Black Hawk Down Was Edited by Entire World
Mark Bowen, author of Black Hawk Down, which first appeared as an interactive web site at the Philadelphia Inquirer, writes:
In the case of Black Hawk Down, apart from all the multimedia razzle-dazzle, it opened up a global dialogue with readers, including men who had fought in the battle. They corrected my mistakes, pointed me to better information, and offered to be interviewed, allowing me to improve greatly on the story before it was published as a book in 1999. Mine may have been, thanks to Jennifer (Musser-Metz), the first book that ever benefited from this new journalistic tool. In a sense, the story was edited by the entire world.
But little has happened in the 10 years since. Surprisingly, the site Jennifer created is still in the vanguard of Internet story presentation.
Bowen adds:
…the future of daily journalism is digital, not because it is the latest thing, but because it is, quite simply, a far better medium than paper and ink.
That’s coming from one of the best nonfiction writers of our time. He concludes:
I advise young journalists today to learn how to use a digital video camera, and to get used to working in multimedia. Nearly every story I write today for the Atlantic, and every book I undertake, I do in conjunction with a documentary filmmaker. This results in a documentary version of the story, which can be marketed to TV but also compiles the audio and video needed to produce a Web presentation comparable to Jennifer Musser-Metz’s Black Hawk Down project.
