This document provides guidance on elements of good multimedia storytelling. It discusses combining different media like video, photos, audio, and graphics to tell a more complete story. Each medium has strengths - video to show action, photos to capture emotion, audio for ambient sounds or compelling quotes, and graphics to illustrate complex processes or data. Examples are given of news outlets that effectively blend media like a slideshow of abandoned foreclosed homes or personal audio accounts of living with medical conditions. The key is including different mini-stories in the most appropriate media to connect all parts of the multimedia story.

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Elements of good Multimedia story telling
At its simplest, a multimedia story combines different elements that complement one another to
make the story more interesting, complete or compelling.
Multimedia storytelling often refers to a blurring of boundaries between media online:
newspapers and magazines post video, radio stations post graphics and text, TV outlets offering
text along with video and maps. Reporters are no longer bound by their medium, but can draw on
the strength of all to tell a better story.
Here are some elements of good multimedia storytelling.
Multimedia stories take advantage of the strengths of each medium:
 Video to show action (teens skateboarding, high school wrestling, a chef cooking),
capture strong quotes (witnesses at an accident site, a cancer survivor talking about her
ordeal) or take viewers somewhere they wouldn’t have access to (behind the scenes at a
concert) or places they would want to visit (a Disneyland ride, the World Cup).
 Photos to capture strong emotion or a key moment in time (a mother reunites with a long
lost child, someone talks about losing their home). Pictures still are often worth a
thousand words.
 Audio to capture compelling quotes (a veteran talking about the battlefield, a mother
talking about a child) or telling “ambient” sound (the din in a crowded restaurant, music,
stadium cheers, construction noise, gunfire).
 Graphics to show complicated processes (how a bill moves through Congress, how a new
surgery works) or complex data (employment figures, population percentages in cities) in
an easy-to-understand format.
Here are a few examples of how different news outlets have used different media to tell stories in
ways they could not have told them even a few years ago:
Good use of video and photo. There’s very little text with this Orange County (Calif.) Register
package on the foreclosure crisis in that area. The photographer wrote a short intro to the story,
then used video to take readers on a ride on the “foreclosure bus,” in which potential buyers
toured foreclosed houses. The package includes a photo slideshow of foreclosed homes that have
been abandoned and vandalized, to finish painting the picture of the foreclosure crisis in this
California community. Notice that the paper also included links in the package to related text
stories in the Register. http://www.ocregister.com/articles/photos-17815-slideshow-
gallery.html#article-comments
Good use of audio and interactive elements. First-person accounts can be very compelling. In
this example, the New York Times lets people who suffering from 34 different medical
conditions talk in their own words about how they live with their conditions. Several people are
interviewed for each condition and each has his or her own audio slideshow: simple pictures with

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the subject’s voice. There is no narration; the reporters are invisible.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/09/10/health/Patient_Voices.html
Good use of maps/text/graphs. The Miami Herald offers several relatively simple graphics to
help readers grasp complex issues in a visual, easy-to-understand way.
There are many examples on the newspaper’s site, but check out this multi-page series of graphs
that show readers how the recession affected South Florida in 2007; this timeline, which tells the
history of the U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba, with pictures of key players along the way; and
this graphic that shows the different ways officials were trying to stop the BP oil leak in the Gulf
of Mexico, with details on each method.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune documented how Hurricane Katrina inundated the city in
2005 with a more ambitious graphic. The interactive map can be found at
http://www.nola.com/katrina/graphics/index.ssf?flashflood . A range of multimedia and
interactive projects about Katrina can be found at the Times-Picayune’s page dedicated to the
historic hurricane and its aftermath, at http://www.nola.com/katrina/.
This post was originally part of an online course by ICFJ Anywhere, which supports journalists
worldwide with free training on a range of topics. Courses are offered in a variety of languages
including English, Arabic, Persian, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish and French. For the latest
ICFJ Anywhere course offerings, click here.
Think of putting a story in different parts, appropriate to video, text, photos, audio. Photo slideshow or
graphics. A multimedia story is really a collection of mini stories in different media forms as most
appropriate, and not a sidebar with featured video and photos as we see on many news websites. The
different parts in a multimedia story should connect and clearly be part of each other.
When to use video, photos, slideshows, audio, graphics
Video is good for capturing the key source in a story. It shouldn’t be long. Raw video works best online
and mobile, instead of reported video (the kind of stories you on TV)…remember the news & TV
credibility struggles…let the source speak instead of your speaking for them
Use video to capture the action, central place (take the viewer there), central person or people in the
story, interesting characters, authenticating materials, drama, humor/comedy, celebrities, kids, pets,
animals, birds, crime scene, food (how to prepare) etc.
Photos are good to show the central character, central places, moments, reflection, emotional situation,
art, techniques/access, fashion etc
Audio is good for capturing the mood/emotion, reflection of person, actuality (take your audience to the
scene), music (if appropriate)…photos and audio complement each other to form audio slides see
www.timespapers.com/slideshows/onethingatatime

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Graphics or maps –location especially if map shows it better, summary of the key points, data/statistics
(never put this in video), how to (shows how things work or flow), history timelime/sequence of events,
where humans cant go e.g. space, stars, swine flue, ebola (how a bacteria is like, how it moves around.
Tools like http://graphs.gapminder.org/world will be useful (its open source). See
www.usatoday.com/graphics.shuttle-evolution/index.html
Text works best as a bridge, providing the necessary explanation and background, quick facts, asked
questions, analysis, investigative journalism, summary context, description (whenever you cant get any
other forms of media), breaking news (always in text first), technique/access
While you can say the death of print is imminent, text is still important
For short stories…text and some video
Log stories..a little bit of more media
It is better for you as a media organisation to have people trained in how to write good narrative as well
as producing good video, audio, photos and graphics. As an individual journalist, you will be more
marketable if you are multi skilled and can produce multimedia stories alone or with limited help.