KDMC Fellows: This a simple survey to get a feel for what multimedia story publishing techniques are being used in real-world newsrooms. Please answer with as much or as little detail as you like.

1) When creating a multimedia package, are you more likely to build it in 100% Flash, in standard HTML with embedded audio and video, or as an HTML wrapper around select Flash elements? What are your reasons for choosing one publishing method over another?

2) Does your Content Management System (CMS) impose major limitations on doing stories as custom HTML packages? Is your tech staff helpful when it comes to "working around" the limitations of your CMS?

3) Based on the constraints of the workplace (deadlines, time management, etc.) do you think the Dreamweaver/HTML training you received in Berkeley was useful? Will it be applied in real life multimedia storytelling?

1) HTML. While I love using Flash, I'm not very good at creating Flash projects myself in a timely manner or professional quality. Most HTML content management systems I use allow me to produce what I need when I need it.
2) My tech staff hates Flash and barely wants to embrace HTML. They still wish this "new" media thing would go away.
3) Dreamweaver had its day, it's not very practical for my purposes.

1. We don't control the HTML of our site, which is maintained by a completely separate unit of our parent company. So we have been either creating individual elements and allowing the online unit to package them, to disappointing results -- packages were nothing more than a set of text links to disparate items -- or creating Flash-only packages that fit into the HTML spaces of the site.

As our packages grow in sophistication, that's led to very large .swf files and long downloads. Also, not having access to the header code in the pages has created some limitations. So we're now planning to experiment with creating our own HTML pages with embedded multimedia and Flash infographic elements, providing the site only with a jpeg or very simple Flash "magazine cover" that users would click through to get to our HTML page.

2. As noted above, we can't get our hands on the CMS. Our access to the site is through a series of blogs, which we use not only for traditional blogging but also as our venue for breaking news and packaging. Meanwhile, our print stories are still shunted to the site through a separate CMS.

The online unit's staff is co-operative but small, so their time is limited and they are basically restricted to fitting our pieces and parts into a rigid CMS. Most of the working around comes from newsroom staffers who double as ad-hoc online tech support, drawing on skills we'd picked up on our own before the newsroom committed to online.

3. I'd had Web design experience before Berkeley, but I'd only briefly used Dreamweaver years ago (and had never used Fireworks). Now that we're shifting our projects to HTML, I'm using Dreamweaver to start the pages, then finishing them up with hand-coding.

Tough call on Dreamweaver at Berkeley. Trying to create our packages that week entirely in Flash probably would have required more training than we had, and I do believe that an HTML-based solution is more appropriate in many instances. But the concept of creating packages is more important to learn than actually being able to put one together in HTML, and bringing it all together in Fireworks was the point at which our team's efforts hit the wall.

I wonder if, given the time, it might be better either to provide us with a group of ready-made templates for a variety of combinations of multimedia elements, or have a group of grad students build the HTML shells to our sketched designs while we polished each individual element.

1. I usually use Flash. I'm more comfortable, and feel like I've got greater control.
2. The CMS is a big headache. Any custom package lives almost completely outside the CMS. The best solution our tech staff has given me is to create a story in the CMS with a text or image link to the package, which then lacks any of the branding and navigation of the rest of the site.
3. I personally felt like I got a lot from the Dreamweaver training, but have only been able to put it into practical use once.

1. We do all three depending on what needs to be done. Our online department, which is small, is pretty Flash-literate, but our graphics folks are now all undergoing Flash training. I would say our standard is html w/embedded audio and video, but whenever we want to do a little more oomph, we go to Flash. Special projects in particular tend to be entirely Flash.
2. Our limitation with our CMS is basically related to staffing. If we had the people and the time we could do a lot -- we just don't have the manpower to produce what we would like to. The system itself is pretty flexible.
3. The only time I've ever used Dreamweaver was at Berkeley; but it was a good introduction for me into the basics of page building, which I had never done before.

1. Currently we build it in 100% Flash because at the moment, we're basically using SoundSlides and other programs that export in Flash. We're not yet customizing in a way that would require a different approach.

2. Our Content Management System is Drupal and it doesn't impose any major limitations on doing stories as custom HTML packages. Our tech staff is extremely thin... 1 1/2 people but they are extremely helpful and enthusiastic about trying new things.

3. While I found it personally interesting, I don't have any need to use HTML/Dreamweaver for the forseeable future. I think using the time at the workshop to develop better skills at one of the other programs like Final Cut Pro would be more productive.

1) All of the above. The name of the game is ":search" we all know flash's search capabilities are pretty bad -- yes there are some ways around it but not very good ways -- bets thing to do is build your site using a open source CMS -- then use flash for your multimedia elements -- giving you the best of all worlds.

2) Of course doesn't every one's CMS just suck? seriously. Go open source, mask the open source CMS to look like the design you want and roll with it. As long as the story is told you should be good, never go with out of the box designs -- customize other wise your site may just look like your 13 year old neighbor's kid's blog.

3) I hardly use DW though I use flash a lot -- but there is no way to learn flash in one week. I think the best thing would be to emphasize multimedia storytelling thought processes -- tell them what the possibilities are -- tell them the software packages that do it and then push them in the right direction as to what they should go back to their papers and evangelize about.

DO THIS!

I think you need to do a interactive graphics fellowship aimed at multimedia producers and graphic artists/illustrators you do that and you could very easily raise the bar in online journalism very very quickly. Soundslides and Video are old hat nowadays -- specialized skills and thinking will take journalism further -- The New York Times is setting new heights with graphics and visualizing data which is as much storytelling as video is.

Hills - SoundSlides exports an HTML mini-site that embeds a small .swf element - a whole hierarchy of files and folders, images and audio files, etc. In other words, a SoundSlides show is an example of an HTML mini-site and can provoke the same hassles of getting it into a content management system that custom HTML-based sites do.

There is however a plugin for SoundSlides that will get it to export a presentation as a single QuickTime movie.