This session starts with a demo by Chuck Rose of how Brightcove is being used by USA Today to simplify the addition of graphics files to their site to give their audiences a very rich editorial resource. USAT does a variety of galleries, including slide shows with music and voice audio tracks, historical timelines that can be assembled in a couple of hours via prebuilt templates, interactive maps that can build Flash graphics on the fly so that last-minute changes to data do not require last minute graphics changes and other forms of rich media in both pop-ups and embedded in pages. These kinds of features can help news sites distinguish themselves as sources of both factual content and tools that people understand both facts and events in an absorbing and entertaining way.

Nora Paul of the University of Minnesota notes that many sites may look more advanced but are still stuck in the put-the-text-online syndrome. She showed a lot of nifty interactive graphics such as a game-like graphic that shows you how an airport baggage screener uses their scanning tools to go through the contents of luggage. Nora also showed a Google Maps mashup of startup funding data with a map of Silicon Valley.

Question notes that use of user-generated media use has tripled over traditional editorial sources on their site. USAT has seen huge spikes in traffic. Editors are trained in how to be an interactive journalist and how to ask questions in social media contexts respectfully, etc. How one interacts with a Web site is part of an editorial job performance. USAT has a common platform for print and online but staffing is still separate, still working out the cultural details. In the middle of working out workflows, budgets, print. Trying to get everyone at the same table and thinking about how to tell a story and how to do it on which platforms.

The panel had some technical glitches but it was a good demo of some of the leading techniques.

Labels: ABM, Digital Velocity, events, interactive, multimedia, USA Today