Alabama Paper Commemorates Bus Boycott's 50th Anniversary

By: Jay DeFoore With Dec. 1 marking the anniversary a watershed moment in the civil rights movement -- the 50th anniversary of Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white rider -- the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser wanted to commemorate the event in a big way.

After all, the story is essentially a local one for the Gannett-owned Advertiser, as Montgomery was the scene of both Parks' heroic stand and the ensuing bus boycott that drew national attention to the plight of blacks in the South.

Today, visitors to the newspaper's Web site can click on a special interactive section commemorating the boycotts and Montgomery's role in the civil rights movement. The site -- the result of more than a year of planning and accompanied by a book and a 56-page print insert running in today's print edition -- features video interviews, photo galleries, timelines, archived front pages from the Advertiser's past, and hundreds of historical articles written during the tumultuous period.

"I think it's the duty of news organizations not only to cover the news of the day but to preserve the news of the past," said Online Director Paul Crawford, who coordinated the Web site's development. "Covering fires and car crashes and all that is fine, but the big stuff that changes the world -- that's the reason we got into this business."

The Advertiser's re-examination of Montgomery's seismic shift in civil rights is not only a prime example of journalism's function as a public service, but also a prime example of print-Web convergence.

The paper's publisher and top editors first met more than a year ago to begin planning the coverage. They decided to develop parallel projects for a diverse set of media, including a book, special print section, and a multimedia Web site.

Crawford and Multimedia Producer Scott Schneider accompanied the Advertiser's print reporters into the field and recorded their interviews with a digital camcorder. Together, the pair conducted more than 25 video interviews with local figures who participated in the boycott.

"Since we had never taken cameras out with reporters before, they didn't know what to expect," said Crawford. "We talked to subjects to get them comfortable and then the reporters did the interviews just as they normally would."

The multimedia aspect of the project required only a minimal investment; a Canon GL2, tripod, FinalCutPro editing software, and a new Macintosh computer were all it took to produce the videos.

Crawford said the reporters were apprehensive about the video cameras at first, but "it worked so well the reporters are now asking us to go out on stories with them."

For Crawford, his ultimate goal is to make video an everyday part of the Advertisers' Web offerings.

In addition to the multimedia components, the Advertiser's staff identified historically significant front pages from the paper's past and uploaded PDF versions. Interns converted nearly 600 news articles from the paper's print archives to electronic files for its NewsBank archive. Until earlier this week the paper charged a fee to access the stories, but on Tuesday Crawford said the paper had consulted with Gannett's corporate office and both parties came to the mutual conclusion that the archives should be open for free use as a public service.

"We just decided that people should be allowed to view these without whipping out their wallets," Crawford said.

For Crawford, working on the project has been a "life-changing experience," and looking towards the future, he believes the Advertiser can build on the success of the current site and create the Web's number one resource for civil rights history.

"This is just the beginning," he said. "Our archive is so deep. I'd like to see how far we could take it.