Multimedia package: The murder trial

Certain crimes grab and hold the attention of a local community. Unsolved murders of average, law-abiding citizens fascinate many of us. Maybe because murder, while all too common, shocks the moral fiber of most humans. Maybe because we are afraid it could happen to us — until we get the final explanation (who did it?) and can breathe a deep sigh of relief. Maybe.

A well-constructed online news package can serve several purposes throughout the long process of investigation, arrest, trial and final outcome:

• Keep the public informed, day to day
• Make it easy to review past statements and evidence
• Help the journalists manage huge amounts of information
• Provide easy references to past stories and dates
• Show accountability, in that the journalists have carefully covered everything — not only the sensational parts of the story
• Make the justice process transparent to the public

Telling the story of a killing or killings within the context of a murder trial — this is something almost every North American newspaper must do at least once (sadly enough) in a span of several years. Through dozens (or evens hundreds) of stories, journalists show the public, step by step, the process of law. I think most people would agree that this is one of the good deeds of journalism. Sure, it sells newspapers. But it also provides a public service.

In our traditional format — the daily printed newspaper that is discarded soon after it appears — these long timelines of events and reports can become a burden. In each subsequent story, more and more space is used up in recounting “the story up until now.”

Back in July 2003, five people were killed in a home in Bakersfield, California. Eventually a high school vice principal, Vincent Brothers, was charged with five counts of murder for the death of his wife, three children and mother-in-law.

The package created by Bakersfield.com (Web site of The Bakersfield Californian, a newspaper with daily circulation of about 65,000) — The Trial of Vincent Brothers — is one of 11 finalists in the 2007 Online Journalism Awards category “Outstanding Use of Digital Media.”

In some ways, designing this kind of package is similar to designing one like The New York Times’s cross-country road trip package, which I wrote about last week — you must come up with a way to present a ton of information in a format that makes it easy to understand at a glance. What am I looking at? How can I see if there is anything here that I want?

Also, like the road trip, the legal process follows a linear chronology.

Unlike the road trip, the murder and trial story cannot be represented completely by a geographical map.

Also, the ultimate size, scope and length of the murder and trial story are unknown, whereas the road trip story was certain to last exactly 12 weeks and no longer.

The sentencing hearing for Vincent Brothers is scheduled for Sept. 27 (yes, this week). Justice is a long process in the U.S.

Package Elements

Typically, the designer can approach this package with two parts in mind:

1. Text stories taken from the traditional newspaper format. The list of these stories will grow, perhaps indefinitely. Some stories will have text sidebars and other accompanying elements (not text) in the printed version.
2. Everything that is produced or acquired for the online that did not appear in the printed version. This might include documents and public records (PDF format); videos produced by the newspaper or other parties; photo galleries and/or slideshows; all manner of graphics (maps, diagrams, illustrations); a news blog (with RSS); reader comment areas.

Unlike a multi-part feature story, the coverage of a long investigation has intrinsic value as a record. It makes sense to keep all those individual stories accessible online, with permanent URLs, and not to force them inside some odd format that is different from all the other text content on the site. So for Part 1 above, the solution will be links to the stories as they appear.

You don’t want to hide these links or make them hard to access. For the duration of the trial, they are the bread and butter that bring readers back to the package. After the trial ends, the links provide the outline of the complete story.

Ideally, you would set this up as a database query, so that the section updates itself automatically, without human labor. At the very least, set it up so that an editor can drop related stories into a designated folder on the newsroom system, and once there, the story is seen and linked by the package. The last thing you want is to waste an online producer’s time by requiring a manual insert for every new story.

You should ensure that when a reader clicks out to the story page, it is immediately clear how to return to the package page. This should appear consistently on each story page. (This might trump the effort to keep the stories in the site’s usual format.)

As for Part 2 above, the hard part is that you have no idea how many online elements will eventually be produced.

I think Bakersfield handled this two-pronged design challenge in a smart way: with a two-column layout on the package page. We see text stories listed in reverse chronological order on the left. On the right, we see an appealing graphic that provides entry into several online presentations, including a timeline of events and a crime scene map.

It’s possible that these should be flipped — graphic on the left, and story links on the right. Why? Because readers now expect ads to appear on the right, so they often ignore images on that side.

One thing that’s missing on the package page — and I think this would be a great addition — is a clear and prominent indicator of the thorough video work done by Bakersfield throughout the trial (video cameras were permitted in the courtroom). There is a very cleanly designed index page for all the videos, and it is linked at the bottom of the left column on the package page. But I think people might be likely to start watching the summary video that is embedded there and never go on to the index. However, they might find the day-to-day videos fascinating — if they discovered the index page.

I would like to shout out a big cheer for Bakersfield’s scrupulous attention to dating each story pulled from the newspaper (immediately under the headline; for example: “This story originally appeared July 9, 2003″; see example). Too many news sites are sloppy about including the year on stories (and on other elements), and sometimes it is quite difficult to find any date other than today’s date — which clearly is NOT the publication date of the item.

Related Posts

I wrote about the Brothers trial package previously on March 12, 2007, and on April 27, 2007.

I have already written about eight of the 11 ONA finalists in the “Outstanding Use of Digital Media” category:

• (Sept. 20) Multimedia packages: Organizing 30+ pieces
• (Sept. 17) Multimedia packages: Music journalism
• (Sept. 15) Thoughts about the ONA finalists