WaPo Video Snoozefest

David Card | January 22, 2006, 11:33 AM

For the past three days, I think, the Washington Post has had as its online front page (for national audiences) "Featured Video" a piece entitled "A Modern Inaugural in Williamsburg." The piece runs about five minutes and is a combination of talking historian heads, stills, and some video footage of costumed actor/interpreters from Williamsburg. The topic is the history of gubernatorial elections in Virginia. It is dry stuff, indeed.

The Post promotes it by prominant, if below the fold, placement, but the only clue as to topic is the title and an image of fog-shrouded folks in mixed colonial and modern dress. No cues from placement, section/topic, teasers, intros, calls to action, etc.

I grew up in Williamsburg. I worked for Colonial Williamsburg a few summers as an "interpreter." I'm still pretty interested in colonial history. In a million years I wouldn't have sat through that video if I weren't a media analyst. This is not a best-practice example of online newspapering.

Other WaPo video topics are more conventional -- a sports profile, a post-Tsunami story, a piece on reconstruction in Afghanistan. But many of them are six-plus minutes long, and neither the promotion nor the first 10 seconds of video tells you what the story's about. Given that this is a new medium, it's worth experimentation. But that doesn't mean old lessons from video storytelling can be ignored. And where are the new ones?

The online WaPo is usually much cleverer. It has choosable front pages, lots of highlighted blogs, chats, an interactive kids section, an innovative travel section, a decent Redskins e-mail newsletter, etc.