Matthias Eberl has developped and programmed a new form of journalistic presentation: the multimedia report. When we spoke about this just a few days ago I couldn’t really envisage what he was talking about but now he has published his first report in co-operation with the youth magazine jetzt.de of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. A very interesting way of presenting stories, news, and wider information not simply in text, picture or sound but in combination of all three.
Das Finale der Passanten (via jetzt.de and Rufposten, in German) talks about the Soccer World Cup Final 2006 at some inconspicuous place in Munich while the rest of the world had moved their eyes on Berlin, the scene of the actual happening. We get to know people crossing by this place, why they are not watching, or why they were, what else is going around during the two hours of the game, just little stories of the pedestrians waiting for transport or allowing themselves a little break.
Another example is a text-based tutorial of his multimedia report format about Munich’s Central Station (in German). There he states that his idea was for a long time „to combine narrative strength with the sensuous experience of image and sound“. Although I cannot imagine so far the multimedia report as being a breakthrough and widely used method of presentation, I think that the idea is fabulous and I can visualize using it myself to for example report on my field research. It would be more than addressing to the people in the usual way of writing, but to include them in some sort of way into what I actually do providing them with impressions, noises and tongues on the spot and let them be an integral part of it all.
A new method in public presentation of ethnographic material within Cultural Anthropology?
