Bringing an avalanche to life

The New York Times - Snow Fall 

The New York Times won four Pulitzer Prizes, including one that went to John Branch for his feature “Snow Fall,” on a fatal avalanche in the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, which, the Pulitzer committee noted, was “enhanced by its deft integration of multimedia elements” including extensive video, animation and graphics.

Snowfall with horses

The Jockey

Russell Baze is the winningest jockey in American history. Yet his name is familiar to only the most avid followers of horse racing.

Curation tools

HuffingtonPost

Amy Wood's 7 Newsies

Buzzfeed 






Mayoral debate   
Public Insight Network - Ask an astronaut

Geofeedia.com  

... below

Indy Star breaking news Storify

Brawling managers fined, not suspended

FSL president reviewed video footage of Saturday's fiasco





Miracle manager Doug Mientkiewicz mixes it up in a bench-clearing brawl: The first-year Miracle manager stormed out of the dugout against the Bradenton Marauders. Both managers were ejected. Video by David Dorsey/news-press.com

Journal Sentinel Empty Cradles

In 2011, the Journal Sentinel took on an issue we have too long ignored – the death of children before their first birthday. Infant mortality is a crisis not just of public health, but of ethics and morality. The rate at which our infants die in Milwaukee is unacceptable. We are continuing to examine the problem and point to solutions.

Major project across all platforms

Instagraphic - video data

College completion project

The Chronicle of Higher Education  -  Project  

LATimes live coverage of Occupy LA

Cool timeline, aggregation of breaking news social coverage.   Occupy LA eviction. 

http://timelines.latimes.com/occupy-la-breaking-news/

WNYC Hurricane Irene data stories

NY, NJ declare state of emergency

Text stories included searchable weather maps like this one:

Video and audio

POWER OF AUDIO
Georgia school shooting 911 tape :  Audio of Antoinette Tuft

VIDEO: TRYING SOMETHING DIFFERENT 

Edmonton Journal candidate forum:  Alberta candidate questions on YouTube.

How they did it 

Sometimes all it takes is a really good Facebook post

Or a good Tweet.  

More thoughts, tips, resources

Thanks to Tyler Chance for this package of digital journalism tips.

• • 
    Tools for gathering information
• Audio
• Voice recorder HD
• External microphones?
• iPhone earbuds mic can be useful on voiceovers (DP)
• Photo
• A Nashville filter can’t save bad photography. Find some external lenses for an iPhone. They aren’t all expensive. You’ll thank yourself later.
• Social
• SocialMention
• Kurrently
• Topsy
• Visual approach to posts
• Tools for disseminating/editing information
• Audio
• TwistedWave
• Dragon Dictation (may be a help, but still kind of funky and can’t be used as a crutch. But still, it keeps getting more accurate)
• Video
• Splice
• iMovie app
• ProCamera
• Photo
• Instagram
• Instagram as a tool, not a savior.
• Text
• Tabula (gathers data from PDF tables)
• PlainText (links with DropBox accounts)
• OpenRefine (clean up messy data)
• Tools for presentation
• Infographics/DataViz
• infogr.am
• visual.ly
• Google Fusion Tables
• Circos
• Quartz’s newly open-sourced Chartbuilder
• Tableau Free Edition
• Social
• RebelMouse
• Storify
• Audio
• SoundCloud (can embed a player for your files, or play straight from the site)
• Text
• ScrollKit (can help you make animated long form pages. They were able to recreate ‘Snow Fall’ in an hour.)

• Eye to the future: what’s ahead for individual publishing/branding
• Newspad : Community blogging/reporting.
• IFUSSSS (If you see something, share something) : Community video newsgathering platform that acts as a middleman between the users and the broadcast companies. Narrowing down a model that actually PAYS royalties for videos used from the site.
• Kindle Singles : A platform for people to download single stories. There have been success stories already.
• A necessary kick in the pants about knowing the pros/cons of each tool (don’t use it just because you can, know WHY you should use it.)

That's all

Thank you!  

Keep in touch: 

@RobinJP  

@SDurhams    

@tchance121    

@davidplazas    

@gqjudy

Luge crash video map

NYTimes luge crash multimedia feature.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/12/sports/olympics/LUGEDEATH.html?_r=0