Scrollytelling has become a way for journalists and media outlets to engage their audience, and online platforms in a way that will keep their readers locked into the story. While Grist, an independent, non-profit media organization, utilizes this innovative technique, they don’t lose sight of the core of their story.

 Founded in 1999 by Chip Giller, Grist has since been dedicated to delivering stories that “illuminate the way toward a better world” and “show that the time for action is now.” The non-profit organization describes itself as independent and “dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.” 

“Misplaced Trust: Stolen indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system. Climate change is its legacy,” is an investigative piece covering the history of land-grants in relation to public universities and its impact on climate efforts and indigenous communities. 

Data analysts Clayton Aldern and Maria Parazo Rose were just two of the many contributors to the piece. Aldern and Rose share that this method should align with the central narrative of the story.

As one scrolls through the piece, a variety of different moving elements appear and change. Whether it’s displaying photography or videography elements to original data visualization, the “scrollytelling” method moves the narrative forward.

“We [at Grist] prefer to take a different tack, which is, ‘What can this particular technology do? And is that useful to our narrative purposes and for us?’ There is an important scrollytelling section in this piece, in which I think we’re able to offer some really substantive geospatial and historical context that is infinitely more effective in interactive visual terms than it is in textual or other narrative-based terms,” Aldern said. 

“I think it’s useful here because we’re doing (a) direct visual comparison and explanation and then showing it. The power of having, as you scroll, these new comparative images come up, I think was useful, because what we’re talking about is such an old land use policy and it’s so map-oriented that I think it did make a lot of sense,” Rose said.

But at the beginning of the reporting process, the scrollytelling method wasn’t exactly on the table. Rose shares that “form must also function” and avoids choosing something “shiny just because it’s shiny.”

The team had over a year of reporting for this piece which involved intense collaboration along the way. From boots-on-the-ground reporters, data analysts, to the team of designers, many of the decisions made throughout the piece were made with specific intentions. And at the core of these decisions is the Native American audience.

“I think the most explicit conversations we had about the audience is that we’re trying to make sure that the story centered a Native audience,” Rose said.

With the map interface above, the duo emphasizes the importance of being able to toggle between lands related to universities and tribal land.

Beyond data visualizations, the overall aesthetic choices from color palette to photography was a collaborative effort that, most importantly, involved indigenous illustrators and experts in indigenous cartography.

“We also had a channel that was just, like, anytime anybody would see anything, whether it’s a jacket, whether it’s another art piece, whether we just put stuff in there; that process itself helps the artistic vision and the aesthetic vision to grow,” Rose said.

Alongside the creative and aesthetic choices, the Grist team also focused on the story’s accessibility. This means that scrollytelling features can be previewed on both desktops and phones, the visual elements loaded at the appropriate times while scrolling through and the technology could be deployed on varied types of data connections. 

“It’s important for us to be able to, in this instance, really ensure we’re deploying technology that can load on a cellphone if somebody maybe has only access to an LTE data connection out there in the world, which is very frequently, the strength of connection that you might have on the reservation, or to say nothing of like a 2D or 3G data connection,” Aldern said. “They’re design decisions and technical decisions that we must make if we’re to follow through on our impulse in terms of where and how we are reaching the audience in question that we believe we’re seeking to serve with this piece.”

In terms of the data processing, Aldern and Rose share that the team worked especially hard to make sure that any reader who comes across their piece can have access to the data Grist used. The data set and the interactive pieces of the scrollytelling elements are available publicly on Grist’s Github Repository so readers are able to successfully deploy it on their own.

“That choice alone is something that reflects similarly these design choices that we made. I think there was the same ethos that informed the design choices, that informed this decision to make the data accessible and the GitHub accessible,” Rose said. “And all of it is in the spirit of how all the information that we use in general is public access.”