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Dear Storyboard community,
"Snow Fall" was published 13 years ago.
I remember being awestruck when I opened my browser to discover the ambitious and visually stunning multimedia story, reported by John Branch for The New York Times, about a deadly avalanche in Washington state. Through a video loop of a barren stretch of mountainside, and animated 3D renderings of the Cascade mountain range, readers were transported to the Stevens Pass ski area, where a 2012 avalanche killed three skiers.
The story won both a Peabody Award and Pulitzer Prize, and kicked off a new era in interactive longform storytelling. Dazzling layouts and interactive visuals would signal to the reader (or viewer or listener) that this story was worth your time and attention.
Not everyone was a fan of the growing trend — at what point do visual elements cross over from complementing the story to becoming a distraction? — but with every new technology and innovation, the possibilities for storytelling, and connecting with audiences, expands.
When I discovered the recent story, “There's No Place at Home: A Mother and Her Trans Teen Decide to Leave the U.S.” I had an awestruck feeling similar to the “Snow Fall” moment. Here, the visuals and technology are not only complementing the written story, but they are central to its telling. It was a storytelling challenge: How do you illuminate the story of a mother and her trans teenager and their impending difficult decision, and how do you visually illustrate their lives while also being sensitive to their privacy and anonymity?
What appear to be constraints actually open up the piece to immense creativity, thanks to the vision of its author Sam Wolson, the Interactives Visual Features Editor at The New Yorker, and my latest guest on the Nieman Storyboard podcast.
Wolson started his career as a photographer and documentary filmmaker, and his work now spans interactive multimedia and virtual reality. He's won an Emmy Award and a Peabody Award for his work with The New Yorker, and his projects have also been featured in The New York Times and National Geographic.
When it comes to exploring new forms and technology, Wolson says the story must dictate the form and the finished product:
“It's got to come from the material. I think this is often the problem sometimes [with] people who work in frontier technology spaces. They're like, ‘Oh, we have this amazing tool. Let's find something to shove into this tool,’ right? And you end up often with [a] sort of tech demo. I'm being very harsh, but I'm so driven by the story and the ideas as the starting point, that it's got to be the guiding light.”
The Interactives Visual Features Editor discusses the intersection of VR, interactive design, documentary work, and reporting.
[ Read the story ]
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Links of note
- At The Writing Shed, the wonderful Tommy Tomlinson revisits his Nieman Storyboard essay about seeking simplicity and clarity in our writing. "It can be harder to write a short story than a long one, and it can be much harder to write with simple words than with complicated ones. Most every good writer knows words that soar on silver wings. But sometimes those words fly off into the clouds and the reader loses track of the story. I like words that work for a living."
- In the Columbia Journalism Review, Lisa Armstrong writes about “When Neutrality Is a Constraint.” The role of journalists is not to provide information in a vacuum, Armstrong writes, “but to add context, history, solutions, and critical analysis.” (via Erika Hayasaki)
- How does Terry Gross do it? Philadelphia magazine celebrates 50 years of "Fresh Air" with an oral history, in which the longtime host talks about telling a story through interviews. “There’s a whole lot of information, and I want to organize that into some kind of narrative structure so that the questions and answers build on each other. But if somebody leads me in an interesting area or tells me something I didn’t know, I’m going to follow them. But I always have something to come back to. I have a structure in mind that I’m welcome to throw away.”
- “Fill your pockets with endings.” At Transom.org, Rob Rosenthal speaks to ”Planet Money“ correspondent Robert Smith about all the different ways to end an audio story.
The future of storytelling can be found in your next sentence. Keep sharing your stories,
Mark Armstrong
Editor
Nieman Storyboard
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