So this week's blog assignment was to go to this link and watch/read at least one story that has won an online journalism award for 2011.
http://journalists.org/2011/09/25/2011-‐online-‐ journalism-‐award-‐winners-‐announced/
I chose to watch a piece that won for online video journalism for a large site. The story was titled, Caught in the Crossfire: Victims of Gang Violence that was put together for the Los Angeles Times.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-gangviolence-html,0,6290501.htmlstory
This piece was really well done! It made me cry! The piece chronicles the stories of 6 gunshot victims (several of which survived), that were shot during gang shootings.
One of the victims that survived was a little 5 year-old boy named Josue Hercules that was shot in the back of the head while playing in his own backyard. His older sister carried him inside to their mother and the paramedics never came. The mother had to drive her young son to the hospital.
The story was an amazing example of awesome multimedia journalism. The interviews of the victims and their families were conducted in a quiet place, with no background noises and lighting that shown down on the subjects. And for the most part, the interviews were shot where the subjects were in the left or right portions of the rule of thirds for shooting. There were a few times that the subjects looked into the camera, but honestly I don't think in this case it was bad. You could literally look into these people's eyes and see the pain! It was real and deep and you could see that when they looked up into the camera! It pulled you into their stories and it made you start to feel their pain!
I loved how they showed mostly pictures with voice overs, as opposed to a lot of just interview shots. They jumped around and didn't just tell one story at a time, which I think kept it interesting.
They also had the final product, but also had links to each of the interviews so you could hear the individual stories one at a time and get the entire story.
I think that this story is a great example of how multimedia journalism can be used to tell stories from all aspects. you can get clear pictures of the who, what ,where, when, how and in some cases the why. In this case, we don't get the why answered. I do wish that I could have a little more info on the stories. Did they catch the gang-bangers that took part in these shootings? Did they hit their intended targets? If not, do they feel remorse about hitting a young child instead?
For a journalist to take on a project like this; for putting their lives on the line to go behind enemy lines right here on U.S. soil to get these stories is amazing to me!
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