Along the same vein as my post yesterday, but in the other direction: Reporters need to think multimedia, but multimedia producers are capable of thinking multimedia for them. Sometimes.

Reporter Susie has been assigned a big, complicated court case with a long history. That sucker sure could use an interactive timeline. “No way!” Susie opines. She just got assigned the story today and doesn’t have time to look up all that backstory. (I’ve heard it before … and lamer).

No worries. I, Multimedia Producer, will come to the rescue. An archive/wire/Web search should provide a thorough, albeit not entirely comprehensive timeline in an hour or so. We can hope.

That’s not a novel idea. In fact I think many reporters just assume multimedia producers should do that (which is annoying). However I think multimediers, me included, need to come down to Earth sometimes and realize we can do the nitty-gritty fact finding too.

What gets me though is how reporters can write stories without even knowing the all the information that graphics can provide. What if you missed something important, Susie?