CONNECTED CL ASSROOM
the coast of Indonesia in 2012, witnesses told the
story of the tsunami alert through Storify.
Burt Herman, one of the co-founders of
Storify, was an Associated Press reporter who
participated in a fellowship at Stanford to re-
envision the future of journalism, so it is not
surprising that this tool has been so widely ad-
opted by news organizations. As an AP reporter,
Herman covered the 2004 tsunami from Indo-
nesia at the same time that LeBeau was in India.
He realized that video from cell phone camer-
as combined with postings on Twitter and Face-
book could provide direct coverage from more
perspectives than even the best-financed news
team. Consequently, he also studied mobile ap-
plication development in the Stanford Comput-
er Science Department during his fellowship.
Founders envisioned Storify as a tool for jour-
nalists, but its simple interface allows anyone to
tell a story using web content. A word-processing
pane on the left provides a window to create the
story. A search pane on the right makes it pos-
sible to search Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, and
more than a dozen other social media networks.
Browser plugins make it easy to insert web ele-
ments into Storify from anywhere on the inter-
net, and you can drag any media into the word-
processing window. The Storify interface also
allows you to import media and other resources
into an online editor.
Users can save stories through successive
drafts and then publish their finished works to
the web. Authors may also embed Storify articles in a WordPress blog or Tumblr post. Other
Storify editors can drag elements from published Storify posts into their own articles.
Telling Stories through Social Media
ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/ANOUCHKA
During the flight to ISTE 2012, we sat next to Carol LeBeau, a news anchor and reporter for the ABC affiliate in
San Diego, California, USA, for nearly three
decades. A five-hour mechanical delay gave us
time to discuss the ways that the news and news
media have changed during her career. She told
us that a trip to India to report on the effects of
a series of tsunamis was one of the highlights of
her career. A news team accompanied LeBeau
on the trip, and the coverage received an award
from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Because advertising dollars have flowed to
the web, traditional media no longer have the
resources that once made this type of onsite
coverage possible, even for local network affiliates. However, the world is now connected
through social media. In a global network where
smartphones with microphones and cameras are
becoming ubiquitous, everyone is potentially an
onsite reporter. Eyewitnesses and experts can
instantly share firsthand accounts and interpretation of events through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social networks.
Reconceptualizing Journalism
This ease of information gathering and dissemination comes at a cost: The raw torrent from the media
stream can make it difficult or even impossible to
follow a story. Curation tools, such as Storify, allow
professional news organizations, teachers, and students to tell a story through the lens of social media.
The major television networks, The New York
Times, and The Washington Post are using Storify
to incorporate firsthand accounts of stories as they
occur. When a powerful earthquake occurred off
