How Australia’s SBS built a stunning, interactive story on gay hate crimes
When Rick Feneley’s editor from a prior newspaper approached him about writing a piece about the string of gay hate crimes that plagued Australia’s eastern border, he knew he would be in it for the long haul. After months of research and digging through court documents, the reporter for Australian broadcaster SBS crafted an extensive investigative piece of journalism. But before “The Gay Hate Decades” was published, Feneley was left with one last hurdle: creating a digital element to accompany his work.
That’s when he teamed up with Ken Macleod, a web developer with SBS, and Gina Mckeon, the head of online content for SBS, to bring his two-dimensional article to life using drone footage, interactive maps and photographs. Storybench spoke with Feneley about the process.
What sparked your interest in this topic?
Well it’s a bit prosaic in this case because I often chase my own angles but in this case the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald had read, as I have read, a column in the newspaper which passionately advocated for these old gay hate cases that have been inadequately investigated. The editor said take as much time required, they said months if it takes it, to investigate.
Did you find it difficult trying to get your ideas across in the story?
The great frustration with this story is that there were a lot of [deaths.] We focused on 30. We tried to do 80 [many of which were solved cases] but of those, 30 [that we focused on] I think we only had pictures of eight of the men … roughly. So that made presentation quite difficult and we had to come up with atmospheric pictures or video of cliff-top areas where a lot of the crimes or deaths happened.
“Young men have been dying in these beautiful locations, it’s sort of ominous.”
“Young men have been dying in these beautiful locations, it’s sort of ominous.”
Is the final product what you were looking for?
Well it certainly morphed. I mean what became clear was that if we did the initial idea – which was vignettes on each case which is almost like a little record of all the cases – I think they originally wanted me to do all 80 of the cases, I said ‘well that’s really not plausible.’ It’s also that there really isn’t much known about a lot of the cases to make it interesting. So I just said what’s interesting about 30 of the definitely unsolved cases where I think all of the attention should be and that is how it evolved. It evolved according to just the needs of the copy.
Were there things you wish you could’ve implemented?
Have a look for the Rosendale story. I think that story ended up as a subsidiary story because Allan Rosendale didn’t die, so he certainly wasn’t one of the 30 deaths. So the story was much bigger than the 30 unsolved cases. There were sort of stories like that that would’ve been good if you could build on them.
How difficult was it to bring the the artistic element into the piece?
Well I want to give most, if not all the credit there, to Ken Macleod. He and and his team got those beautiful aerial graphics of North Head and South Head. It’s beautiful but it’s very haunting given the subject matter. Young men have been dying in these beautiful locations, it’s sort of ominous.
For a lot of journalists incorporating all of these digital elements into a piece might be intimidating. What would you say to those people?
Well I just think that most good journalism and most good results come from time and effort. So clearly you can’t if you got to do quick turnarounds. But wherever you can afford the time, the power of the work can be lifted so much with this sort of treatment. So don’t shy away from the hard yards, do the hard work and you get the reward.
