February 4, 2003
Interactive Storytelling: The Columbia Crash
By Nora Paul
Director,
Institute for Media Studies,
University of Minnesota
The pressure of covering a
big, breaking story barely leaves time to make sure the
headlines are right, much less to craft unique content for the
online news site. But I figured some of those shops
where innovative content is routinely developed might have been
able to get out something. Here are some of the "usual
suspects" in the creation of compelling animations and
multimedia packages and how they responded to the Columbia
explosion.
Most other news sites
responded well with slide shows and the gathering of both
current and background stories on the shuttle. Many had links
to supplemental audio and/or video reports, and to forum areas
for messages of support or reports of personal experience with
sighting the Shuttle or finding pieces. But the following
sites used the potential of the Web space to create content that
evoked emotion or helped their news public better understand the
events that took place on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2003 in ways that
just couldn't be done in print or on air.
New York Times:
Loss of the Shuttle
The New York Times had several
of their automated slide shows with audio overlays by a reporter
on the scene. Final Flight – The Debris Path, for example,
shows images of the scattered pieces of the shuttle with a
report by Rich Oppel. The way they have the individual photos
move gives a sense of action to the static images. This is a
linear slide show and it is interesting that the audio report by
Oppel doesn’t necessarily sync with the image being shown –-
cutlines explain the image.
There are also several static slide shows for which the user has
to click to get the next image. The Map of the Wreckage is
an animated graphic which provides a good sense of the range of
the debris field. Another effective use of the digital space is
the automated slide show of Doppler weather radar images which
shows the drifting of the particles across Louisiana. Many of the
other graphics are just recreations of the static images they had
in the newspaper, showing the design of the tiles and a timeline
of the events. They have a nice feature where they select messages
from their forum area to compile as a “Forum Snapshot.”
Washington Post:
The Columbia Disaster
There are several static slide shows, audio pieces and video
reports. The
Chronology of Events is an animated graphic laid over a
satellite photo of the US –- click the time and the events and
location that it happened are shown in animation. The rest of the
graphics are static -– the kinds of material that could be
produced in the newspaper. Their treatment of the Columbia’s
Flight Crew was a hyperlinked photo -- click on a name and get a
box of info with a link to the article and bio.
El Mundo: El
Accidente del Columbia
El Mundo led the field in responding to the event with an
excellent
animated graphic which really enhanced understanding of what
had happened. Even if you don’t understand Spanish, they provide
a clear explanation of the events by plotting of the timeline over
a map of the US and having a left side content box with animated
graphics of what the trajectory of the shuttle would have been at
that point. El Mundo’s online graphics team is to be commended for
its consistent response to news events with excellent visual
explanation.
Fort Lauderdale
Sun Sentinel: Columbia’s Last Moments
The Sun Sentinel’s Edge team produced
Columbia’s Last Moments –- an animated graphic/timeline which
provided text of the countdown of events in a left-hand box, a
locator map showing the path at each point in a lower right-hand
box and an animated simulation of the shuttle’s maneuvers in the
box above the map. At the point of the last transmission they
provide a link to the actual conversation.
CNN:
Lost: Space
Shuttle Columbia
CNN packaged a lot of their old shuttle coverage into their
Shuttle page. One animation of the
Shuttle Reentry Stages
(click on the next button) was produced by Analytical Graphics. It shows a
simulation of the shuttle’s actions as it reenters the earth’s
atmosphere and provides a really interesting perspective. They
have
a very compelling audio/slide show where images were tied to
audio segments: a photo of Ilan Ramon conducting an experiment on
the shuttle has him talking about the experiment, a photo of
mission control has the last transmission, a picture of Bush has a
portion of his address to the nation.
As you
would expect, they also packaged video into their “interactives.”
The Shuttle Prep Course has four areas. The story
provides a text, photo, and video package explaining the stages of
building the shuttle. The gallery has still images you click
through and read the cutline. The “interactive” is just a static
map of the shuttle launching area with links to explanations of
each area. Then there is a quiz to test yourself on how well you
paid attention to the previous material.
This
wasn’t developed in response to the accident but this is a
different sort of interactive piece about the shuttle:
Shuttle Discovery. Shuttle Discovery lets you, using the
mouse controls, fly the shuttle, spin it, open the cargo doors.
It is this sort of content that lets you move and play that is
truly unique to the digital story space.
RELATED FEATURE:
CyberJournalist.net's gallery
and analysis of news sites' coverage of the shuttle crash.
