Multimedia flashback: Black Hawk Down, 1997
Mark Bowden relates how an enterprising online producer at the Philadelphia Inquirer transformed his 29-part series (!) “Black Hawk Down” into a Web site — in 1997. Early days indeed. It’s a fascinating site to look at today — imagine how much work went into this package. Tons of audio, lots of great contextual links …
In the case of Black Hawk Down, apart from all the multimedia razzle-dazzle, it opened up a global dialogue with readers, including men who had fought in the battle. They corrected my mistakes, pointed me to better information, and offered to be interviewed, allowing me to improve greatly on the story before it was published as a book in 1999. Mine may have been, thanks to Jennifer [Musser-Metz], the first book that ever benefited from this new journalistic tool. In a sense, the story was edited by the entire world.
But little has happened in the 10 years since. Surprisingly, the site Jennifer created is still in the vanguard of Internet story presentation.
Bowden provides nice commentary on where we’re headed — especially considering he is a self-proclaimed “old fuddy-duddy” who still wants to pick up his newspaper in the driveway every morning.
Technorati tags: online journalism | online media | design | journalism
I remember that one quite well. It wasn’t perfectly polished — for one thing, I wished that the definitions would appear in a pop-up rather than taking me off the main story page — but it was groundbreaking. Smart use of contextual links, plus legit interactivity.
So if we do smart multimedia projects, will we also get film deals?
June 20, 2007 at 11:38 amI am amazed that it’s still online, intact. So many of the examples that I have used in classes and workshops have been removed from their sites — it’s really a shame, because some of the great online journalism packages are now gone forever.
June 20, 2007 at 2:09 pmI remember Mark’s site and the power it had in allowing people to help write the story with him. Unfortunately, we are not always thinking about the past when talk about technology and the power it has to help tell a story. When I was at the NPPA Summit recently I asked the multimedia panel what we can do to preserve content and keep great stories like Mark’s alive. All to often, like you stated above, great content is lost forever. They looked at me like I had worms coming out of my ears and the quick answer was, “just keep updating the file.” We really need to think about how we archive our work, especially today.
June 20, 2007 at 2:32 pmRob Curley said in this Fast Company interview that “Blackhawk Down” was an important discovery for him.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/110/open_hyper-local-hero.html
As riveting as the catastrophic military mission was on paper, the online account had chats with author Mark Bowden, Pentagon video, and audio interviews with surviving soldiers–their stories, their voices. “It was like doing journalism in black and white versus doing it in color,” Curley says. “How could you not want to tell stories that way?”
June 28, 2007 at 5:18 am[...] end with a riddle. How did Philly.com do this in 1997, and what happened between then and [...]
August 21, 2008 at 6:19 am