Multimedia and more

Clay Felker died to day. The pioneer of the print magazine was immoralized by the New York Times in one of their classic obituary style articles, written in the only way the NY Times knows how.

But, what fascinated me the most when reading about Felker’s life, was his persistence during the 60s to reinvent this medium of journalism in the face of the burgeoning TV broadcast news industry. I think the New York Times put it best in this paragraph:

“New York [Magazine's] mission was to compete for consumer attention at a time when television threatened to overwhelm print publications. To do that, Mr. Felker came up with a distinctive format: a combination of long narrative articles and short witty ones on consumer services. He embraced the New Journalism of the late ’60s — the use of novelistic techniques to give reporting new layers of emotional depth.” - NY Times Felker (July 1, 2008)

I couldn’t help but realize the connotations to what is happening today with digital media. As the cacophony of Internet publishers, bloggers, PR firms, social networks and everyone else (and their brothers) overwhelm the traditional print format, no one seems to really be stepping up and saying: Let’s reinvent storytelling to fit this new medium and establish it in the best way we know how.

As we have proselytized during every Knight workshop, the Internet should not be just another distribution platform for news; it’s a brand new medium fully capable of its own merit. It’s almost disheartening to see newspapers simply shoveling the same exact print stories that run in the newspaper straight to their Web site — and then ask why they can’t compete for attention.

It’s unusual because every other medium of news has adjusted the craft of storytelling to fit the medium its told in. Radio news isn’t some print story read over the air. Radio news reporters molded the craft of journalism for the spoken word. TV especially had to adjust their format to fit the medium of communication. But it seems like every industry these days simply shovels their stories online; whether they work for the medium or not.

In the same fashion that Felker defined the glossy pages of the magazine, the long-form narrative, the beautiful full-page advertisements, we need a pioneer to come along and truly define the Web for what it’s capable of producing. We need a news organization to serve as an example of what journalism can be on the Web. There are lots of great multimedia projects out there, but that’s just what they are: single pieces of great work. I would like to see an entire organization serve as a shining light to the rest of the industry; one that says, ‘Hey, we’re taking this thing seriously.’

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