Journal article
Toward a New Aesthetic of Digital Literary Journalism: Charting the Fierce Evolution of the "Supreme Nonfiction"
Literary journalism studies, Vol.9(1), pp.101-116
03/01/2017
Abstract
Increasing mobile audience engagement with long-form journalism has prompted industry to update the digital design conventions originally established by the New York Times's Pulitzer-Prize winning "Snow Fall" in 2012. Since 2015, such innovations have adapted to smaller mobile screens with a leaner aesthetic orienting multimedia elements in succession rather than crowding them on the same screen. Increased automated activation via scrolling has intensified the immersive experience of the story world, making its function as cognitive container of reader attention even more potent than in the first wave of products following "Snow Fall." With roots in ekphrasis, the word/image dialectic central to media theory, the aesthetic borrows from the photographic art movement of Pictorialism and from the cinematic montage method of Sergei Eisenstein. This new wave of innovative storytelling signals the latest attempts at capitalizing on engaged time without burdening users with excessive interactive elements. Legacy media have invested in major projects while start-ups less than a decade old have generated award-winning pieces, cementing their reputations as the latest powerhouses of literary journalism. Branded content is also on the leading edge of the genre as seen in the most recent productions of TBrand. and WSJ Studios, the respective content marketing divisions of the New York Times and Will Street Journal that produced multimedia features to promote Narcos and Orange Is the New Black for Netflix, indicating corporate synergies between print, television, and online news media.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Toward a New Aesthetic of Digital Literary Journalism: Charting the Fierce Evolution of the "Supreme Nonfiction"
- Creators
- David O. Dowling - Univ Iowa, Sch Journalism & Mass Commun, Undergrad Studies, Iowa City, IA 52242 USA
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Literary journalism studies, Vol.9(1), pp.101-116
- Publisher
- Int Assoc Literary Journalism Studies
- ISSN
- 1944-897X
- eISSN
- 1944-8988
- Number of pages
- 16
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 03/01/2017
- Academic Unit
- Journalism and Mass Communication
- Record Identifier
- 9984309161902771
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