The vast majority of American towns are overlooked. If you’re not in the hub of city activity or living in a place exposed by The New York Times for its engrossing and unique attributes, there is little chance to tell the story of one community to the next. But when that story does pop up, and hasn’t been granted its due coverage, what does one do to make the story shine when it has otherwise been left to dull and rust?
Enter the innovation.
Trying to paint a coherent picture when your canvas is an entire region is no simple task, but data visualizations are always a good place to start.
My goal was to highlight what in my mind is the most convincing explanation for a rising tide of disenrollments (in essence, large-scale banishment) in Native American tribes. Indian gaming brings wealth, and fewer members in the tribe mean more money for each. But after a decade of reporting on the individual occurrences, I had yet to find any direct comparison of the numbers, so I decided to build my own data set and display it on a timeline-map for my story on California’s tribal cleansing.
Be proactive. This is what I have learned in my Infographics class last semester. Go out, take pictures, talk to people, record sounds, take notes, draw sketches, ask questions. This is what reporters do for their stories. What about graphics? YES. Be proactive.
My next graphic on the list involves creating a 3D model of a windmill, explaining how it works, what are the main components, how they have changed in time etc. One can argue that there is no need to take a trip to Texas, to the community my colleagues are reporting about, just to make a 3D model of a wind turbine. But I can come up with several points that argue in favor of getting that experience.
- There are dozens of models of wind turbines, several sizes and unconventional styles. Which one to recreate? Since my graphic is complementary to a video story, doesn’t it make sense to study the model featured in the story?
- For an accurate graphic and high aesthetics, I prefer to create textures for objects and backgrounds in Maya using photos of those particular objects rather than textures I can find in online libraries.
- At the spot you can meet with specialists and use the information they are providing to explain processes. They can give a fresh perspective and interesting hints.
- I find it always rewarding to record audio and add it to the graphic. For example, the sound of a wind turbine.
- It is useful to take photos of the surroundings or to capture unusual perspectives and add them to the graphic. Unfortunately, you need training and many approvals to climb into a wind turbine.
“Information graphics can be fantastic click magnets.” (Mindy McAdams)
The Changing Winds Of Newtok from philter on Vimeo.
Newtok, Alaska, is one of the first places to dramatically feel the effects of increasing global energy consumption, as temperature shifts, storm surges and a melting permafrost chip away at the infrastructure of a community of nearly 350 on the state’s central west coast.
During a window-rattling storm there Friday, July 3, I crossed paths with Stanley Tom, tribal administrator for the Newtok Traditional Council and the driver on finding funding to make the village’s move to higher ground a reality.
Well, everything in Texas is in fact bigger. Big trucks. Big burgers. Big wind turbines. The windmills extend a towering 69 meters. And there’s hundreds of them lining the towns here creating a whimsical landscape of spinning doo-dahs. But don’t get too close to the towering beauties for fear of the voltage monster (pictured above).
As I’ve been researching for The High Energy Diet story, I’ve become more aware of what I’m eating. Last week, my boyfriend and I went to Torero’s Mexican Restaurant in Durham, N.C. While we were sitting there munching on chips and tortillas made of corn, I realized that we were “eating oil” in a sense.
Some energy issues are so controversial that people can’t even agree on the words used to talk about them.
Chris Carmichael and I noticed during a recent trip to Ohio that supporters of a new electricity-generating plant in Meigs County call it a “power house.” Opponents call it a “coal plant” or a “coal-fired power plant.
My story feels like a disaster. It began so neatly. We want alternative energy. We don’t have the transmission lines to carry it. Building transmission lines is expensive, time and labor intensive, and difficult because of land rights issues. I found an example of this. The town where I grew up has just constructed a new wind farm. There is one more phase to go in their operation and then, they are stuck. The lines can carry no more power.
The nation's leading journalism schools come together in this unique program to experiment with new forms of in-depth and investigative reporting.
Fellows travel the country to report on critical issues facing our changing nation and then find innovative ways to tell those stories.