Mixing in Multimedia

By Stephanie Riel
June 16, 2009 02:19 PM

Business stories often hinge on large amounts of data. A sea of numbers coupled with complicated subjects and static sound bites can make holding readers’ interest a challenge.

To keep readers’ attention and increase their understanding of complex topics, multimedia can be a business reporter’s saving grace. But since the beat doesn’t easily lend itself to visuals, drafting alternative story forms requires creative thinking and a wiliness to step outside your print comfort zone.

Many business journalists are already leading the way in visual thinking by incorporating interactive learning tools, videos and graphics into their pieces.

At Crain’s Chicago Business, staffers use photos, videos and interactive maps on their Web site, ChicagoBusiness.com, to help readers grasp the contents of a story.

Matt Carmichael, research director for Crain’s Chicago Business, embraces multimedia as “another set of tools you can tell a story with.”

This year alone, the staff grabbed seven Web content awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for their audio and visual reporting that helped Chicago readers understand their community.

In the award-winning project “Market Facts,” multimedia helped dissect the Chicago market.

Organizing large amounts of geographic data created a collective experience for their site’s users.

Components like population size, economy, consumer spending trends; culture and tours of Chicago’s Lincoln Square and the buildings along Chicago River’s south bank were molded into a multimedia presentation that walked readers through the information.

The process for developing such a vast overview of the Chicago market was time consuming and detailed, but the team focused on what individual pieces of the project needed to communicate with their readership.

“We had two goals with (the Lincoln Square tour), one to give meaning to the numbers and two, to present a user’s guide of here’s what you can do with it,” Carmichael said.

Although daily business stories might not garner the extensive research and package presentation the “Market Facts” team used for their piece, the project offers lessons for how to begin incorporating multimedia into smaller stories.

Carmichael suggests brainstorming visual elements that can accompany a story as soon as an assignment is received. This will help keep the story and the visuals connected from the beginning, he said.

And start small with a narrow focus. Adding simple visuals into daily coverage trains your brain to see the multimedia possibilities for your business coverage.

A focus on entrepreneurs also helped mold Crain’s “Entrepreneurs in Action,” an in-depth video series that highlights Chicago’s small business owners.

The project started two years ago as a way to increase the publication’s small business coverage. Brandon Copple, Crain’s managing editor, said they thought the beat would lend itself well to video and give readers another way to consume content.

Copple understands the challenge of incorporating multimedia into business stories, since much of the beat is not inherently visual.

To jumpstart a multimedia mindset, he urges reporters to understand the visual techniques that work for their specific audience and to keep an eye on best practices from other journalists.

“Journalists are doing great things with multimedia,” Copple said. “Viewing other work is a great way to help get acclimated with the different options.”

Take Chris Wilson’s work for example.

Wilson, an assistant editor for Slate magazine, has extensive experience with creating his own multimedia elements, including a recent interactive map called “When Did Your County's Jobs Disappear?” The map organized unemployment data from each county in the United States since January 2007.

For the piece, Wilson created his own map using Flash and Action Script to present employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics over the past 29 months.

The map lists each month’s employment data for more than 3,100 counties and displays the number of jobs gained (dots in blue) or lost (dots in red) since the same month in the prior year.

Although his project required intense labor, Wilson said there are many free and easy to navigate data-sharing Web sites that provide models for turning numbers into media elements.

IBM's Many Eyes’s site is a resource that journalists can use to plug data into pre-existing visuals. The site allows users to take data from an Excel workbook and plug it into graphics. Wilson said a disadvantage is that uploading the data to the site is necessary, so it becomes public.

Other sites like FusionCharts Free allow simple ways to create charts similar to those used in applications like Excel and Word. The charts are already created; you just have to customize the data.

For more graphic options, also consider Google Maps or Google Maps API, a program that allows a map to be embedded onto a Web page and provides numerous utilities for adding content and data.

Whatever method you choose, rest assured that adding visuals to your business coverage helps readers navigate through complicated data and topics. And compelling multimedia images might attract new readers to stories that they would have otherwise overlooked.

Are you ready to add multimedia to your coverage right now? Here are five ways suggestions:

1. Pull apart local unemployment data from your coverage area and create a series of charts that details the current job market conditions. Compare the local numbers to the national figures.


2. Shoot video of local auto lots and employees affected by the recent General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies. Package the videos with a story analyzing the impact of the car crisis for your community.


3. For a small business profile, opt for an alternative story form and shoot a video interview.


4. To visually explain the impact of the economic stimulus plan, create a map that tracks your local stimulus monies and show your readers where the cash landed.


5. Create a timeline of gas prices in your coverage area and show the cost fluctuations throughout the last year by using a Candlestick Chart from FusionCharts Free.

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Copyright © 2009 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism