BOP 2007 > Web Site Winners > Best Multimedia Package (Large Affiliated Sites)
- 2nd Place
- “The Lifeline”
- latimes.com
Bringing back the wounded with heart, soul and surgery. A three part Los Angeles Times series following the lives of soldiers wounded in Iraq.
- Comments (Josh Meltzer)
Being a Black Man is the perfect story to tell through the web and was done in a most complete way. It took a topic that so many organizations would be afraid to attempt or to do in full scope. The videos featured men and women from many walks of life that discussed both stereotypes and realities honestly and fully. Though some of the judges disagreed on whether the length of the videos was too long, each story flushed out any questions we had about that particular subtopic. The database of information was another selling point for this piece for the judges and the survey and corresponding statistical results allowed the reader to participate in the discussion in a private way, and discover how their own individual perceptions match with the average reader responses. The project also allowed the user to learn about the issue in manageable chunks and in a variety of mediums.
Lifeline has a fantastic and perfect balance of amazing photojournalism, natural gathered sound, and well-thought and well-edited interviews to form a narrative that brought us from the battle field to the home through a medical facility. The access of the journalists was phenomenal and the choice to get close to certain subjects and follow their progress for a series of months paid off.
Sister’s Gift is a video piece that showed how simple narrative storytelling can compete against larger multifaceted projects. It was one of the few entries in this category that was a personal story that greatly moved the judges. We sat through each chapter intently and were anxious to proceed to the next segment. The effort and persistence by the photojournalist was worth the investment and the judges felt that they got to know the subjects of the transplant story really well by the end.
In great contrast to the Sister’s Gift, the Los Angeles’ Times piece, Altered Oceans is a huge scope project that literally went to the corners of the earth to tie together a complex, important and often ignored problem. The photography, storytelling and video were first rate, and the giant reach of this project was impressive. The judges wished that the main navigation page had a single navigable map or entry point for all the stories that didn’t need to be reloaded each time. Had the piece had some sort of common character or compelling feature to really make the viewer want to see each chapter one after another, this entry would have risen to the very top of this category.
The Vanishing Class is a story that the judges felt did a great job of taking a local story of numbers and turning it into a personal story with a common narrative line. The video, stills and audio are top rate, and the story itself is both moving and informative. Interviews were done with careful thought to appropriate length, and the project was wonderfully edited.
A note about Yolanda’s Crossing….The judges were very moved by this piece and considered it for an honorable mention, but felt that it included too much theatrical video that wasn’t documentary in nature. That said, the photographer did a phenomenal job telling a story about something that happened in the past, but the judges were concerned about the real subject matter of much of the video.
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