Afghanistan Dispatch

The Washington Post’s Afghanistan Dispatch was most compelling for its design, rather than its effective use of multiple media to tell a story (although that was admirable as well). The majority of convergence pieces I see in online publications present the video or the photography or the interactive what-have-you, the very stuff that makes the story a convergence story, as if it were an afterthought. When I see a video off to the side of an article, separated from the text and most likely to appear in its own window once selected, I’m not compelled to watch it. The Post integrates these elements into the story by giving them position above the text, headlining this story as truly a convergence story, not a print piece with some stuff thrown in afterwards for online publication. The layout is consistent, appealingly simple, and, most importantly, user-friendly. It is a model convergence as a form of journalism and not just a modified form of traditional journalism.