Today Taking and its Multimedianess

The use of multimedia journalism today helps news sites quickly and efficiently inform audiences of the importance of a story. Seeing as The Today Show is a television news program its use of multimedia is spans from their live show to their website and social media accounts. When discussing multimedia we must look at the sites use of convergence, parallel reporting, evergreen stories, and user-generated content. Today. com fortunately covers each with flying colors. 

Today.com's use of convergence can be found in each section of its site. Displaying a majority of its posted stories with written text, photos, and video. Using these media tools, creators of today.com are able to successfully inform site viewers of a story that aired on television earlier in the day, week, or month.

As seen in the above screen shot of a recent news story covering this adorable panda, today.com flowed text in between photos, tweets, and video. The elements displayed as such make it easier for the reader to obtain the information in a timely and equally entertaining fashion (with the use of coordinating photo and video) 

Today.com succeeds in its parallel reporting the same way it does convergence. If viewers miss a story they are aware (as the reporter states) that they can read or watch more about it on today.com. In the example below, the video clip from the show is posted among the article text. 

Here site viewers have the option of simply playing the video they missed or reading the quick article and viewing photos, if they aren’t able to watch the clip.

Today, as a family-oriented morning news program, supplies its viewers with many evergreen stories for their day-to-day life. With reports (and their today.com article pairings) that discuss health benefits, tips for parenting, or new ways to create a quick healthy lunch for your kids, today.com maintains a variety of stories that remain relevant for a long time. These stories (such as the ones below) pull viewers into the Today site, even with a simple Google search of these topics. Today thus creates their site-stickiness with these evergreen stories that will then lead viewers to explore the site further.

Not only does the Today Show involve its viewers and outside audience members in the live show, but they also generate stories from their lives. User-generated content, or “crowdsourcing” takes on a different role on today.com. Stories aired on Today come from videos sent in my viewers, such as this adorable little girl catching a fish. 

Or more user-generated content can also be found in tweets prompting viewer opinion on a story. Today enjoys using ordinary people to create news for other ordinary people to see. The show even has viewers writing in about a tragic event that their family has gone through with hopes of being selected for the Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb segment, “Everyone Has A Story,” in which Kathy Lee writes a song about the tragic event and its performed by broadway singers for the family live on the air.

By using real world people in their multimedia coverage today.com brings in an audience of viewers that feel this sense of reliability. Using multimedia journalism, the Today Show and today.com have both maintained a sense of interactivity with its viewers, prompting audience to watch , talk, and read the stories it generates on a daily basis.