Eventually, Time hopes to add visual features, and hook newsmakers and sources into on-line chats as well. Today, multimedia generally begins with a CD-ROM, a little plastic circle that cannot be added to or easily copied. To create the multimedia stories, Rogers and Church start with printed texts, most of which are written by Newsweek staff reporters, in much the same style as if for the magazine. The editors also look for new ways to present information. Suppose we begin controlling pollution, but we lose ground in global food supplies.
Church cautions that the simulations are limited and rather artificial at the moment.
But their potential for analyzing public policy could keep a media techie awake all night. For a June story about the business of baseball, the NWI team created a kind of interactive interview, which it called Face to Face. The feature begins with a handful of the sources Rogers and Church interviewed being pictured on the screen, each in separate boxes. The viewer is also shown the various questions that were asked. With a click of the mouse, the viewer picks the questions, and each source comes to life briefly, answering in video.