Journalism, and many other communications professions, is not simply just about words anymore. You need something eye catching, something different, something interactive and visual if you want your work to standout and if you expect to gain hits and readership on your site. After watching the documentary, “Journalism in the Age of Data,” this relatively new phenomenon became even more clear and real for me.
The truth is simple, multimedia journalism rules all. Since we’re now living in a digital world, it only makes sense to adapt and become a digital-first journalist. Just like the documentary talked about, this means embracing technology and graphics. It means taking your own photographs and video and embedding them into all of your work. Take advantage of Twitter and other social media sites to promote your personal brand and get yourself noticed.
I personally love this new direction that media is headed in. I find it to be engaging, educational, and stimulating in more ways than one. When done right, providing multimedia entities – like graphic data – make me want to read the article – I’m already engaged and interested in finding out more based on the provided graphic. Eye candy is essential when trying to hook a reader. This documentary made that very clear and got me thinking, why haven’t we thought about this before?
I thought it was great that the film touched on how important our sense of sight is. We as humans are programmed to be attracted to visual stimuli. Our brains take in information more effectively and efficiently when there is a visual aspect to that information. I find this to be very true in my everyday life. I remember pictures more easily than I remember a long paragraph of text. As a producer of content, I need to remember that I would never want to bore someone with words when I can just as effectively use a picture or a graph or some type of visual data graphic. Not only would lack of visual stimulants cause my audience to suffer, I would also suffer in the long run because no one would want to come back to my site.
The creators of this documentary are onto something – something big; something that will benefit both readers and producers alike. Data is necessary in many cases, but that doesn’t mean that the data displayed has to be boring. Don’t just site your data as facts in your writing – make that data come to life. Make readers want to read more. Bring them into your piece and bring the data to them – not the other way around…because chances are, they will not be seeking out your data in the first place.