Ever seen something like this?

Here's a new one: A story (a review, actually) that is 100 percent questions.

It definitely works for me -- although it goes on and on. You might feel like the reviewer's point has been made about halfway through or so, and the rest is the reviewer making sure you know that he ate (or tried to eat) a lot of stuff.

Anyway ... can you think of any other types of stories for which this approach would work?

The reviewer, Pete Wells of The New York Times, explains how he did the story in this post on Poynter.

A man advertises his time machine: A story in status updates

I like this Storify thing, not for every story, but sometimes it's just the thing. Here's what the internet was saying about a local guy looking for a time-travel partner, and about time-travel in general (a more popular topic on Facebook, Twitter, etc. than I would have thought.

Laughs & more

I've touted this blog -- called Hyperbole and a Half -- to a couple people in the office, because it's funny as hell. But I figured I'd note it here as well, because it's really a form of storytelling.

 Check out, for example, this post. It's a straight-up narrative that reads like a graphic novel or comic. At a couple points, art alone picks up the narrative. It has dialogue. Conflict-resolution (although the resolution is less a dramatic conclusion than it is a gentle letting-you-come-down-from-laughing-so-hard ending).

 There has to be a story or two out there to approach this way, whether with art or photos. Be on the lookout.

Maybe a new form of narrative ...

... could be the investigative-slideshow-narrative.

Sue J. pointed this out -- it's from MSNBC.com's Bill Dedman, who is a major public records/investigative reporting kind of guy, who, instead of writing what would've had to have been a longish narrative, turned it into a slideshow and wrote the story in the form of long cutlines.

In a talk with Poynter, Dedman said he set out to answer the question, "Why are the mansions of one of America's richest women sitting vacant?" William Andrews Clark (pictured at right), amassed a fortune in money and property and left it to his family when he died. The only surviving direct descendant is a daughter -- the woman Dedman refers to in his question above.

I think the slideshow/narrative idea might lose a little in terms of transitions, and thus cohesiveness, but I think what Dedman did works and has a lot going for it as a narrative form. Obviously it would be better suited to some stories rather than others. Anyone have an idea for a story using this form?

Picture book news story

This is super cool.

There's not that much text here, but it's a complete story. I love the use of photos, creative fonts and the poem-like quality of the writing.

I'm not totally sure how this page was built for the Web. I'm not sure if the writing is handwritten (the author is also an illustrator) or if it was done with a program that creates computer fonts using your handwriting.

Regardless, I'm sure this would take some time to create. Kind of like the slow food movement the story tells us about.

Any ideas on how difficult it is to create a page like this online?

I'd say it's worth it because it's a use of the Web to tell stories in a creative, new way. And as a bonus, this was one of the paper's top-viewed pages.

Journalism prof's guide to multimedia journalism

... and, of course, to multimedia storytelling.

Mindy McAdams of the University of Florida blogged on how journalists can "transform themselves," as she puts it, into multimedia journalists. She collected those 15 posts and put them in a PDF. It's available here, but it's long, so I thought I'd do a quick abstract, based at least in part on Mindy's text, to help. If you want more, see the whole document; it's pretty good stuff.

1. Read blogs and use RSS -- Read blogs, especially ones about online & multimedia, to help you understand changes in media, keep up with the changes, and adapt. Set up an RSS reader (e.g., Google Reader)

2. Start a blog -- Helps, or in some cases makes, you search for new information and connect with other online/multimedia sites & people.

3. Buy an audio recorder and learn to use it -- In our case, see Chris Glass. A number of you have added audio to your reporting/storytelling already. Anyway, audio adds another level to your work.

4. Start editing audio -- Again, some of you have done this here. Great. And you know it can be time consuming. But it's similar to editing your notes or notebook as you turn from reporting to writing ... so you already have some skills. As McAdams notes, this also forces you to broaden your computer skills, a necessity if you're embracing multimedia.

5. Listen to podcasts -- You need to hear good audio stories to have something to model yours on, to have something to shoot for.

6. Post an interview (or podcast) on your blog -- So you're saying, Blanchard, why haven't you posted an interview or podcast on your blog? Guilty. But this is another area where doing this forces you to broaden your journalistic skills.

7. Learn how to shoot decent photos -- Because, as McAdams says simply, every journalist ought to be able to get a basic spot news photo. You might be the only one there.

8. Learn how to crop, tone and optimize photos -- Check in with Chris or Brad on this one if you want to learn. Again, McAdams is approaching this from the standpoint of, if you're going to be a fully-developed multimedia journalist, you've got to know how to work with your own photos.

9. Add photos to your blog -- This is quite easy in Blogger, but Movable Type drives me up a wall. Maybe I'm doing something wrong ... but in any case, if you have a blog, try to get art on it the same as you would try to get art with a story in print.

10. Learn to use soundslides -- This is a different, and usually very cool, way of storytelling, and something that our photographers do very well. Making your own might even be fun.

11. Tell a good story with images and sound -- If you have a story that's worth telling this way, you ought to be able to pull it off.

12. Learn to shoot video -- The natural extension of No. 11.

13. Edit your video -- The natural extension of No. 12. Again, many of you have done this. Chris and Brad and probably others can coach you.

14. Publish your video on your blog -- Tom Joyce seems to have taken to this nicely. Blogs are better when they have more than just headlines and text. (I need to find a picture to go with this post).

15. Maintain/udpate your skills -- To crib from McAdams: Get over your fear, learn to fail, find good tutorials. From me: Keep pushing yourself. You're not going to master any or all of these things in a couple of weeks, or after one coaching session or a three-day seminar. But by making time to work at them, you'll first learn, then get better. That's the point.

Further thoughts on the redesign, narrative, and data-heavy stories

Brad sent out a thorough, helpful note about our upcoming redesign and what it's intended to accomplish. Some of the language of his note -- particularly about narrative and data-heavy stories -- may have been a little confusing. He and I just talked about this, and we're on the same page, and I wanted to add some (hopefully) clarifying thoughts here.

This line -- 'The problem is that many stories fail when they try to deliver too many numbers, dates or facts in narrative form.' -- is not talking about true narrative; it's referring to more traditional news and feature stories. Narrative, as we know from our work here, is its own thing, with its own set of reporting and writing requirements and skills. It's not something we do a lot of, because it takes time and effort to do it right.

That's not to say that we shouldn't consider even true narrative in alternate forms. (We've pointed out some on this blog over the past couple years -- here, here and here to pick a few). But the focus on alt-story forms is more to re-think our approach to some of the more routine daily stories that we do, the quick turnaround types that are common and thus can be overlooked or passed off as boring by readers.

My second thought also grows out of the same sentence noted above, regarding 'numbers, dates or facts.' We're not talking about banning investigative pieces, or declaring that no one can ever write a budget story again because budget stories have to be in alt-story form.

What Brad is trying to get across is: Let's approach those types of stories to see how they can best be told. If a budget story is better told visually than in 18 inches of text with a breakout, let's do it. If the enterprise piece can benefit from a large graphic that can deliver some of the newsy stuff -- thus potentially giving the reporter a bit of elbow room to write his or her investigative discovery with the needed context and depth -- let's pursue that.

And, actually, this is all stuff that we're already doing. The redesign is an opportunity to reach some new levels of planning, thinking, focusing and executing stories and story elements.

If you want a great example, look at this past Sunday's paper and Teresa's earthquake story.

As Brad noted (in an e-mail to me earlier today), Teresa reported the hell out of that story to provide the content for the graphic as well as the elements (2 short stories -- including one alt-form -- and a breakout). Teresa, Carrie and Brad took what could have been a traditional 60-inch enterprise piece and created an informative work of art on the front page. That was the approach to the story from the beginning.

In that case, that approach really worked. In another, the choice might be different. The key is to keep applying this kind of thinking into our work -- what's the best way to tell this story? -- as we go forward.