It's about swishy graphics in journalism

September 10, 2018 2:09 AM

I have a friend/client who is writing something that he wants to publish in an interactive form on the internet, and I am looking for examples of good, innovative, interactive journalism to give him an idea of what is possible. Interactive websites whose purpose is to present information (not journalism but not, like, games) are also fine.

When I asked him to show me what he was talking about, he linked me to this BBC gallery, but I know there are better examples with more impressive or diverse effects out there. I know I've seen at least one with a bar graph, in which each bar was highlighted as you scrolled through the part of the text that talked about that particular bar, but as I don't remember the actual content of the piece, it is proving very resistant to googling.

posted by lollymccatburglar to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Best answer: It's a self link, but some colleagues and I just launched this site which is an example of some relatively simple interactive dataviz you can do with d3.js to present fairly complex information. (In this case who is benefiting from the complex financial industry around immigrant detention in the USA.)
posted by lollusc at 4:22 AM on September 10, 2018

Best answer: The Follower Factor from the NY Times
posted by starman at 5:36 AM on September 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Dive into NYTimes and WaPo, both of which are leaders in clearly communicating data in interactive formats within the context of their reporting.
posted by entropone at 6:22 AM on September 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: NY Times opinion section, wall street journal - https://graphics.wsj.com/
posted by lafemma at 7:24 AM on September 10, 2018

Best answer: I suggest looking through the "Things You Made" section on the Source website, which is the community online for data journalists and features hundreds of examples.
posted by melodykramer at 8:43 AM on September 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: This is another BBC page, but I really liked the design
posted by JulesER at 8:53 AM on September 10, 2018

Best answer: A couple pudding.cool visualizations (about pockets and skin tones in makeup) have showed up on Mefi recently and I think they're pretty impressive.
posted by torridly at 9:36 AM on September 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: In the vein of "Interactive websites whose purpose is to present information (not journalism but not, like, games) are also fine.", you might want to take a look at /r/explorables, which is full of (links to) interactive demonstrations.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 10:40 AM on September 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: This Storymap about the Anacostia River is super duper cool. Uses maps and pics to tell the story. Not too interactive. It was done as a project with ESRI.
posted by frecklefaerie at 4:22 PM on September 10, 2018

Best answer: Hmmm. The New York Times used to have an area on it's website devoted to their interactive stories, but I can no longer find it.

I did find this article on Medium though: https://medium.com/@aschugart/the-best-in-interactive-multimedia-journalism-2017-pushing-the-limits-of-storytelling-e2ccdec8e576
posted by xammerboy at 7:40 PM on September 10, 2018

Response by poster: Thanks people, you were all really helpful. Best answers for everybody!
posted by lollymccatburglar at 1:51 AM on September 12, 2018