UPDATE (March 19): I was interviewed today for an episode of A&E’s Biography about Ted Williams (and I got to meet him! see: photographic proof above). I’ll let you know when the episode actually airs.
Original Post:
In early January a video shot by Columbus Dispatch videographer Doral Chenoweth went massively viral on YouTube and dominated several news cycles locally. It also received a lot of national attention.
It’s the story of a (now formerly) homeless man and recovering alcoholic named Ted Williams who has the gift of a “golden radio voice”.
Here’s the original video (now reposted on The Columbus Dispatch’s “official” YouTube channel – read on to see what role their lack of understanding the internet played in the story’s development):
As the story developed, starting on Tuesday, January 4th, I realized that social media had played a key role in the story’s early spread, so I decided to try out a new tool called Storify to document the spread of the story as it unfolded.
Storify is a tool that allows a user to collect bits and pieces of stories shared via social sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and piece them all together in a coherent narrative by providing context around the individual pieces that make up the story. It turned out to be an especially effective way to tell this particular story.
Here’s the Storification of the Ted Williams “Golden Voice” story that I put together in the days after the story began to take off: