I’m at the Association of Health Care Journalists’ annual conference, called Health Journalism 2008, in Washington, D.C. I just met Scott Hensley from the Wall Street Journal‘s Health Blog, who is one of the panelists in this session on new media tools for telling stories. Appropriately, his presentation is going to be a blog. He set it up here free on WordPress.com.
Other panelists include Amy Eisman, director of writing programs, American University School of Communications, and Joy Robertson, anchor/reporter, KOLR-Springfield, Mo.
Amy sees the following trends in news:
- need more video, more pictures, better presentation
- Better text – SEO
- Social networking
- More readers finding content “sideways”
- Hyper-link off site
- Mobility (information on mobile phones)
- Transparency
- Experimentation
She also said you need to think about what you can do on the web that you can’t do in print. Think interactivity, links to archives and multimedia. Covering an event for users who can’t attend, via liveblogging.
She recommended Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” as a handbook for writing and web design.
Scott Hensley says the WSJ Health Blog has over 2,000 posts in the last year, and more than 21,000 comments. You really should check out his presentation on the blog he set up for this purpose. Here are some highlights:
Continue reading “Multimedia Reporting”