Multimedia Journalism for College Educators

Poynter | St. Petersburg, Florida | February 2008

Multimedia Journalism

This page contains all the links and resources from Mindy McAdams for the 2008 Poynter seminar for college journalism educators. Mindy's blog Teaching Online Journalism may also prove useful. You can search categories such as blogging, teaching, or Flash.

Transforming the Journalism Curriculum

Teaching with Blogs

Flash in Journalism

Refer to your CD from the workshop for the exercises and files we used on-site.

Here is the exercise we did in the session.

Here are the 10-minute Flash tutorials.

Here is information about how to put Flash video online.

Get more Flash tips and tutorials.

Even if you do not learn to make things with Flash, you can begin to understand the ways Flash is used. What are the elements of a finished Flash package? These uses of Flash can be identified and discussed in any journalism course:

  1. Slideshows: Bicylces, Beer and Bratwurst in Bavaria (simple slideshow using Soundslides Plus, not Flash); When the War Comes Home (Washington Post; 7 min. slideshow, made with Flash, not Soundslides)
  2. Chaptered slideshows: My Body Myself (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle; Soundslides Component used in Flash); these consist of multiple stand-alone slideshows bundled together
  3. Animated infographics: Homicides in Boston in 2006 (Boston Globe; very simple); California wildfires, 2007 (Newsweek; this is simpler to build than it may appear); Sector Snapshots shows up-to-date economic data, powered by a database that is read by the Flash graphic (New York Times; dynamic data); Deadly Rampage at Virginia Tech (New York Times; awesome visual storytelling)
  4. Big packages: Liberians in Minnesota (Star Tribune; this has a great navigation interface); Being a Black Man (Washington Post; this is rather too large but still demonstrates how Flash can be used to combine a lot of disparate elements in one place)
  5. Interactivity: BBC Electricity Calculator (illustrates soaring need for power in Britain); Manufacturing Chocolate (from the Field Museum, Chicago)
  6. Interface: Folk Songs for the Five Points; the timeline segment within Churchill and the Great Republic -- both of these are unique; they will help you see the real potential of Flash and multimedia journalism

Often when journalists refer to "an interactive," they mean a package built with Flash.

Flash is an application from Adobe (formerly Macromedia). The file type it generates for the Web is a SWF (pronounced "swiff"). The editable file (like a PSD in Photoshop) is a FLA (pronounced "flah").

The Flash player (currently at version 9) is used by more than 90 percent of all Internet users. The player is free; the application (used to make SWFs) is expensive. To view a Flash file on the Web, your Web browser uses the player as a plug-in, and you see the Flash content in-line on the Web page.

My book can be used in journalism classes for hands-on Flash instruction and assignments: Flash Journalism: How to Create Multimedia News Packages (Focal Press, 2005).