As I listen to Sara talk about the basis of multimedia training is multimedia thinking, I clicked mentally to Reporting Across Platforms, a course that I developed with Judy Robinson and Victoria Lim. The course is a free online training course.

Just go to newsu.org, set up a free account and click on the class. It takes about 2 to 3 hours to complete the course. You see how Victoria presented a story as a newspaper column, as a television story and online.

A key part of the whole process is realizing that aspects of the story could be best told in each platform. That’s a great insight and a change of thinking for many who think that the print story would be uploaded on the Web site or the TV news story would be uploaded to the Web site.

Instead, think of how a newspaper can best tell a story — a longer story, using infographics and photos. How can television best tell a story — the impact of seeing video and hearing the emotion of people’s voices. How can online best tell a story — with links and audio and video.