ARTICLE: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-11/why-everything-you-thought-about-running-is-wrong/11775598
Once again, this week’s article comes from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. No, I’m not particularly interested in Australia. I was reading my article that I chose for last week, when I stumbled upon this piece through researching the designer who created the graphs from the last article. This new article, titled “Why almost everything you thought about running is wrong”, features multimedia elements once again, but this time they are even more prominent in the piece.
The article details the differences in running techniques between recreational runners and professional, or ‘elite’, runners. After reading the introduction and scrolling down, you are met with animations that take up the screen and begin to move – quite similar to Snowfall. These animations are of skeletons of the two runners in question in the piece. As you scroll, the animations remain on screen while nuggets of text scroll into frame. The information explains what is occurring in the animations, like how the elite runner leaves her leading foot on the ground longer than the recreational runner does. Without the animations to visibly represent what is being discussed, it would be very difficult, especially for non-runners, to understand this abstract information. Without the fun structure and interesting animated graphics, this piece would be a dry and boring article on a subject I couldn’t care less about. The addition of the multimedia elements not only shortens the piece and breaks up the walls of text, but it makes the information interesting and more valid.
I learned quite a bit from this article, but this information is not all that useful to me. I’m not a runner, so I doubt I’ll ever get the chance to improve my form. But, I suppose that now I’ll know how to, thanks to this article. I’m sure I’m just repeating myself when I say this, but this just shows you how much a well structured article with multimedia elements can help a piece. It made me stick around and read the whole thing. If it didn’t feature a unique scrolling pattern and those running skeletons, I wouldn’t have made it past the lede. Also, graphics like this reflect on how much work was put into the article, and as a reader I respect that. If I can sense a story was just thrown together willy-nilly, why should I take the time to read it? Also, there was a lot of very ‘official’ sounding science in the piece. They had a sports doctor in the article, so the piece itself felt trustworthy. This of course ties in with modern sports journalism’s obsession with under-the-microscope sports science and analytics, and this article takes those ideas and presents them in a helpful and interesting way. Mostly though, I picked this article because I was impressed they got me interested in an article about running. That graphic designer they’ve got in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is pretty darn good.
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