Ted Kennedy remembered, via multimedia.

Web Story Receives 8 Million Views in One Day!


8 million views in a day is mind-blowing… I’ve been reading a lot about attention spans this week related to multimedia and online publishing, and came across this web story in relation to the debate about long-form journalism on the web vs. sampling. Some say we’ve become a “sampling-culture”- and I’ve noticed this to be increasingly true in myself. When I want to learn more about something, I might have 10 different tabs open comparing what the “word” is on a particular subject. With that said, I came across this article published by the Nieman Journalism Lab- exploring the Boston Globe’s online story about the death of Ted Kennedy (’09), which brilliantly has sampling built in to the web story interface. I challenge you to check out this story and NOT get entirely sucked in. It’s beautifully crafted and come’on- this is an endlessly fascinating family! The story is essentially a website in itself- with links to newspaper articles, super8 home-movies, letters… more personal information than I personally feel like I have any right to see… (yet I’m looking)! The Globe found that making videos prominent became a gateway for viewers to become engaged and want to know more. There’s been some debate about whether people will read long-form journalism on the web, and in this case it appears that viewers who become engaged through video often want to know more and will go on to read a long-form articles as well. Regardless- it’s always inspiring to see great storytelling on the web and this is truly an example. Bravo, Boston Globe.

For the Boston Globe’s Kennedy series, video is dominant