Multimedia Tools (9-1)

Image courtesy of CURSORCH
(CC BY 3.0)

How does multimedia enhance our messaging? Are certain multimedia techniques more effective than others? Provide examples using multimedia tools and post the links to the blog to support your thinking.

New media are still primarily driven by text-based content. McEachern (2013) notes that “Social media are, in many ways, inherently written media […] even those that do not rely primarily on text do have important textual elements” (p. 280). Nevertheless, audiovisual and interactive materials are increasingly being used to supplement and enhance web and mobile content; photographs, charts, infographics, music and audio, movies, widgets, and even font selection can enhance a reader’s experience and focus his or her attention on key elements of a message. “The real trick,” Sniderman (2010) explains, “is adding multimedia that enriches your site, product, or brand without taking away from your company’s core message and aesthetic.” (para. 2). Done effectively, multimedia techniques can complement the written material in a digital document.

The mere presence of these elements is no guarantee of improved reader response or clarity of information delivery, however. As an NPR report (2013) on the use of multimedia elements in a White House web page released for a State of the Union speech observes, "sometimes, even accuracy can be misleading, especially when it comes to graphics and charts" (para. 2). While numeric data on various charts was accurate, the absence of a zeroed axis on some charts (para. 6, 22) and tapered images in bar graphs (para. 38) could create a visual impression that misleads readers or distorts the underlying data. Sniderman (2010) further points out that, "As silly as it seems, font choice can hurt the impact of your message" (para. 16), linking to an article that noting the attention generated when Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert posted an online tirade in Comic Sans after the departure of superstar basketball player LeBron James.

The New York Times multimedia feature "Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek" illustrates how the thoughtful union of text and multimedia can produce a digital form that is more powerful, compelling, engaging, and informative than then elements would be individually. Concerning a massive avalanche that claimed the lives of several skiers in a 16-person party in Washington, the article is written with black serif typeface on a stark white background, conveying both the formality and sophistication of a New York Times piece and the foreboding whiteness of the avalanche the story is about.

The feature begins with a full-screen animated image of a wind-swept ski slope, dry flakes of snow blowing across the landscape in the foreground while a foreboding grey sky looms in the distance. As the reader scrolls down, the image remains in place but is covered, from the bottom up, by the advancing wall of white text, much as the snowpack is depicted in an animated graphic on the second page as growing over the course of the days leading up to the disastrous snowslide. This effect, with different images, reoccurs on all but the third section of the six-page feature.

Some of the multimedia elements are understated, providing additional information while keeping the focus on the developing tale itself: small, square headshot images of the individuals mentioned in the story, for instance, appear in the margin immediately to the right of their first appearance in the article, along with a brief descriptor including their names. Other elements are indispensable tools that aid in the reader's comprehension of the event; the animated 3D depictions of the mountains near the bottom of the first and second pages provide the reader with a complex spatial awareness of the landscape and a better understanding of the region's topography than even the well-written text description of the area (para. 18-20) is capable of.

Even though some audiovisual media may have more of an impact on the reader than others in terms of usefulness or aesthetic appeal, the overall effect of various multimedia elements working in tandem can greatly enhance the reader's experience and the effectiveness of the writer's message.

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References

Branch, J. (2012). Snow fall: The avalanche at Tunnel Creek. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek

McEachern, R.W. (2013). Social media challenges for professional writers. Journal of Current Issues in Media and Telecommunications, 5(3), 279-287.

NPR staff. (2013, February 14). Chart check: Did Obama's graphics 'enhance' his big speech? NPR.org. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/02/13/171935151/chart-check-did-obama-s-graphics-enhance-his-big-speech

Sniderman, Z. (2010, July 28). How to: Add multimedia to your blog. Mashable.com. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/add-multimedia-to-blog/ 

Blog Best Practices (8-2)

Image courtesy of Dave Crosby
(CC BY-SA 2.0)

Choose a blog and analyze the functions and substance of the blog as a form of writing and information delivery. In your opinion, what are the “best practices” when creating a blog to ensure appropriate form, function, and substance? Provide a link when responding to classmates and post your opinion along with your rationale.

Best practices

I can think of at least eleven aspects of web log creation the inclusion and optimization of which could be described as best practices for blog authors looking to improve their online contributions to the form: content and style (substance); layout/design, widgets, links, and informational sections (function); and title, body, labels/metadata, URL/permalink, and images (form).

Substance

Most important are the content and style of the blog’s main text, for this is where a writer establishes a connection with his or her audience. Content refers to the subject of a post and the examples and evidence used to support it; style refers to the author’s tone, objectivity, humor, punctuation, and sentence structure.

The content of the blog may be informative, argumentative, analytical, or interpretive. It might be personal or professional, factual or anecdotal, formal or conversational, Whatever the case, a blog’s content should be consistent in both theme and style, attracting a following by establishing a rapport with readers who themselves promote the blog.

Function

A blog’s utility and function are a product of the page elements and layout as well as design features that promote further exploration and sharing of the writer’s background and/or information beyond the primary content. Widgets enable a blogger to add functionality to a page by easily embedding multimedia information from outside sites; hyperlinks offer interconnectivity and point readers to sites the author has deemed noteworthy; different informational sections or pages can provide background information about the site itself, the author, or the practices adhered to on the site. The layout includes whether images, columns, links, widgets, a title, and other web page elements are appear on the blog as well as how they are formatted and where they are located.

Form

The web log form is distinguished by several elements including a large title; body paragraphs, typically appearing in on larger column often flanked by one or two more narrow columns with additional images, information, or links; labels/metadata not always visible to the reader but able to be scanned by search engine indexing crawlers; a customizable URL/permalink for specific posts and images; and eye-catching images relevant to the subject matter that will show up if the entry is linked to in a social media site such as Pinterest, Facebook, or Google+.

Best practices

The best practices for web log creation, based on those elements and my own limited practice and research as an amateur blogger, could be summed up thus:

1. Provide rich material that is consistent in style and theme and informative, entertaining, analytical, and/or about a specific topic that may be of interest to a target group
2. Write in your own unique style, and be consistent with that voice
3. Develop an attractive yet functional page layout that emphasizes your unique content while also providing functional access to additional information and resources
4. Incorporate relevant widgets that improve your readers’ experience without overshadowing your main content
5. Within your blog entries, provide hyperlinks to external websites that you referred to in your own content development or that would prove useful to someone interested in your topic
6. Provide sidebar features that provide additional information about the blog itself, its author(s), and its policies. This might include an “About the Author” section, history or background information, an overview of the topic or subject matter, a disclosure policy, and/or information about copyright or creative commons policies.
7. Develop a clear title, preferably of 70 characters or less to decrease the chance of it being cut off when it displays on a search engine results page (SERP)
8. Employ metadata to make it easier for search engines to identify the key ideas in your writing. Blog creation sites often provide tools to facilitate the listing of keywords or labels.
9. If possible, design a custom URL for every entry that reflects the title and contents of each post. Consider using hyphens between words to increase human readability but omitting unnecessary words like articles for brevity’s sake.
10. Most importantly, incorporate at least one relevant image on each post. For starters, image searches often drive traffic to the pages hosting the image files. Additionally, links to your page via social media sites will include a thumbnail of one picture; having an eye-catching primary image on such third-party recommendations could boost traffic even further. Furthermore, some image-based sites such as Pinterest will be unable to showcase a writer’s material without a captivating image to display. 
11. As a follow-up to the recommendation to incorporate an image, do so only if you have taken the picture yourself and/or own the rights to it, have permission from the copyright holder, or fulfill the terms of a creative commons license (usually just including attribution to the source; even better is to make such an attribution a hyperlink to the page the image was found on).

Blog analysis

Among the list of honorees in Time's "The 25 Best Bloggers, 2013 Edition," McCracken (2013) recommends Mark Forsyth's etymology, grammar, and language blog The Inky Fool, writing that "Forsyth writes about linguistic questions you never quite asked yourself concerning words such as qualm and shebang, answering them in a manner which is both playful and concise" (para. 1). As an English instructor myself, I thought Forsyth's blog was something I might be interested in and decided to take a look.

The Inky Fool is notable, as one would expect from a blog about language, not for its flashy visuals but for its content. While most of the entries I read were brief--one to several paragraphs--there are quite many of them (over a thousand in five years). A quick calculation based on the helpful "Blog Archive" widget in the site's sidebar reveals that Forsyth averaged 210 posts a year between 2009 and 20013 (interestingly, after being honored in Time's "Best Bloggers" list, Forsyth has not been as prolific--he has only posted 18 entries from in 2014 (through the beginning of August).

Despite a simple (some might say spartan) design aesthetic--simple black text on a white backdrop with very few images--the blog features a number of widgets and links to the right of the main content, including a Facebook plugin, search bar, Twitter link, word cloud, and links to dictionaries, style guides, and language sites. Most notable and prominent of these features are images of the covers of his three books, found at the top of the sidebar as well as in the header image.

The fact that such an austere blog could garner recognition on the top 25 list of a major publication speaks to the importance of the actual writing over flash and pizazz; without quality content, even the best-designed blog won't draw an interested readership or a devoted following.

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References

Forsyth, M. (2014, July 31). Harrogate and Moby Dick [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://blog.inkyfool.com/2014/07/harrogate-and-moby-dick.html

McCracken, H. (2013, August 5). The 25 best bloggers, 2013 edition. Time.com. Retrieved from http://techland.time.com/2013/08/05/the-25-best-bloggers-2013-edition/slide/mark-forsyth-inky-fool/

Press Release (7-2)

Image courtesy of Michele M.
CC BY-SA 2.0

Create a press release for Joe Paterno’s death (review the Media Dead Wrong to Repeat False Report of Paterno's Death article discussed in the 5-1 Discussion). Craft an accompanying Facebook post. Hint: Consider ways to make this story meaningful to a wide audience and not just an announcement of a potential tragic loss.

This week, I am creating a hypothetical press release and Facebook post announcing the death of former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, written from the standpoint of a university sports information department. Skerik (2012) offers several press release pointers gleaned from exchanges with professionals in several PR discussion groups, including the importance of newsworthiness, editing/proofreading, images, and keeping “key messages of the press release front and center” (para. 12). She also notes the importance of brevity: “From a user (and search engine) standpoint, a 400 word release is more effective than an 1800 word tome” (para. 10).

To brush up on the conventions and expectations of the press release format, I consulted several web resources for tips and pointers: PR Newswire and wikiHow. These resources provided me with a few additional suggestions beyond Skerik's advice: to begin with a boldfaced headline, include a quote, provide contact information, and signal the conclusion of the release with three hash marks.

Press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Joe Paterno, legendary Penn State coach, succumbs to lung cancer at 85. 

STATE COLLEGE, PA, 23 January 23, 2012—Joe Paterno, the Penn State coach who led his teams to more victories than any other coach in college football history, died yesterday at 9:25 am due to complications from lung cancer. His family has requested privacy but released a statement saying that “His loss leaves a void in our lives that will never be filled” and that he “was a man devoted to his family, his university, his players, and his community.”

Joseph Vincent Paterno was born on December 21, 1926. He grew up in Brooklyn and was a star quarterback and defensive back, sharing the school’s career interception record to this day. He began his career with the Nittany Lions as a 23-year-old assistant in 1950. Paterno became head coach in 1966, leading his teams to 409 wins, 37 bowl games, five undefeated seasons, and two national titles. He is the only coach to have lead teams to victory in the Rose, Cotton, Sugar, and Orange bowls. Challenging his student-athletes to excel in the classroom as well as the gridiron, his “Grand Experiment” produced 47 Academic All-American players over 46 years, and he assisted in a $14-million-dollar fundraising effort to rebuild the PSU library, which was renamed in his honor in 2000.

A memorial service will be held this Thursday at the Bryce Jordan Center near Beaver Stadium. It is open to the public.

Contact information

Team Sports Office
139 White Building
University Park PA 16802

(814) 863-9530

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Note: A press release is not a form of academic writing, and the PSU sports information department would not likely need to turn to outside sources for this kind of information, so no citations appear in my sample. However, I have provided at the bottom of this blog entry the sources that I have used to complete this exercise.

Facebook post:

In the interest of maintaining consistency of message, my hypothetical Facebook post contains the same information that appears in the lede of the press release, as well as a link to the full contents of that statement. It also incorporates the press release language about the memorial service and an eye-catching image—again, consistency would be key in my communications strategy, so I would use the same image as in the press release.

Note: Joe Paterno images courtesy of Frances Sonne (CC BY 2.0) 

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References

How to write a press release. (n.d.). wikihow.com. Retrieved from http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Press-Release

Joe Paterno. (2011, June 30). Penn State Athletics. Retrieved from http://www.gopsusports.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/paterno_joe00.html

Joe Paterno, 85, dies in State College. (2012, January 23). ESPN.com. Retrieved from http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7489238/joe-paterno-ex-penn-state-nittany-lions-coach-dies-85-2-month-cancer-fight

Layden, Tim. (2012, January 30). Joe Paterno 1926 – 2012. Sports Illustrated. Retrieved from http://www.si.com/vault/2012/01/30/106154381/joe-paterno-19262012

Maisel, Ivan. (2011, November 9). Joe Paterno’s Penn State legacy. ESPN.com. Retrieved from http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7212678/penn-state-nittany-lions-coach-joe-paterno-legacy

The official site of Penn State team sports. (2012, July). Penn State University. Retrieved from http://www.athletics.psu.edu/teamsports/

Press release template. (2010, November 24). PR Newswire. Retrieved from http://www.smallbusinesspr.com/pr-learning-center/diagrams-templates/press-release-template.html

Skerik, S. Press release best practices: Accuracy, newsworthiness & illustration. PR Newswire. Retrieved from http://blog.prnewswire.com/2012/04/26/press-release-best-practices-accuracy-newsworthiness-illustration/