Berlin Wall project: a lesson in multimedia?

If you have been watching coverage of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, chances are you may have seen the multimedia project by City University graduates that they have dubbed "a documentary on online journalism".

As reported on journalism.co.uk, the Berlin Project, which was launched on the 5th November, plans to provide 7 days of initial coverage (till the 12th November) using a variety of tools, including audio service Audioboo, Twitter and mobile video service Qik.

The article states how the project will assess how free services can be used to create, consume and distribute multimedia reports.

The project has been partnered by Reuters who, according to team leader Alex Wood, have been using the team to cover more unusual stories surrounding the anniversary in a range of media.
The team previously collaborated to provide coverage of the G20 summit protests in April using Twitter and Qik.

G20 Live attracted more than 80,000 unique users to a site only built the night before, but the Berlin Project will be about more than using mobile and mixed media for journalism, said Wood.

"It's about connecting the dots [between different mediums]. It's all about context rather than just content," he added, explaining that how a reader of viewer watches the team's work will inform their choice of tool and medium for covering an event. The quality of video streaming offered by Qik, for example, would be used to cover events that might be watched back on mobile.

Think of it as a documentary on online journalism. For online journalism the rules aren't written, so we're trying a different thing."

Interestingly, the team have kept navigational features to a minimum in order to allow users to 'get lost' and discover new reports and features. Content will also be published on Facebook and Reuters.