The end of story-telling?

Just a very quick short note about the meeting of the Online News Association gathering last afternoon at the Brufani Hotel. Geek talk? Not really.

Erik Ulken did a very interesting and interactive talk about alternative ways of telling stories, or “beyond th story-centered model” as he named the presentation. He started by tracing the background of the putting of articles in newspapers, their not-so-abnormal lack of structuring, and new resources for presenting stories to the public, such as photogalleries and quick notes to context the images.

Then he traced a “3-way mash-up” for transforming and telling stories without looking that you’re actually telling a story: first, you have the “public data”, raw information itself as the data you want to transform; then you have the “original reporting”, which is the background and analysis to situate the reader, and as the third step there’s the “user contribution”, which is the dialogue with the reader and the space for people to give their feedback (which can, as well reminded, be the first step in the communicative process, since journalists can now get the opinion of the public on what they want to know more about).

Above all, there’s got to be creativity to enhance the capacity of calling the attention of who journalists are talking to, inform and being innovative at the same time. As Erik reminded in his closing note, “it’s not the end of the article-doing”. It’s just another way of dealing with the “new news” and the new public who read them.

Meghie Rodrigues