Transmedia: Storytelling for the Digital Age

Henry Oliver:  "Clicks. Views. Engagement. Eyeballs. Every news outlet is trying to find new ways to get and keep your valuable attention. And the latest weapon news outlets are trying to get you to watch, read, and listen to them rather than anyone else is telling stories in virtual reality."

Mădălina Ciobanu:  "Photojournalist Marc Ellison's new graphic novel aims to inform people about the struggles faced by four women in Uganda after spending most of their lives with the Lord's Resistance Army" ...

ReadThisThing:  "Podcasts are blowing up, great stories are reaching more people than ever, people are paying for content, and the modern web is giving the world a better platform to tell stories than the world has ever seen."

Aleszu Bajak:  'The story is the foundation to interactive storytelling. There are strict rules to the reporting and news gathering for the story. Distribution, the launch and the publicity that follows, has its own strict set of rules, too. What’s flexible, says [Konstantinos Antonopoulos, senior interactive designer], is the narrative: “This is a space to infuse technology, use good visuals, and transform the story into an experience.”'

Fusion:  "This [Ferguson Firsthand] is an interactive experience that explores Michael Brown’s death using a combination of graphic journalism and virtual reality. It allows you to move through an immersive recreation of the Ferguson shooting—and view the events based on eight eyewitness accounts."

Kate Abrosimova:  "The craft of storytelling is experiencing a sea-change in its development. Putting a viewer in the event directly with the help of virtual reality technology is what journalists are likely to be doing in the next decade."

Beckett Mufson:  "Nonny de la Peña has been called the pioneer of "Immersive Journalism," as she fuses news experiences with virtual reality, literally putting viewers inside the story."

Alastair Reid:  "Giles Wilson, features editor for BBC News Online, has commissioned a number of recent multimedia articles from the broadcaster, and shared his advice in making them work" ...

Kevin Moloney:  "Anyone who follows any news in the 21st-century mediascape has experienced this native and uncoordinated form of transmedia journalism first hand" ...

Sisi Wei:  "Designed well, video games guide players to feel emotion and conflict, as well as learn the intricacies of complex subjects and systems. They engage users in a highly meaningful, memorable, and influential way" ...

Madeline Welsh:  "Virtual reality is clearly having a moment. News outlets like Frontline, The Wall Street Journal, and the AP are all experimenting with how to fit VR into their storytelling."

Alastair Reid:  "New projects are integrating traditional art with digital innovation, and the medium's proponents believe it can tell stories in a way other media may not" ...

Jess Linington:  "From a realisation that the digital sense of presence is a powerful thing, to being the dubbed the 'Godmother of VR', Nonny de la Peña took use through her experiments in 'immersive journalism' at an lunchtime talk in Bristol."

Melody Kramer:  "The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC News) has been producing interactive stories for many years, but it wasn’t until February of 2014 that Australia’s public broadcasting company formalized the process and created a team to focus exclusively on interactive storytelling."

DRC:  This article contains a great list of software tools and insights into the process of interactive storytelling that are useful beyond the newsroom.

Aleszu Bajak:  "Last October, [Laura] Amico coordinated the production of “Chasing Bayla,” an immersive story about one man’s quest to save a whale ensnared in fishing nets. The story features over 6,000 words juxtaposed with multiple photographs, videos, audio recordings, and animated illustrations. Amico recently spoke about the project at The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard."

Catalina Albeanu:  "Knight Foundation has today published a guide intended to help media outlets produce their own interactive storytelling projects."

Frank Rose:  "When I first arrived in New York, some time back in the last century, I gazed in awe and fascination at subway riders reading The New York Times. Thanks to a precise and universally adopted method of folding the paper (had it been taught in schools?), they could read it and even turn its pages without thrusting them in anyone else's face. The trick? Folding those big, inky broadsheets into neat little rectangles—roughly the same size, in fact, as an iPad." ...

Kevin Moloney:  "I’ve written elsewhere that we’re living through a Cambrian Explosion in the ecology of media. [...]  And with this explosion has come a diversity of terms to describe new creations and new arrangements. Multimedia? Crossmedia? Transmedia? What is the difference? I get that question a lot, and it’s a good one."

Sisi Wei:  "Journalists can learn a lot from videogames. Games can help players explore unfamiliar worlds and experience stories, almost literally, through the eyes of another person" ...