Multimedia blog tools and an example

*Note: This is a post we did in class a few weeks ago. I am posting it now because I have learnt a bit more about online journalism tools and I wanted to give an example of how they could be used in a story. I think we were told that we could use it as an example of online journalism. I added some notes at the bottom of the post about online journalism tools. 

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 This story is from the Gold Coast Bulletin, August 14, 2012. 

A teen who allegedly rammed three police vehicles while leading officers on a two-hour chase through south east Queensland has been denied bail.

The 16-year-old Stockleigh boy, who is facing 15 charges, applied for bail in Southport Magistrates Court today after handing himself in to Coomera Police Station yesterday.

Police will allege he reached speeds of up to 140km h during a two-hour chase that started at Warwick at 10.30am on Sunday when officers sighted a vehicle wanted for an earlier evade police incident.

The teen allegedly rammed a police car at about 11.30am while avoiding tyre spikes set up on the Cunningham Highway at Willowbank.

Police said the youth allegedly drove along Beaudesert-Boonah Rd to Bromelton. He  allegedly drove at an officer and rammed two police cars at 12.10pm when he avoided road spikes on Waste Facility Road at Bromelton.

Police will allege he then abandoned the vehicle on Kurragong Drive at Jimboomba.

Duty lawyer Bridget Patchell told the court the teen had gone off the rails this year after his family situation at home deteriorated.

He had been living with his father after the relationship breakdown but recently moved to live with his mother.

Ms Patchell said all his possessions were left at his father's house and he was driving to get them on Sunday when the incidents happened.

"It was a situation that just blew out of proportion," said Ms Patchell.

The teen's parents were visibly distressed in court when Magistrate Catherine Pirie denied him bail until a bail plan, including counselling and employment, was drawn up by Youth Justice Services.

He was remanded in custody and will reappear in Southport Magistrates Court on Friday.

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This post is a good example of online journalism because it contains links, pictures, maps and a video. These are not the only things you can use in an online journalism post though. As evidenced in my story for assessment, you can also incorporate:
- infograms - if you want display statistics or facts in an interesting way (make your own here)
 - a slideshow of pictures relevant to your story - could be used in a story about Emmy outfits, for examples (make a slideshow here)
- music - for an emotional or soft news story, music could add to the feel of the piece (use SoundCloud to get copyright free music for your blog)
- Printscreens - use the printscreen button on your keyboard to take pictures of your computer screen to document things you think may be useful for your blog
- Finally, you can embed a twitter feed into your blog. The twitter feed can be your own, or someone else's or the feed of a particular hastag. I used the QUTOJ1 hashtag this class has been using to create the twitter feed below. It is a great way of encouraging the audience to interact with you and others. For a great tutorial on how to embed a twitter feed, see here. It's simple - create a widget, copy the embedded code and place it in the HTML version of your blog post where you want the feed to appear.

Tweets about "#QUTOJ1"