Advancing the Story: Broadcast Journalism in a Multimedia World. Debora Halpern Wenger and Deborah Potter. Washington DC: CQ Press, 2008. 352 pp.
The authors of this book describing technological transformation in broadcast journalism suggest that in today’s multimedia world, journalists “must develop a multimedia mind-set.” They are correct; unfortunately, more could have been done with this book to assist aspiring broadcast journalists in understanding how to do that.
Wenger and Potter offer a definition of multimedia reporting — “communicating complementary information on more than one media platform”—but what this reviewer believes is lacking are extensive descriptions and examples of how old-fashioned broadcast journalism reports can be translated for and delivered in a multimedia world. There are a few chapters devoted to this, most especially chapters 7 and 8, but not enough is done throughout the book to establish multimedia.
