Online media can help newspapers tell better stories
By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 17:06:00 05/20/2008
Filed Under: Media, Technology (general), Internet, Newspaper & Magazines
MAKATI CITY, Philippines -- Online media can help newspapers tell better stories, a visiting American journalism professor said during her lecture at the Ateneo de Manila University on Tuesday.
Janet Steele, author of a book about independent Indonesian magazine Tempo and a lecturer in specialized courses like narrative journalism, said there is a place for narrative journalism in the age of new media.
Citing examples from American newspapers like the Washington Post, newspapers have used the online medium to combine narrative journalism with multimedia components.
"There is still a place for narrative stories in an online age. They bring all stories in a multimedia package. But nothing replaces good reporting no matter what platform is used," said Steele who is an associate professor of journalism at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.
Newspapers in the US now wrap newspaper stories around multimedia content, which are usually composed of archives, video, blogs and documents related to the story, she said.
"Online media can provide access to documents and other content to add to the overall story," she said.
Steele did not speculate how new media will change the face of journalism.
"Nobody knows how narrative reporting will play out in the age of new media," she said.
Steele said narrative journalism was described differently back in the 1960s when American journalist Tom Wolfe called it "new journalism." Hoping to win readers back by using literary devices to tell a story, new journalism was a new way of telling stories that go beyond the traditional "inverted pyramid" journalists have been using for decades.
By the 1980s, Steele said new journalism was called "narrative journalism" since it described journalism that uses literary techniques in storytelling.
Steele, who has been lecturing in Southeast Asia, said American media began introducing narrative journalism because newspapers were seeing fewer readers interested in news. At the same time, new media has somehow commoditized news, putting newspapers in "serious trouble," Steele said.
Narrative journalism is a technique that can help newspapers or any news organization to present news in a "more interesting way," she said. Combined with new media, narrative journalism can help tell better stories, she added.
Steele wrote a book, titled “Wars Within: The Story of Temp,” an independent magazine in Soeharto's Indonessia, which focused on the magazine and its relationship with the politics and culture of New Order Indonesia.
She currently writes a weekly newspaper column, "Email from America" for Surya daily in Surabaya, East Java.
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