Norway’s Aftenposten and a Multimedia Story with Happy Ending

TAKEAWAY: Today we showcase another excellent example of multimedia storytelling, this time from Norway’s Aftenposten.

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Take a look at Hooked on Yoga here:

Today we showcase another excellent example of multimedia storytelling, this time from Norway’s Aftenposten.

http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Etter-et-liv-i-rus_-er-han-na-bare-hoy-pa-yoga-7358039.html

Watch a video of the story here:

https://vimeo.com/78461944

Eirik Wallem Fossan, Aftenposten’s multimedia editor, tells us that this feature, titled Hooked on Yoga, tells the story of how a drug addict found his way back into society through Yoga.

“The story hit a nerve among Aftenposten’s readers and was the fourth most read news story in Norway, as well as the most shared link, on the day it was published,“ Eirik said.

I asked Eirik to give me details of how the story came to me.

This, to me, is at the heart of a successful multimedia story. It requires planning, as well as the talents of several people, but with one supervising the entire production.

Astrid Hexeberg, an Aftenposten visual journalist, produced the story. An award winner for her video features, Astrid this time she also wrote the four to five pages of text published in print and also supplied the photos.

How did the story come about?

From Eirik:

The story came about after Astrid received a tip concerning a project called “back in the ring”, which involves ten former drug addicts that practice yoga. It was decided early that this was a story suitable for the Saturday paper, so after getting the go-ahead from the editor of the Saturday paper and the multimedia manager, the work started by conducting a series of video interviews and field recordings on different locations such as the woods, the mountains and the yoga studio. These recordings and interviews were used to produce the text.

The photographer, Fartein Rudjord, followed the group for two days as they climbed one of Norway’s highest mountains. The Aftenposten team also received visual material from photographers producing a documentary on the group of drug addicts.

“Only a couple of weeks before deadline, the idea of presenting the story online in a feature / magazine format, was formed. It turned out that there was so much quality material that it demanded a different treatment than what the standard content management system could offer,“ Eirik said.

Per Byhring hand coded the story for the web in only two and a half days. It was produced in a responsive format to work properly on mobile devices and features rich media modules nicely integrated in the text. The splash image, or start image, on top of the page is a video loop, and the main video documentary and smaller interviews were published in a customized version of Flowplayer.

What was the work involved?

Astrid spent around four to five days video editing, three days on field work, three days writing and four to five days researching the story. It was finally published in the print edition on Saturday, Nov. 2, and online on the same day around 9.15 a.m.

“I think the story received a wave of feedback, and perhaps this is because it is a story about survival, with a happy ending,“ Eirik said. “For Aftenposten these rich media features will become increasingly important as we move forward.“