For this week’s class we learned about Flash journalism, and we explored packages from different news organizations to understand our likes and dislikes from the viewer/user perspective. I decided to spend some time examining Broken Trust (HeraldTribune.com), which is the result of a two-year investigation of why hundreds of Florida school teachers who have sexually harassed or molested their students are still allowed to teach.
Since I know the basics about how to create Flash packages, I was most impressed by the animation in this package. The topic was really data heavy since it presented statistics, stories and maps so at first glance I thought it maybe boring. However, the animation, for example, the three-demensional movement of the main pages of the package grabbed my attention. I also thought the animation in the case flow charts, which shows how complaints are processed, was eye catching and made me want to understand the process. The package was well organized and allowed the viewer be aware of how the story or page being viewed fit into the entire presentation.
One thing I didn’t really like about the package was the dot plots, which seemed kind of boring compared to the main pie charts which presented the information. The information was easy to interpret from pie charts because you could see both percentages and numbers in the chart. They were also colorful and eye-catching. But, I thought some of the information didn’t lend itself to the dot plots because you couldn’t really see any trends because the scales, which usually went up to 100%, had to be set at such large increments.
Overall, the presentation kept me interested firstly because I grew up attending public schools in Florida, and secondly there was always more than one element of the story to explore on each page. For example, if you were reading one story, you could see what other stories were in the same section in a sidebar on that page or while looking at pie charts, you can select a place on the map to see if there were any child abuse cases in that area. It was also interactive because viewers could report an abuse case if it wasn’t already included in the package, search for a particular case and e-mail their reactions.
