Poynter Institute's Jan. 10, 2007 blog about Soundslides

"Photos, Audio and the (Glorious) Struggle to Combine them"

Audio slideshows are popping up all over news websites--and not just national sites. According to Pat Walters, the author of the blog, small newsrooms created this trend.

The creator of Soundslides, Joe Weiss, went to the Poynter Institute to train the staff on how to use it (I say: Cool?)

Weiss is a photojournalist (so it makes sense that he create a program to seamlessly blend audio and photos) He designed the program when he and a team had 8 hours to create 50 multimedia presentations.

And then he shared.

Now, newsrooms across the country are changing because of him.

(okay, that's a bit overdramatic, but not really--see, audioslides are appearing to be more and more prevalent and while I think they can get a little boring sometimes, they are cool to watch, one at a time, when I have the time, which is normally never.)

Getting back on topic...

Walters says that there haven't been many hard news stories done on audio slides...and I agree. Mainly because I don't think the news media wants to take something so new and risk it on their lead stories or whatnot.

However, more and more sites are attaching slides to their hard news stories (like 'click here' if you want more). So basically they augument hard news.

I guess it's just a featur-y medium. Personally, I don't think it's unlike making a pkg...it's just instead of moving video, the images are still.

I do agree: they are too long--most at 3 minutes...and Walter says that there aren't enough good photographs by one photographer to fill that, and I kind of agree.

I think they are too long because at 2 min, my attention span starts to fail.

Walters interviewed Weiss and recorded it in the blog--basically, Weiss created Soundslides to make creating this medium easier.

And since I haven't used the program, I can't say I agree or disagree with that.