Life without power tells the story of Puerto Rico in more than two months of blackout following Hurricane Maria. The video reconstructs three scenes: a mountainside overtaken by a mudslide, a devastated baseball stadium and Elizabeth Ortiz’s house, which was heavily damaged.
The interactive video produced by the Washington post allows viewers to immerse themselves visually and mentally in the disaster. This multimedia story provides an intimate look at the challenges people were facing day in and day out in Puerto Rico through a combination of videos, writing and photogrammetry.
Interactive simulations offer an experience that can not be achieved through traditional journalism. There are some situations and stories for which it is much more efficient and impactful to tell a story using interactivity than via a static piece of text or image.
Designer Emily Yount spoke to storybench about the harsh reality Puerto Rico is facing and how their presentation allows for viewers to be transformed to the location of the story and be confronted with this reality. “This format just allows to ideally suck you into the story and hold your focus because it’s full-screen, it’s more immersive.” Yount said.
The story relies heavily on drone cameras to capture aerial footage in places which were either inaccessible or dangerous for reporters to go. The emergence of drones has led to new ways of storytelling, especially for environmental stories. For journalists, there are a variety of reasons to use drones. The media now have a new means to approach and cover a story, providing consumers with new angles, both literally and figuratively, on the news as it’s happening.
Drones are also able to capture multiple high-resolution photographs from different angles, which can be combined to create photorealistic 3D models through the principles of photogrammetry which is seen in this multimedia piece. According to (Whitaker 2016) “these innovative services trigger active audience collaboration and enhancement and they have been used for raising public awareness in various circumstances.”
To gain audience attention they have used twitter as a platform to spread awareness and further publicise their story. Unlike traditional TV broadcasting or newspaper articles, the public plays an active role in a story by replying to the journalists on Twitter.
According to Pew Research Center, more than half of Americans get some news from social media platforms.
With the rising use of social media in presenting news, the users realised that news is changing (Jennifer Alejandro, 2010) and people now expect to access news immediately with constant updates (Jennifer Alejandro, 2010).
Because of this media sources need to be more credible and reliable than ever. According to Media bias/ fact check The WashingtonPost has been rated very high for factual reporting and publishing and the trust they have in fellow citizens is evident in their large following.
Posting a concentrated number of Tweets in a short time span, is how they stay on top of breaking news and provide ongoing news reports for their audience. A recent study found that the average American checks their phones 80 times a day – once every 12 minutes. The consistent tweets posted by the organisation shows they are in sync with the digital age, as they are constantly keeping people in the loop with their stories.
For reporters, Twitter has expanded their readership to an entire globe that was once limited to geographic circulation boundaries.
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