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Category: Behind the scenes

How the Pudding analyzed YouTube “vlogpologies”

What does a YouTuber do if they’re caught in a scandal? Usually, they’ll film themselves explaining that they’re sorry and how they intend to change, and then upload the apology […]

April 14, 2020April 14, 2020 Siti Aisyah Behind the scenes, Interviews

How ClaimReview is simplifying the process of fact-checking

One of the biggest challenges facing journalism today is the prominence and spread of unverified facts and misinformation. In an era marked by fake news, it has become increasingly difficult […]

April 13, 2020April 14, 2020 Kate Secrest Behind the scenes, Interviews

The Atlantic Selects brings short docs to a wider audience

Branded as a “showcase of cinematic short documentary films,” The Atlantic Selects is a one-woman show run by film curator and journalist Emily Buder. The series, which currently consists of […]

April 13, 2020April 14, 2020 Samantha Barry Behind the scenes, Interviews

How Vox visualized sea and land ice loss over the last decade

Last December, Vox published a piece that uses interactive images and charts to visualize the loss of sea and land ice over the last decade. The reporter, Umair Irfan, focuses […]

April 13, 2020April 14, 2020 Valentina Mendoza Hanna Behind the scenes, Interviews

A look inside the Boston Globe’s immersive Cape Cod project

In late September, the Boston Globe published an in-depth report on how climate change is affecting Cape Cod. Nestor Ramos, the writer, said the intent of the article was to […]

April 13, 2020April 14, 2020 Maria Lovato Behind the scenes, Interviews

How Vox explained China’s Belt and Road Initiative

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an infrastructure and development plan that will connect China to the rest of the world — an attempted renaissance of the historic Silk […]

April 13, 2020April 14, 2020 Sofia Bergmann Behind the scenes, Interviews

How the Wall Street Journal made the College Board’s adversity scores interactive

The world of higher education reporting got more than its share of news coverage in 2019. Actress Felicity Huffman was sentenced to two weeks in jail for paying Rick Singer, […]

April 12, 2020April 14, 2020 Rose McDermott Behind the scenes, Interviews

How The New Yorker’s augmented reality feature gave voices to ordinary items

Augmented reality is set to transform media as we move into a more networked society. News organizations are continually shifting into digital formats where AR can enhance coverage and offers […]

April 10, 2020April 10, 2020 Liz Pereguda Behind the scenes, Interviews

How the Times’ Conor Dougherty tells the story of California’s trillion-dollar housing crisis

The San Francisco Bay Area is known for tech, liberalism, and now a raging crisis of homelessness. The housing crisis has reached an all-time high with more jobs flooding to […]

April 10, 2020April 10, 2020 Eliana Tallarida Behind the scenes, Interviews

What the Covid-19 pandemic looks like through the lenses of 18 Latin American photographers

While the novel coronavirus outbreak has created uncertainty for many in the journalism industry, it has also created an opportunity to tell powerful stories about the effects of the pandemic. […]

April 3, 2020April 6, 2020 Maria Silvia Aguirre Behind the scenes, Interviews

The Guardian wants to know what global sustainability goals you would prioritize

In 2015, the United Nations released 17 sustainable development goals centered around people, prosperity and the planet. So far, 193 countries have committed to this transformation by 2030. Now 10 […]

March 14, 2020April 14, 2020 Saárah Murphy Behind the scenes, Interviews

How the Washington Post logs fatal police shootings in the U.S.

The Washington Post first began examining fatal police shootings in the United States in 2015. The newspaper’s investigation that uncovered that the FBI was undercounting half the number of fatal […]

March 13, 2020March 25, 2020 Juliana Malzoni Behind the scenes, Interviews

Telling stories on Instagram: A Q&A with Neil Shea

Neil Shea, a contributing editor for The American Scholar and The Virginia Quarterly, is also a writer who has worked for National Geographic for more than 15 years, a role […]

March 12, 2020April 3, 2020 Tay Xu Behind the scenes, Interviews

Behind the scenes of the Vox web series “Borders”

Filmmaker and video journalist Johnny Harris travels the world to tell compelling and moving stories. Harris is based out of Washington, D.C., and works for Vox Media. His style combines […]

March 11, 2020April 14, 2020 Max Schochet Behind the scenes, Interviews

How the Wall Street Journal developed its make-your-own hedcut feature

As of December 2019, the Wall Street Journal has been offering all members the opportunity to create their own portrait “hedcut,” a drawing made of dots and hatched lines. At […]

February 23, 2020April 14, 2020 Evelyn Bleed Behind the scenes, Interviews

The challenging — and delicious — adventures of producing the first America’s Test Kitchen podcast

Kaitlin Keleher, America’s Test Kitchen TV & podcast producer, believes the most powerful stories are the background tales about food: the discoveries, mysteries, history and everything that happened before any […]

February 13, 2020April 14, 2020 Maria Silvia Aguirre Behind the scenes, Insights, Interviews

How Northeastern’s Samuel Scarpino built a live map tracking the coronavirus outbreak

Samuel Scarpino, an assistant professor in Northeastern’s Network Science Institute, built a map that monitors the outbreak of the coronavirus. He has collaborated with many other scientists to track the […]

February 10, 2020April 14, 2020 Anna Kracklauer Behind the scenes, Interviews

How The New York Times is visualizing the smartphone tracking industry

A phone application company you have never heard of before likely knows where you are right now. That information is being bought and sold right now. Those apps and their […]

February 10, 2020April 14, 2020 Erin Merkel Behind the scenes, Interviews

How The New York Times broke down the history of the NYC subway map

For the 40th anniversary of the New York City subway map, The New York Times created an interactive story that all but places you directly inside the map. Using a […]

December 23, 2019December 23, 2019 Alexander Lim Behind the scenes, Interviews

How I visualized hundreds of ballot proposition outcomes with R Shiny

Most years, San Franciscans vote on ballot measures determining whether or not police should carry tasers, to allocate $50 million a year for homeless services, or to impose a fee […]

December 19, 2019December 19, 2019 Nick Jones Behind the scenes

How The Boston Globe is using a suite of niche products to cover the booming business of marijuana

Last December, The Boston Globe launched a marijuana section – three months before the first recreational dispensary opened in Massachusetts. The section wasn’t the Globe’s first foray into the world […]

November 8, 2019November 12, 2019 Carro Halpin Behind the scenes, Interviews

How PopSci’s “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week” podcast is making science accessible

Death By Rainbow, Face Blindness, Watermelon Snow. These are just three of the many weird things recently addressed in a podcast titled The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. Currently […]

November 6, 2019November 6, 2019 Ruth Hunger Behind the scenes, Interviews

How Vox visualized segregation in the United States

Vox data journalist Alvin Chang, an alum of the Boston Globe and ESPN, has been writing stories about segregation for most of his career. Earlier this year, Chang looked at […]

November 5, 2019November 5, 2019 Audrey Cahyadi Behind the scenes, Interviews

How The Pudding visualized the prevalence of hyphenated names in sports

At first glance, a hyphenated name is bound to catch your attention — take NFL player Ha Ha Clinton-Dix’s name, for instance. For Clinton-Dix, who plays for the Chicago Bears, his […]

November 4, 2019November 1, 2019 Calli Remillard Behind the scenes, Interviews

How the New York Times visualized auto carbon emissions in the U.S. and your city

When data visualization guru Alberto Cairo visited Northeastern University in October, he said data visualization is not so much about simplifying a complex issue or set of information. Rather, it’s […]

November 1, 2019November 1, 2019 Nick Stoico Behind the scenes, Climate Journalism Lab, Interviews

How designer Nadieh Bremer teaches herself new skills to continue visualizing data in new ways

If you are passionate about telling data-driven stories more engagingly, you should not miss out on Nadieh Bremer, a freelance data visualization designer and artist with a background in astronomy […]

October 31, 2019October 30, 2019 Szu Yu Chen Behind the scenes, Interviews

How The Washington Post built a game to demonstrate how autonomous cars work

If your autonomous car is headed into oncoming traffic, what should it be programmed to do? Swerve or hit the vehicle? Chris Alcantara, Youjin Shin and Aaron Steckelburg, members of […]

October 23, 2019October 23, 2019 Nadine El-Bawab Behind the scenes, Interviews

How The New York Times transformed its “Diary of a Song” series with FaceTime and social media

Think of your favorite song and imagine calling the artist on FaceTime to ask them how they made it. The New York Times series “Diary of a Song” puts viewers […]

October 9, 2019October 9, 2019 Julia Hong Behind the scenes, Interviews

How Nicky Case designed the game “Adventures with Anxiety”

Mental disorders are often considered “invisible illnesses,” as the symptoms aren’t always visible. Illustrator and game developer Nicky Case wanted to shed more light on one of the most common […]

October 7, 2019October 11, 2019 Sophie Cannon Behind the scenes, Interviews

How Adrian Zaw produced “A Journey Back to Myanmar” to lift up stories of his country of birth

Imagine taking a 20-hour flight from California to Myanmar every single month. For Adrian Zaw, that was a reality during the production of his film “A Journey Back to Myanmar.” […]

October 4, 2019October 4, 2019 Naomi Silver Behind the scenes, Interviews

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What is Storybench?
Storybench takes an “under the hood” look at the latest in digital storytelling, from data visualization and investigative journalism to virtual reality and the digital humanities. In addition to in-depth features and interviews with industry practitioners, we offer hands-on tutorials that can be “downloaded” right into the newsroom or classroom.

We also publish research we're running at Northeastern's School of Journalism along with collaborators in data science, communication studies, computational social sciences and information design. These projects include the Co-Laboratory for Data Impact, the Climate Journalism Lab, the 2020 Storybench Election Coverage Tracker and the Reinventing Local TV News project.

Want to contribute to Storybench? Pitch us or join us for a graduate degree in the Media Innovation program at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.
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Storybench 2020 Election Coverage Tracker

The Storybench 2020 Election Coverage Tracker intends to keep tabs on the political coverage of the 2020 presidential election by covering media trends and using various data sources to explore media narratives.

Instead of keeping track of who’s ahead in the horse race, we’ll be turning our focus to those covering the horse race – the media outlets themselves and various proxies for public attention. Follow along here.

Best of Storybench

How the Wall Street Journal visualized 500+ conflicts of interest of the Trumps

Women on the 2020 campaign trail are being treated more negatively by the media

Getting started with data visualization in R using ggplot2

Understanding what makes a visualization memorable

Using French wine reviews to understand TF-IDF, a measure of how unique a word is to a document

 

Projects

Over the next two years we’ll be surveying the media’s coverage of the candidates and the issues. Follow along here.

 


The Reinventing Local TV News Project, from Northeastern’s School of Journalism, is analyzing the formats and practices of local news stations, and suggesting new ways of telling stories that can better engage diverse audiences. Read our inaugural post here.

 

The Climate Journalism Lab

The Climate Journalism Lab aims to examine and unpack the trends, tools and techniques employed by reporters and organizations covering climate change.

 

Join us at Northeastern!

Want to write for Storybench and probe the frontiers of media innovation? Apply for one of our graduate programs at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.

Rolling admissions, no GREs required and financial aid available. Email here.

Interviews

Pizza, Press & Politics is our weekly speaker series at Northeastern’s School of Journalism. Watch interviews with David Filipov, Mike Workman, Jenn Smith, Martha Durkee-Neuman, Susan Labandibar, John Ward, Marc Fortier, Carol Gregory, Ling-Mei Wong and Elana Gordon.

Collaborative, Open, Mobile

Over the last three years, Storybench has interviewed 72 data journalists, web developers, interactive graphics editors, and project managers from around the world to provide an “under the hood” look at the ingredients and best practices that go into today’s most compelling digital storytelling projects.

They boil down to three key areas of emphasis: 1) highly networked, team-based collaboration; 2) an ethos of open-source sharing, both within and between newsrooms; 3) and mobile-driven story presentation. Read our paper here.

Storybench on Twitter
What is Storybench?
Storybench takes an “under the hood” look at the latest in digital storytelling, from data visualization and investigative journalism to virtual reality and the digital humanities. In addition to in-depth features and interviews with industry practitioners, we offer hands-on tutorials that can be “downloaded” right into the newsroom or classroom.

We also publish research we're running at Northeastern's School of Journalism along with collaborators in data science, communication studies, computational social sciences and information design. These projects include the Co-Laboratory for Data Impact, the Climate Journalism Lab, the 2020 Storybench Election Coverage Tracker and the Reinventing Local TV News project.

Want to contribute to Storybench? Pitch us or join us for a graduate degree in the Media Innovation program at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.

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