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Transmedia Journalismin PrincipleByKevin Moloney

A factual story can be told in more ways and more places than journalists usually consider. Kevin Moloney, 2010

Heres a miniature manifesto fortransmedia journalism:

We journalists need to find the public across a very diverse mediascape rather than

expecting them to come to us. The days of the captive journalism audience are over, and if

we hope to serve our ideals of democracy, human rights, environment and positive social

change, we need to find a broad public.

To make our stories salient we need to engage the public in ways that fit those particular

media. We lose an opportunity to reach new publics and engage them in different ways

when we simply repurpose the same exact story for different (multi) media. Why not use

those varying media and their individual advantages to tell different parts of very complex

stories? And why not design a story to spread across media as a single, cohesive effort?

To define our goals Ill remix and repurpose Henry Jenkinsprinciples of transmedia

storytellingto fit the journalists cause. Theres nothing new to invent for them. Examples of

all of these principles have already appeared in journalism, they just havent been sewn

together in a predesigned and expansive story campaign. This is no more a digital

firstidea than it is an entity of ink-on-paper or Murrow-esque broadcast news. But it could

embrace all three of those methods as well as games, virtual reality, museum installations

or even paper airplanes. It also requires no change in the ethical ideals journalists value.

Transmedia journalism should be:

http://transmediajournalism.wordpress.com/author/cariocakev/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Jenkinshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Jenkinshttp://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.htmlhttp://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.htmlhttp://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.htmlhttp://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.htmlhttp://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/11/03/digital-first/http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/11/03/digital-first/http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/11/03/digital-first/http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/11/03/digital-first/http://transmediajournalism.wordpress.com/contexts/transmedia-journalism-principles/http://transmediajournalism.wordpress.com/contexts/transmedia-journalism-principles/http://transmediajournalism.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/36hours_santa_fe_24.jpghttp://transmediajournalism.wordpress.com/contexts/transmedia-journalism-principles/http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/11/03/digital-first/http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/11/03/digital-first/http://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.htmlhttp://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Jenkinshttp://transmediajournalism.wordpress.com/author/cariocakev/

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Spreadable: What makes a story infectious? How can we and do we inspire thepublic to share the stories we craft among their own networks, so they reach beyond

our core public?Examples.

Drillable:How can we activate the publics curiosity, enough to sleuth out moredepth and detail on their own? If there is more to be found either among our own

extensions of the storyline or among the worlds social and data networks thepublics engagement will be deeper.Examples.

Continuous and serial: As our stories expand across an array of media, how canthey keep their continuity of shape, color and tone even as they leverage the

strengths of each individual medium? By letting the story unfold across those media

in series, would we keep public attention longer?Examples.

Diverse and personal in viewpoint: Can reporting from a variety ofperspectives strengthen the telling of a complex story or engage new publics we

might have otherwise missed? What can we gain from letting the public in on the

process and result of journalistic work?Examples.

Immersive: We always want to draw our publics deeper into a story, to the pointthey forget they may be separate from it. How can we put alternative storytelling

forms to work on a complex story, to better explain a system or help the public

understand a storys impact on its subjects?Examples.

Extractable: What can the public take away from our work and put to use in theireveryday lives? The more our reporting enters their world, the more engaged the

public will be.Examples.

Of real worlds: All our stories are the product of a real, complex and multifacetedworld that is the envy of fiction writers. What can we do to embrace this complexity

and nuance in journalism instead of always simplifying that world?Examples.

Inspiring to action: Most of us become journalists in hope of changing the worldfor the better. How can we inspire the public to put down our pages or step away

from the screen and fix a problem or reward a success?Examples.

For a more detailed look at these qualities and how they have worked individually already

continue on to the fullTransmedia Journalism Principlespage underContextsat the top of

the window, or linked at the top of the column on the right. If you just tuned in, find more

context to these ideas in earlier posts on this blog and their related pages.

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