Thing 7: Making Multi-media stories with Storify

So now that you're on Twitter, you can see that a 140 character post can be useful.  And the immediacy of tweets can draw in readers who want to know what's happening NOW.

But let's say you're following a particular topic:  say last week's big winter storm Nemo (that name keeps making me think about a fish).  There may be lots of tweets tagged with #Nemo, but I'm guessing not all of them are that interesting.  And what if you want to look at pictures?  or read longer comments--on blogs, for example?

If you want a full picture of the storm, you might want to look at many different media sources.  And maybe you'd like to make your own story about it and share it.  Like one news channel did here!

Storify is one way to sort out the most meaningful material from social media and put it together yourself, creating a story that's a mosaic of tweets, images, and commentary on a particular trend.  It's a way for writers to create multi-media stories by collaborating with social media creators all across the web.  News outlets uses it, and ordinary people use it, too.  Here's a brief tour on one web page.

Or if you'd rather look at quick video, here's the official Storify intro video.


Thing 7:
Explore and try out Storify
1.  Go to Storify and explore the trending stories.  Look at the multi-media, collaborative stories created with this digital tool.  The most recent ones are linked on the home page; you can search for others.  Choose three stories about topics that interest you, and look at them.  On your blog, describe one of the Storify stories you viewed/read.
2.  Create your own story.  First get a free Storify account.  Think of a recent topic that people are buzzing about in social media:  could be in national or international news, arts, sports, entertainment, even weather!  Then click on "create a new story."  Follow the instructions to choose tweets, blog posts, images, and other media to your story about a recent topic.  You can add your own text, too.  It doesn't have to be long, but do try to include various types of social media.
3.  After you've created a Storify story, embed it in your blog and share your reflections about the process:

• what did Storify allow you to do that you might not have been able to do were you writing a news story in the old-fashioned way (interviews and local research)?  
• If you're tweeting, would you like your tweets to be shared in someone's Storify story? 
• What are the limitations to writing stories this way?