Every now and then, while surfing the web, you stumble upon a site that is as compelling as it is appealing, a site that is shocking to your system. Brian Storm’s web, MediaStorm, is just such a site. The moment I hit the site I knew that I wanted to write about it, but it would be several days before I’d get to type out this article.

I had almost forgotten how I stumbled onto this web site. I was actually reviewing content on Clicklore.com, my own online journalism project. I was browsing the Online Journalism Review feed when I cam across a title that interested me, “Building a perfect storm of journalism and multimedia”. I read the intro, clicked the link and began reading the article on the OJR site. I found the link to MediaStorm.com on the 2nd paragraph, and I clicked on it.

MediaStorm.com has an elegant flash intro that actually opens up to form the website itself. The site is the creation of Brian Storm, a photojournalist, specializing in multimedia productions. Brian’s vision is to usher in a new generation of multimedia journalism in the storytelling documentary genre. MediaStorm uses a combination of audio, digital images and video clips to tell the stories, which are enveloped in a rich black web background with gray and blue lettering.

The combination of smart multimedia presentation and first person storytelling make moving documentaries. Each one tells the heartfelt life story of individuals locked in a gripping battle with the hard circumstances that life throws at you. Most compelling are the stories of the people in Sub-Saharan Africa that are struggling with HIV and AIDS. These are the kind of stories that make listening to troublesome news worthwhile, because they make you feel, and they stir up concern for your fellow man deep within you. When stories are told in this intimate fashion, they seem void of the economic concerns that are usually attached to the publishing of journalism, whether it is in print, audio or video publication. These stories focus on the humanity of the individuals, and make you feel as if you are involved in their situation.

MediaStorm, which is sponsored by the Washington Post newspaper, publishes content for MSNBC.com as well as for their own web site. It will be interesting to see how journalism will be shaped in the months and years to come, as this style journalism proliferates in the global market (the internet causes me to think globally).

I think I’ll continue to visit MediaStorm, and watch as they develop this new form of multimedia journalism, and hope that you will too.