Richard Koci Hernandez of the San Jose Mercury News put together a great multimedia package about the resurgence of rail traffic due to increased imports. It's a package that really breaks away from the newspaper mindset that a lot of us have. He did both the video and the Flash for "Red Hot Rails."
Unfortunately, the newspaper mindset still rules the Mercury News web site template. A day after it was published, you can't easily find it there.
What's up with that?
If your staff produces something great that will draw traffic over time, make an effort and put it out there for the world to see! Many of the newspapers I look at regularly do the same thing -- hide, fritter away, and lose great content. And worse, the special projects are in Flash and don't get search engine traffic.
Shortly after "Final Salute" won the Pulitzer, it couldn't be found on the Rocky's site. Good stuff on our site disappears after 24 hours. At least Dallas' Katrina and 'Yolanda's Crossing' packages are still on their photo/video page.
C'mon people - the web's not a broadcast medium!
2 comments:
Hear hear! I hate that about our site.
We do sometimes leave a link for multimedia pieces on the homepage for multiple days, but that is rare. Even when the multimedia does go in a prominent place, it's not given the same play as a print story.
For example, the print stories on our site get a big link and a blurb. But multimedia only gets a tiny link underneath the blurb ... Why can't it get full story status? Especially a huge package? HELLO!
One good point is that whenever a follow-up story publishes about something we've done multimedia about, they'll sometimes dredge up the old links and put them on the homepage.
Also, we do have a page where all the past multimedia can live, but it's not organized very well.
I always just check mercurynewsphoto.com to find their multimedia. In fact, I check that before I check the main Merc page.
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