The Australian launches online storyline to celebrate 50th anniversary
The Australian has launched a new online tool that invites consumers to explore the big news stories of their life, as part of the newspaper’s 50th anniversary celebration.
The tool, called Storyline, asks users to enter their birthday and then shows them the front page from the day they were born along with other images from key national and international events through their lives.
“The Australian turns 50 today,” said Nicholas Gray CEO of The Australian, “We’re celebrating our proud past and exciting future by releasing Storyline which showcases our wonderful archive of front pages, stories and imagery in an innovative, immersive and interactive way.”
“Storyline encourages Australians to recall their own life journey told through the big events of their lifetime. We all remember where we were for key events like the first moon landing, the dismissal, royal weddings past and present, 9/11 and Cathy Freeman’s gold medal in Sydney amongst many others.
“With Storyline, we are inviting Australians to relive these moments and memories with their friends via social media.”
The project was developed by Native Empire after an initial briefing of the idea to Fishburners’ digital start-up community, after the pair announced a partnership in December.
Fishburners general manager Murray Hurps said: “It’s pleasing to see such a fantastic interactive digital tool like Storyline come from the partnership between News Corp Australia and Fishburners.
“It’s great for our startups, especially Native Empire, to be given such an opportunity to develop a social engagement tool for a newspaper like The Australian.”
Gray said: “It is great that we have been able to collaborate with the digital start-up community to create Storyline. I thank Fishburners and Native Empire for contributing to The Australian’s 50th birthday in such a creative way.”
Clicked through with some enthusiasm – only to find the timeline is not ‘zoomable’ 1 articles per year and that’s it. No zooming in to 1 article per month or week. It’s customised to one’s year of birth – big deal – all this does is shift some pointer to a decade after the number entered. Utter waste of time
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While people may complain about the Right-wing bias of The Australian, it still is a major achievement in Australian newspaper publishing.
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