Em defesa do Flash

Em seu blog-aula, Mindy McAdams pega carona nas dicas de melhor produção multimídia - que circularam em vários posts na última semana - para defender o uso do flash na produção diária de notícias. Tal como são planejadas as peças de composição do jornal como infográfico, quadros e mapas, por exemplo, a pesquisadora americana argumenta que o uso de material visual interativo é uma das particularidades do ciberespaço e deveria ser uma constante e não um trabalho esporádico, complexo, que geralmente leva horas para ser concluído.

McAdams critica a remediação aplicada a diversos pacotes em flash, que restringem-se a reunir vídeo, áudio e gráficos característicos da mídia analógica, como os exemplos abaixo:

Silent Shame — Wisconsin State Journal
The Girl in the Window — St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times
Touching Evil — Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette

Trata-se de interfaces estáticas, empacotadas com flash. A professora de jornalismo digital ensina, porém, que é possível criar peças interessantes, dinâmicas e interativas com o programa da Adobe. Sobretudo, a partir de bases de dados complexas, e o NY Times é um dos grandes jornais a apostar nesse tipo de conteúdo.

Can a President Tame the Business Cycle?
Exit Polls - Election Results 2008
The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 — 2008

Anothers:
Architectural Monuments in a Reshaped Beijing (New York Times)
How Much Is $700 Billion? (USA Today)
University of Texas Supercomputer (Austin American-Statesman)

Peegunta McAdams: "What criteria should you use?

The first priority is to look at either long shelf life or immediate impact (likely high traffic) — and weigh it against time needed to produce the project. I heard a lot of examples of this kind of thinking from two Chicago Tribune designers last summer. If your Flash producer is doing Flash work day in and day out, she can reasonably estimate how long the work will take. She can even offer options — this much will take three hours, but if you want to also add x, then that will take a day and a half.

Another consideration is coordination with print and other products. If graphics are being produced for print or television, then why isn’t that production optimized for the Web site? Does your Web site lack graphics, maps, etc., because your emphasis for graphics is on the daily print product? It’s past time to refocus and make sure that ALL graphics are Web-ready and Web-optimized.

None of this will be worth anything if you fail to play up the Flash work on the Web site. A lot of newsrooms say no one looks at their graphics, games, interactives, or Flash packages. They say the traffic numbers are low. This might be because the projects were displayed on the home page of the site for, say, two hours — and then buried forever where no one would ever see them. How do you think visitors to your site find stuff? Would you like to get 1 million pageviews for a Flash package in two months? It’s possible — but you have to promo it, play it up, and not bury it.

Keep in mind that Flash is not used only for big honkin’ packages that take months to produce. As I noted yesterday, Flash is ideal for animated data visualizations, interactive maps and diagrams, and other one-off information graphics — many of which can be produced in several hours (if your Flash person’s skills are not rusty).

If you focus on producing Flash graphics that will have relevance to your market, your audience — local, important, high-profile or need-to-know — you could be driving more traffic to your Web site. My favorite example remains the Dallas stadium graphic from two years ago — 42,000 hits in 24 hours. Why? Because it gave Dallas Cowboys fans a first look at plans for a new stadium, with lots of details in a compact, easy-to-use visual package."

Íntegra

A pensar,

LM