Category: Behind the scenes
Boston lacked a system for the public to keep tabs on police, so the Boston Globe built a public database
The killing of unarmed people of color at the hands of the police led to protests and calls for change last summer. As popular support for the Black Lives Matter […]
How Stamen turned a photo archive into an interactive art experience
In 1966, Ed Ruscha mounted a camera to the back of his pickup truck and drove slowly down Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. He photographed every building on each side […]
Storybench Founder Aleszu Bajak on the moral call of the pandemic and his return to daily data journalism
After running Storybench at Northeastern for many years, instructor and program manager Aleszu Bajak decided to leverage his knowledge of data and passion for journalism into a senior data reporter […]
How Sean Evans made Hot Ones an Internet Sensation
Hot Ones is a YouTube web series created by Christopher Schonberger and Sean Evans in 2015. The show is produced by First We Feast and Complex Media. It puts the […]
How the Boston Globe encouraged readers to support restaurants through #ProjectTakeout
On Jan. 15, the Boston Globe launched Project Takeout, an initiative spearheaded by food writer Devra First, which encourages Boston residents to order takeout and support the restaurant industry while […]
How the Wall Street Journal conducted a video investigation into the role of the Proud Boys at the Capitol
On Jan. 6, 2021, the United States Capitol was breached and stormed by supporters of Donald Trump to protest the results of the 2020 presidential election. Of the many participating […]
How Lazaro Gamio of the New York Times visualized the COVID-19 death toll
As the number of Americans who have died of COVID-19 has climbed beyond 500,000, it’s become increasingly difficult to conceptualize this number. The New York Times has been tracking COVID […]
How Reuters visualized the influence of K-pop on social justice issues
For the past several years, racial injustice in the United States has been trending on social media and in the news. Movements such as Black Lives Matter have increased awareness of racial injustice across the […]
How the podcast ‘Science Vs’ investigated a 1971 virus conspiracy
In November, Gimlet Media’s podcast Science Vs published a two-part story on a viral outbreak in Cuban pigs in 1971. The Cuban government had ordered all their pigs burned to […]
How the Wall Street Journal visualized the 2020 election results
Each time an election year dawns, it brings changes – the candidates campaigning, how the battleground states are polling, and, of course, changes in our national obsession: election maps. But […]
How IndyStar’s Emily Hopkins helped break a nursing home scandal in Indianapolis
Emily Hopkins, a data reporter on the Indy Star Investigations team, spoke with Storybench about their reporting on improperly funded nursing homes in the time of COVID-19. Hopkins spoke about […]
How we used math to explore racial segregation in Pennsylvania public school districting
American life is based on American thought. American thought is based on American values. And American values have a foundation in the public school system. So what happens when the […]
How the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism is reporting on water access around the world
There is nothing more vital to life on Earth than water. Yet from rural, sub-Saharan Africa to Asia’s crowded megacities, there is a global water crisis with one in 10 […]
How Cultural Survival is mapping the impact of the pandemic on Indigenous communities
As the Covid-19 pandemic unfolds, Indigenous communities across the globe are finding themselves excluded from case data. In response, a Cambridge-based human rights group called Cultural Survival has created a […]
Four tips from the Wall Street Journal’s Yan Wu on visualizing police data
News organizations interested in exploring different ways to cover policing can draw inspiration from a piece by Yan Wu, a graphics reporter at the Wall Street Journal and alumna of […]