Animation and the future of TV news storytelling: A Q&A with Animation Professor Jason Donati
Substack newsletters. Podcasts. Social media. With every passing year, local TV news is facing new competitive mediums and gradually losing its share of the attention market.
But experimental outlets like Vox and VICE News are using animation in their storytelling and proving that video-oriented outlets can engage new and younger audiences. Research from the Reinventing Local TV News Project at Northeastern is examining the impact of animation in local television and discovering animation and graphics could make local TV news more appealing to more audiences.
We spoke with award-winning animator and Northeastern University professor Jason Donati to learn how animation for films and games can be adapted to news formats, particularly local TV. He contends that with news storytelling moving in a digital direction, newsrooms need to catch up through animation. Augmented reality wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.
Professor Donati’s work can be viewed on his website.
Listen to our interview below!
A still from his short film “Head Quarters,” a 3D animated film. 
A 3D medical visualization project for a pharma company. 
A 3D animated project for a retail company. 
An example of 2D animation from “Veterans Day,” a film created for Netflix and Syfy.
Milton Posner is an aspiring sportscaster based in Boston. He graduated Northeastern University in 2021 with a combined journalism and political science degree.
