Transcoding the news: An investigation into multimedia journalism published on nytimes.com 2000–2008

Abstract

Manovich (2001) describes the changes that result from translating an established cultural product into a new technology as ‘transcoding’. This study investigates the form that the journalism of The New York Times takes when transcoded to the Web by evaluating multimedia news packages published on nytimes.com from 2000–2008. The number and sophistication of the multimedia packages grew over time to include new interfaces that incorporated elements native to digital environments such as hypertextual links, interactivity, elements borrowed from digital games and social media tools. Most packages were produced as sidebars to stories published in the newspaper, suggesting that multimedia was used as an extension of the written word, not as a primary storytelling format.