Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek changed the way a lot of people thought about how to present stories online. I've even heard the story's headline used as a verb: "you should snow fall that story," to mean, add photos, audio and video to a plain text article.
Derek Poore, one of our visiting photography professors, visited our advanced reporting class last week to show us how to 'snow fall' a story. He said that following stories like Snow Fall and the Guardian's Firestorm, a few startups set out to give the masses the ability to do in a few minutes what used to take months. Among the free platforms are Creatavist and Medium.
On my way out west, I spent a few hours combing through my photos and videos from Turkmenistan. The desert flashed across my screen as the plane zipped through clouds, and the images took me back to a place and a time that now seems imagined.
I watched myself speak Turkmen with friends in the old bazaar. We climbed ancient ice houses. I remembered falling in and out of love with a country so maddening I will always have a love/hate relationship with those memories. Despite the struggles, my nostalgia is mostly romanticized now. Time has lessened the pain of the wounds that naturally arise from living as a Westerner in an autocracy. One thing I learned as a Peace Corps Volunteer is that sugar-coating doesn't really help anyone. Presenting uncomfortable realities can be a little awkward, but these days, I find there is no way not to do that. I've seen too much. Anyway, back to the project at hand.
Building the multimedia project itself took little under an hour. I'm sure there's lots more to explore. I created some chapters, embedded a video, clicked around for drop caps and eventually gave up after about 10 minutes of not figuring it out. The final produce is basic, but so much more visual than text blocks.
A story from Turkmenistan: Running in forgotten lands
Derek Poore, one of our visiting photography professors, visited our advanced reporting class last week to show us how to 'snow fall' a story. He said that following stories like Snow Fall and the Guardian's Firestorm, a few startups set out to give the masses the ability to do in a few minutes what used to take months. Among the free platforms are Creatavist and Medium.
On my way out west, I spent a few hours combing through my photos and videos from Turkmenistan. The desert flashed across my screen as the plane zipped through clouds, and the images took me back to a place and a time that now seems imagined.
I watched myself speak Turkmen with friends in the old bazaar. We climbed ancient ice houses. I remembered falling in and out of love with a country so maddening I will always have a love/hate relationship with those memories. Despite the struggles, my nostalgia is mostly romanticized now. Time has lessened the pain of the wounds that naturally arise from living as a Westerner in an autocracy. One thing I learned as a Peace Corps Volunteer is that sugar-coating doesn't really help anyone. Presenting uncomfortable realities can be a little awkward, but these days, I find there is no way not to do that. I've seen too much. Anyway, back to the project at hand.
Building the multimedia project itself took little under an hour. I'm sure there's lots more to explore. I created some chapters, embedded a video, clicked around for drop caps and eventually gave up after about 10 minutes of not figuring it out. The final produce is basic, but so much more visual than text blocks.
A story from Turkmenistan: Running in forgotten lands
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