How online news outlets covered Haiti earthquake

by Javkhlan Bold-Erdene

The use of multimedia by online news outlets makes context more meaningful and powerful. It also allows viewers and readers to absorb information in an easy and effective way and to judge situations themselves. People’s voices, combined with photos, can tell a rich and multi-faceted story.

Let’s take a look at how some news media used multimedia in telling the story of the 2009 Haiti earthquake. In one simple audio slideshow of just nine slides, Carolyn Cole, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning photographer at The Los Angeles Times managed to portray the magnitude of the earthquake, telling in pictures and words, in an easy-to-understand way, the suffering of some of the nation’s young children.

The Times also used interactive panoramic photos to great effect, showing 360-degree scenes of ruined buildings and displaced people in tent cities.

However, the newspaper that used panoramic photos the best was the New York Times. Nine panoramas, combined with audio, showed an orphanage, a tent city, St.Croix Cathedral, a warehouse, a barber shop, Fort National, a lumber yard and a textile factory. It’s an effective way for readers to connect with the story with no need for additonal text, explanations or description. The audio panorama of St. Croix Cathedral, for example, uses the natural sound of machinery and a barking dog, combined with an up-close view of the sanctuary’s hideous wreckage of rubble and jagged rebar to convey much more than merely words or pictures.

In another feature that stretched the boundaries of photographic storytelling, the Times presented a composite photo of the utter devastation of stores “cracked open like piñatas” along a quarter-mile stretch of Port au Prince’s Grand Rue. Embedded in the composite are short, close-up stories--pushcart sellers waiting in vain for buyers; looters running with their booty; 11 dusty tires stacked neatly outside a ruined storefront. There is no need to write a long story with such powerful photos so effectively presented.

Madrid’s El Mundo, the second largest daily newspaper in Spain, used information graphics to explain different facets of the Haiti earthquake--how the earthquake affected various regions, city areas that suffered most from the earthquake, earthquake standards for buildings and how a navy hospital ship was being used.

USA Today used before and after satellite images of areas hit by the earthquake allowing readers to see the damage to buildings such as the U.N. headquarters.

A USA Today graphic clearly summarized relief efforts in an interactive map giving readers the option of selecting various factors such as search-and-rescue and severity of damage. It was an efficient solution that covered much about the Haiti earthquake.

The BBC provided good coverage of the massive damage and loss by comparing the Haiti earthquakes with earthquakes in Italy and China with the help of graphics. It showed how easily complex data can be presented via graphics.

BBC audio slideshows and straight audio packages allowed viewers to hear the sounds on the ground as doctors raced to save lives on makeshift operating tables and rescuers raced to find the living.

Not surprisingly, considering its proximity to Haiti and its Haitian population, the Miami Herald provided continuing coverage of the event. Its news package included videos, slideshows, graphics, radio reports, etc.

Online newspapers also used multimedia to make donation appeals to the public. For example, Virginian-Pilot journalists sent to Haiti shared a blog on which they posted their ideas and opinions on on-going circumstances in Haiti, who needs what assistance and where, and what are the ways to help.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy estimated recently that donations to Haiti exceeded $709 million, more than 20 times the amount given to 2004 Asian tsunami relief. Much of this was collected through social-networking sites. For example, the American Red Cross raised $12 million via text messages. Besides providing news updates, it also used Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Youtube to allow people to interact and raise awareness about the ways they could help. Social media also inform people about how the Red Cross has spent donations on food, water, health, through a special page “Disaster Online Newsroom.”

“I remain convinced that mainstream media will soon turn away from the Haiti story and it will be up to social media to report on the long aftermath of the quake,” says Jack Lule, Director of Globalization and Social Change Initiative and a journalism professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. “Multimedia can help deliver news through social media. Multimedia can provide the dramatic pictures, audio and video that bring news stories to life.”

“The earthquake in Haiti showed the world just how many NGOs were already working in Haiti,” Lule says, “These groups labor with little recognition or reward. The earthquake has only served to redouble the efforts and passion of these groups. I firmly believe that the future of Haiti will be tied with these aid and relief organizations -- their work and their ability to communicate about their work through social media.”

“The donations, however, point out another aspect of those media -- their immediacy, Lule added.. “If people are moved by the scenes they see in real life or television, they can pick up their cell phones and immediately make a contribution. Not many years ago, those people would have had to go home, find their checkbook, write a check, get an envelope, address the envelope, stamp the envelope and put it in the mail. That laborious process has been reduced to a few touches to a phone pad,” he said.

What’s next for multimedia coverage of future stories as huge as the Haiti earthquake?

Says Tracy Boyer, an award-winning multimedia producer at The University of North Carolina, specializing in interactive Web development and multimedia storytelling, “We need to start thinking about designing multimedia for multiple end products, depending on if our users are coming to our site via the traditional computer screen, or using more recent technologies such as the iPhone and iPad. Currently, the largest issue is the limitation in Flash due to the incompatibility of this software with multiple end products. Additional interactive and customizable features such as user-submission tools, social media sharing options and other filtering/exporting tools also greatly elevate a multimedia presentation.”