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| Entry Number: | 521 |
| Entry Category: | 20.1 |
| Title of Broadcast/Webcast: | The Washington Post |
| Title of Story or Report: | Coverage of Chinese Earthquake |
| Running Time: | Approx 10 min (multiple videos) |
| Production Company: | The Washington Post |
| Date content was originally aired / available for viewing (must be 2008): | May 2008 |
| Original URL (if applicable): | (archive) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/china_earthquake_map/ |
| Additional Material: | |
| Essay: | Videojournalist Travis Fox was in China when an epic earthquake struck Sichuan Province. Working alone and with a small camera, he was able to redeploy quickly to the disaster area, and was among the first Western journalists to reach the area. During his 10 days filing daily reports of the aftermath, he created a collection of multimedia stories from China that was unique among web journalism-- and different from print and television. Within Sichuan province, the solo videojournalist was able to move quickly and discreetly, and therefore capture scenes that traditional television crews simply could not. He documented the sheer horror of such a massive natural disaster when he captured the screams of a frantic mother trying to dig out her buried daughter-- with her bare hands. Another man in the destroyed town of Beichuan was searching for his parents after a bus-sized boulder rolled down a mountain and landed in their apartment. But his coverage went further. In other video, Fox showed firsthand how the earthquake was quickly becoming a political issue-- and therefore a problem for the Chinese government. Fox's story about the collapse of a school was among the first to shed light on the issue of shoddy school construction and the battle that was forming between the parents of killed students and local officials. Outside the destroyed school, Fox captured an unusual yelling match between the parents and government officials. Rarely are such confrontations captured on video in Communist China. In the week after the earthquake, however, the story was more about the scale of destruction than the political implications. And there was no better way to show this than using a medium unique to the web-- panoramic photos. In some of these interactive photos, Fox showed the vastness of the quake, such as the photo from Yingxiu, the epicenter, where viewers could witness how even the sides of mountains collapsed. The panos could also be used to tell more intimate stories like the image of the collapsed Yu household. Finally, all of the content was plotted on an interactive Google map, where users could share and "mashup" the content. Taken together-- the videos, the panos and the Google map-- this collection of daily breaking news reporting allowed viewers to powerfully experience the scene on the ground in real-time, in a remote disaster area, and in a way that is simply not possible in any other medium. (Note: In addition to the examples on the submission page, the rest of the videos and panos can be found on the archive page: http://tinyurl.com/749fol) |
