New York Times presents multimedia feature “Snow Fall”

Just days before I was supposed to go skiing over the Christmas holidays, my Twitter feed lit up with a lot of people talking about an avalanche story. More specifically, the New York Times web project Snow Fall – a multimedia feature about a deadly avalanche.

It’s a brilliant long format multimedia feature, showcasing in-depth reporting and using probably everything in the multimedia storytelling toolbox: text, maps, graphics, photos, video, audio and animation. And that’s just what you see and hear. Underneath the hood there is another world of programming and code. This is a long, labour intensive project.

As a text story alone, Snow Fall is a gripping piece of journalism. You really feel the story arc build up as facts, characters and action develop. I think what’s really interesting to note is the reader or user experience, particularly where video, audio and animation clips are placed.

In a memo to NYT staff (26 December), executive editor Jill Abramson, said Snow Fall had already racked up “more than 3.5 million views”.

A number of journalism academics and deep thinkers in our trade have talked about Snow Fall being, dare I use this oft spoken phrase, “the future of journalism” or at least has taken multimedia journalism to a new level.

If you haven’t seen it, go take a look at Snow Fall now and let us know what you think – it looks good on a tablet too. Then pop back here to read about how the NYT produced Snow Fall.

And finally, check out the Storify below to get an overview of the reaction to Snow Fall.

Author: Guy Degen