNDies). He's linked and tagged nearly all of the entries on his del.icio.us account -- and has categorized them into gold, silver and bronze categories.
Let me call particular attention to:
OnBeing, washingtonpost.com
A People Torn: Liberians in Minnesota (this has been cited before in Cronkbyte)
Exploring Antarctica, washingtonpost.com
American Diversity Project: Mississippi Delta
Atacama Stories, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
On the Line: Stories of Economic Hardship in North Carolina, UNC Chapel Hill
The Metropolitan Museum's new galleries, The New York Times
The Fight for Iraq: A Regional Power Play, MSNBC

Train Jumping: A Desperate Journey, PalmBeachPost.com
Events Leading to an Accident, newyorktimes.com
Crisis in Darfur Expands, washingtonpost.com
Is it better to buy or rent?, newyorktimes.com

These were chosen more by my preference than by award, although there are golds, silvers and bronzes among the above. To view by winning category, try these: Gold, Silver, Bronze.
We'll be talking about these in class -- feel free to add more links-of-note from the almost-full list Joe provides.

Video part of WP report on upcoming Iowa vote

Another example of the growing "norm" of multimedia reporting with multiple points of entry. The text story, "Iowa a key test for Democrats," is packaged with the video and reader comments and is well larded with hypertext links throughout. ADDED: And you can see the same story run on a CBS News Web page -- no video, though. Guess CBS welcomes the writing but keeps the video production to itself?

Living to the end

The story of Lovelle Svart's death ran in the Oregonian today, the culmination of months chronicling, in multimedia, the last months of a woman who chose to end her life legally under Oregon's Death With Dignity provision -- and who suggested the series. The project incorporates videos -- the last one made about half an hour before Ms. Svart took her final medication -- as well as stories, photographs and document reproductions. Probably the best way into this moving work is through the introduction, although I read the "obit" first then had to know more. UPDATE: Considerations on running the project are in the Editor's Blog.

1st online-only presidential mashup

Yahoo, Huffington Post and Slate sponsored a forum on Sept. 12, moderated by Charlie Rose, in which Democratic candidates responded to questions about issues of current concern. The videos are gathered on Slate, along with transcripts and commentary. We live in interesting times...

Air guitar, funerals and cartoons...

I'm going to post the links you handed in as examples of multimedia types. It'll take up so much room here, though, that I'm going to do it as comments. So click on through... and enjoy! (The image above is from a video report of Pavarotti's memorial services. See Elyse's links.)