Each week Henry Alford of the NY Times gives a quick-and-dirty rundown of things to talk about for the upcoming weekend – a compilation of the week’s events in pop culture, politics, science…every genre that anyone remotely cares about. Well many don’t have time to read all 10, so I’ve kindly narrowed it down to the best for you, so you’ll undoubtedly be the most interesting person in the room.
A great refresher of this decade’s most newsworthy events. How do you say this decade, anyway? The “two thousands”? The oh-ohs?
Intended Consequences is a video story I found on MediaStorm that is harsh on the eyes and painful to the mind. In 1994, over 800,000 women in Rwanda were raped and killed in a massive genocide. The pictures left me speechless and the titleslides are few-worded but impactful. Watch wearily, but everyone should know of these man-made disasters that are happening in other countries throughout our world.
This is my favorite audio slideshow I’ve ever seen. It’s about some teenagers in Los Angeles who have their own style of dressing and dancing. It’s entertaining and intimate(without being emotional). I like how the creators, Simone S. Oliver and Stephanie Diani, used different speeds of showing the photos to create movement when needed. They also make good use of title slides and minimum captions at the bottom of their photos.
The New York Times developed this multimedia interactive tool to describe how you feel – republican, democrat, or “neither” – after Barack Obama having been elected president one year ago. It’s kind of a mixture of a Tag Cloud and a poll. Love it.
The New York Times did an audioslides presentation on a play currently on Broadway. It’s interesting to watch after making one myself. While the audio is a little better than mine and a little more varied, I’m still proud of my creation!
Pittsburg Steelers player Tyrone Carter hits an Arizona Cardinals player at the Super Bowl on Feb. 1 in Tampa, FL.
I’m not sure how I stumbled upon this interactive chart/timeline for Super Bowl ads when this year’s game was in February. This project seems to have taken even more work, time and digging than my previous multimedia find on the New York Times‘ Web site; and it took only three people!
You can slide the little doohickey left and right to any year from 1984 to the present, and every commercial aired during the year’s most-watched sporting event in the U.S. is there. It lists the company that aired each ad and what the ad entailed, and gives a percentage breakdown of how much humor, animals, and celebrities were used in the ads of that year.
This is definitely something that would attract a lot of readers during Super Bowl season. It should be advertised in the print version of the Times, and even on sports networks too, depending on how expensive that would be.
I am not an avid sports fan to any degree, but I do like to watch the commercials during the Super Bowl each year, so I enjoyed sliding the bar thing back and forth and seeing how advertisers-and viewers-have changed over the years.
The Super Ad Bowl – Two Decades of Players
This time line of the year 1969 on the New York Times‘ Web site is interactive in many different ways. There are photos and video to peruse, history to read, and a time line to move and manipulate. The Times made this to commemorate the 40-year anniversary of the year 1969. This is an excellent use of converged journalism. This was undoubtedly a large project, as it is credited to eight Times staffers. The key to keeping readers’ attention online is primarily conciseness, and secondarily, it’s interactiveness. Many successful sites now offer the ability to customize its appearance and function to your own personal preferences: iGoogle, Yahoo!, The Miami Herald‘s Web site, and many more. This interactive time line mimics that and invites readers to tinker with it and make it their own.
I’m interning at Fox 35 this semester, and on my first night, the video department gave me a warm welcome and showed me some of the difficulties in on-site reporting. How hospitable of them.
Mashable – all things social media, mobile, etc. Gathered Garments – rummage your way to chic
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