Friday, November 16, 2007

Reluctant multimedian's

.. so a couple of weeks into looking at multimedia, with one interview pending within the BBC - with the good hand of Peter Barron, editor of newsnight that could come together - what have I learned?

Profundly the different interpretations of multimedia, particularly at odds with the current manifestation.

I interviewed some graphic design students who gave some interesting views; one was adamant that what newspapers were doing was not multimedia.

One senior figure within the multimedia industry who has lectured, trained scores of students; one famously who would work for Negraponte, expalins how the term has evolved.

And he says implicit in multimedia is multiple interactivity, something I'm drawn to.

As journalists, it appears the low hanging fruit for multimedia is photography. Nothing wrong with that at all and there are many journalists who take fine photos.

There's a saying in broadcast journalism that, if the shot's not in the package it won't be missed.

It's a generalisation.

But if what we're doing now defines the dynamic era of multimedia, then indeed that's what users may come to expect.

The summit may always be shifting, but in redefining multimedia, is there a fundamental approach that needs adopting?

I posted this some days ago and have a lively talk with Adrian Monck, Head of Journalism at City University recently.

The pool for selecting journalsts often resides in English, History, mainly the Arts.

The Sciences tend to be rare. That I know as an Applied Chemistry graduate.

But what if we started to nurture or look for multimedia journalists within graphic design, computing, what might we yield?

There are many questions and some illuminating answers in the feature I'm making.

The more I ask, the more I know. The more I know, the more knowledgable I become. The more knowledgable I become, the more I want, The more I know, the more complicated it all becomes... and then I'm confused.

Multimedia huh ?

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