Innovation in Storytelling
The New Voters team spent time exploring nonlinear storytelling by blending video, audio, images and text in new ways. Here are a few examples of the experiments:
Video Tag Player
The News21 team at Maryland developed this media player as a way to present many videos and allow viewers to use "tags" or keywords to sort them and decide what to watch. The player shows tags on the right; the tags grow larger if multiple interview subjects raised those topics. Video clips appear in a grid on the left based on which tags are clicked. The player was conceived in a brainstorming session by all the News21 fellows and was built in Flash by News21 consultant Kristen Novak.
Blending Linear and Nonlinear
Jose Castillo, a visiting News21 fellow from the University of Texas, developed this mixed-media player to showcase linear video at the top, while displaying related items such as maps, photos and text in nonlinear fashion at the bottom. Two stories in The New Voters package, about Latinos in Fresno and Allensworth in California, showcase this innovative player.
Talking Bar Chart
What would a bar chart say if it could talk? The idea here is to embed audio (and later, video) of people talking into data visualizations to bring statistics to life. The test example embeds audio of young people into charts that compare voter attitudes by age.
