Using video to promote print

Lost Remote points to a video preview on the home page of The Sacramento Bee's Web site promoting a series on sex offenders that will run in the paper's print edition on February 12th, 13th and 14th.

The preview, which may or may not be visible on the site depending on when you visit it, features two reporters who worked on the story providing a description of what the series will discuss, interspersed with photos of a number of the offenders.

In a comment posted to the Lost Remote entry, a man named Jim largely criticizes the effort and for the most part, I have to agree with him. I also didn't like the "talking heads" approach that was used and thought another format would have made me much more interested, engaged and eager to read the story in tomorrow's paper.

I do commend the paper for its initiative and think the idea of video and other multimedia promotions is a great one. I expect the style and formats used will evolve and improve as more papers embrace such changes.