Category: Behind the scenes
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 […]
How Nature magazine visualized 150 years of scientific discovery
In honor of the 150th anniversary of the seminal scientific journal Nature, the publication spent months producing a special “cover” for the 21st century. Through a colorful interactive tool, a […]
How interactive, visual storytelling helps readers better retain information
Earlier this year, you may have seen the Washington Post’s wildly popular coronavirus simulator explaining how pandemics spread exponentially. But have you played the Financial Times’ Uber Game? What about […]
How Kate Sosin told the story of transgender individuals in California prisons
How often do transgender people get the opportunity to tell their own stories at major media outlets? According to Kate Sosin, LGBTQ+ Reporter for The 19th, organizations with a particular focus […]
How the Boston Globe’s Mark Shanahan made a podcast about his battle with prostate cancer
In a recently published six-part podcast series, Mr. 80 Percent, Boston Globe entertainment writer Mark Shanahan went into granular, personal detail about his treatment journey with a disease that affects […]
How Stuff.co.nz told the story of New Zealand’s coronavirus lockdown
Felippe Rodrigues creates data visualizations for stuff.co.nz, New Zealand’s largest online news publisher. One of his recent pieces, “The story of New Zealand’s COVID lockdown, in graphs,” uses smoothly animated […]
How the Allen Coral Atlas is mapping and monitoring coral reefs worldwide
Although coral reefs occupy less than one percent of the ocean floor, their importance extends well beyond their size. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that 500 million people […]
How The New York Times visualized racist historical redlining and urban heat
In late August, The New York Times published “How Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left Neighborhoods Sweltering,” a visual reckoning on historical redlining, persistent racial inequality and who feels increased […]
How The New York Times is tracking Covid-19 cases in the U.S.
Published June 30, 2020. The New York Times’ map of U.S. cases of Covid-19 is a living webpage that changes with the numbers and relies on a team of over […]
How Circle of Blue investigated freshwater issues in Texas
While 70% of our planet’s surface is covered in water, only 3% of it is fresh water – and most of that is packed away in glaciers and polar ice […]
How NASA’s Earth Matters blog sparks conversations with satellite images
Exploring NASA’s Earth Matters blog is like walking into a candy store. The various categories featured on the blog include photographs of Earth by astronauts, news and research roundups, and […]
How FlowingData’s Nathan Yau thinks about data stories
Nathan Yau, the founder of the website FlowingData, has been creating and discussing data visualization projects since 2007. Browsing through the site reveals no single theme; instead, there is a […]
How The New York Times produced a visual explainer of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus
The novel coronavirus is much more than a sphere wrapped in spike proteins. Back in April, The New York Times published a visual explainer of the proteins and genome of […]
How The New York Times visualized trends in white extremist attacks
In April 2019, The New York Times published an interactive article on white extremist killings from New Zealand to Norway to the United States. Using maps and a timeline to plot […]
How Gimlet’s Science Vs podcast produced a season on Covid-19
Science Vs host Wendy Zukerman begins every coronavirus episode with the reassurance that she’ll bring some clarity through science. In tackling Covid-19 for its eighth season, the popular science podcast […]
How Radiolab produced “Gonads,” a podcast series on human reproduction
Listening to Radiolab’s “Gonads” series is a lot like hearing a science documentary about human reproduction and having an epic narrative play out in your mind’s eye. The podcast series, […]
How Paraguay’s El Surti is adapting to the age of Covid-19, boosting its fact-checking on Whatsapp and launching a new podcast
Four years ago, Paraguayan media outlet El Surtidor — known as El Surti — was created to address deep-seated issues of media accessibility and information inequality in the country. The […]