Here's the Crosscut piece I mentioned Tuesday night in connection with adaptability. It's a shift in format for me in that much of the "added value" is in the captions for the slide show rather than in the essay, which is unusually short (500 words). What we're doing here is taking advantage of web publication, which let us publish an unlimited number of photos at no cost. If this piece had run in a print newspaper or magazine, we'd have been limited to three or four photos, and readers would have had to visualize the rest of the places through words. Clearly, words + pix makes a better package.
It probably wasn't as rewarding to write as a coherently structured and well-argued 1,000-word essay on the subject. But it was easier, and I think it's more useful and informative for the reader. On balance, that's a win for everyone.
I won't be doing every piece in this format, but we'll use it when appropriate and also keep looking for different multi-media possibilities with web publication. That's what I mean by adaptability.
No comments:
Post a Comment