When I try to encourage journalists to think multimedia, I try to sell it to them this way: “Don’t think of it as more work. Think of it as a better way of telling a story.”

But part of me thinks I’m being a little dishonest. If the journalist is doing extra work (multimedia), shouldn’t he have to do less of something else (writing a text story)?

I thought about this as I read a post by Andy Dickinson on his students’ interest in word count minimums. Assuming journalists are working at capacity and don’t already have unnecessary slack they can cut, what do we take away from their workloads because they now shoot video, research for graphics and write two versions, web and print, of the same story?

How about half of that 30-inch story? Many people won’t make it until the end anyway. The logical approach to me would be to remove (or rather, not write) the parts covered by the multimedia:

Video and slideshows could replace the anecdotal lede, maybe some perspective or some imagery, any info the visual multimedia covers. Flowery wording isn’t all that necessary anyway.

Databases and Graphics can replace lengthy examples and analysis in complicated stories. The text story could instead briefly summarize the main ideas.

Now wait. I’m assuming our audience will see every element of a story. But if someone just reads the print story and misses the rest, is anything lost? That risk is too high for me to justify replacing a part of a story with audio. Most stories hinge upon what was said. The audio is just, well, extra.

That’s journalists’ gripe. How much extra can they do?