Washington state’s largest daily print newspaper, The Seattle Times, utilizes streaming media on its home page.
While doing public relations outreach a couple of years ago, I encountered the trend toward streaming media firsthand. I was taken aback when an editor at the Times confirmed over the phone with me that her team had plans to cover my client’s event − in a nontraditional manner:
“Yes, we’ll be there to get a video.”
“Great, we’ll see you there!” I replied before hanging-up the telephone.
Wait a minute. A video?
Yes. [Enter streaming media.] The newspaper, characteristically ingrained in text and photographs, was going to cover the event with a video camera.
Nowadays, having overcome the novelty of finding streaming media on a print publication’s Web site, I find such combinations of media (multi-mediumed multimedia?) to be the norm.
I like The Seattle Times’ Web site in that its streaming media components are discretely placed midway-down the page and off-set to one side. The site maintains a focus on written articles and is not screaming streaming media. I find the publication’s streaming media to be user-friendly, featuring diverse videos that are easy to scroll through and select. There is also a separate page for the Video section of the “paper” that can be opened in a new window without disturbing the more traditional text articles.
My sole quip with the Times‘ use of streaming media is the lack of information about the videos themselves. In a clip titled “Cape Flattery and Neah Bay” which turned out to be more of a narrative feature than a news report, there was no reference given to the creator, Liz Langdon, until the end. As the video’s narration took place, I was distracted from the content and asking myself: Who’s narrating this? A journalist? A local resident? What am I watching? I would have found the segment to be both more informative and enjoyable had I known the context up-front. The lack of detail can be remedied by implementing more descriptive titles, providing a video introduction to each clip, and/or posting adjacent text that states what is being viewed.
Nice point on adding context to the video at the beginning rather than the end. I think since credits are traditionally reserved for the end so editors have just gone with what they know, but since a lot of people don’t watch videos all the way to the end more information up front (or in discrete text at the bottom of the screen occasionally) would add value.