If you dream big, you can redefine the way we tell stories in the digital age
For The Washington Post’s “Raising Barriers”, our ambitious interactive on border walls, we used every multimedia tool in our arsenal. Here’s what we learned from the experience
By Kat Downs, Anthony Faiola, Samuel Granados, Zoeann Murphy, and Kevin Schaul
More border barriers separate countries today than at any other point in modern history. Politicians across Europe and the United States are gaining significant support for their hard-line positions on building walls that are bigger, thicker and stronger.
The Washington Post wanted to tell this story in a way that hadn’t been done before. So we created Raising Barriers, a 3-part multimedia project that took readers to eight countries across three continents and examined the divisions between countries and peoples through interwoven words, video and sound.
Here’s how we did it — and what we learned from the experience.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
Anthony Faiola, Berlin Bureau Chief: The world is witnessing a surprising convergence of anti-migrant, pro-security movements that are translating to both the rise of walls and populist politicians. It’s the ubiquity that’s fascinating, and that compels us as journalists to make sense of this phenomenon that’s as real in the United States as it is in Europe, with strong echoes in places as diverse as South Asia, Brazil and North Africa. The historic elections in the US and the migrant crisis in Europe makes this particularly timely, but it’s the broader global parallels that seem to force this to the forefront now.
Kevin Schaul, Graphics Editor: With our latest project, Raising Barriers, we aimed to take readers to those barriers, to see the walls, to visit with locals, to hear from those building them and those being kept out. But we also knew context was essential in this project: the scale of a historic refugee crisis, the geography of migrant routes and fence building, the policies that supplement the barriers. There is a lot to barrier building beyond the physical structures. That’s something we tried to bring across.
Kat Downs, Graphics Director: After we published The Waypoint, a project focusing on Lesbos’ role in European migration, in early January, we were looking for more opportunities to tell important stories in visually fresh and compelling ways. Samuel Granados pitched a visual project focused on barrier-building.
We set out to tell an ambitious, global story in a way we had never done before. We wanted to create a project that relied not fundamentally on one medium or another (text, video), but on the marriage of different media types. We wanted to make that experience as seamless and simple as just reading text — we know people find reading easy and quick, especially on the go, and are sometimes unable to spend more time with us during busy workdays.
HOW IT CAME TOGETHER
KD: We decided to focus on creating three episodes: an overview that explained the phenomenon and why it’s happening; a case study of Europe, where we could evaluate how well walls have worked to stop the mass flow of migration; and on the U.S.-Mexico border, where building a wall presents myriad logistical challenges.
Samuel Granados and Zoeann Murphy went out in the field to report, meeting Anthony Faiola in the field for the Europe leg of the trip. Kevin Schaul joined the reporting along the U.S.-Mexico border. That field reporting took much of April and May, and we began putting the project together in earnest in June.
Samuel Granados, Senior Graphics Editor: Graphic editors reported in the field, and video editors worked very closely with the graphics department to provide insights and work together in the development of both the narrative and its shape. With the help of the Foreign desk, we reported for one month from three different continents and eight countries.
We interviewed more than 70 people including academics, politicians, neighbors, migrants, border enforcement agents and fencing companies.
Zoeann Murphy, Video Journalist: It was powerful to hear from the people living in fear that terrorism and violence would spill over their borders and to understand why they felt walls were an important part of their protection. And it was powerful to hear from the people fleeing terrorism and violence who were stuck in limbo and in dire living conditions because of closed borders.
KS: When shooting video for this project, we had a rough idea for how we’d eventually present it: relatively short clips interwoven with text and graphics. But only when we returned did we discover how many options we had. Our team tried at least three fundamentally different presentation structures, each with tens of their own variations. We eventually settled on a scroll-based, full screen video approach, with essay and graphics sections mixed in.
SG: While the desktop version is a full-screen sequence of slides that blend into each other while you scroll, on mobile we used a sequence of stacked cards with intertwined text and graphics. In both experiences, we focused on immersive storytelling as the user travels through the story flow.
In the earlier stages of reporting, we created what we called a “consistency grid” to help manage all this information into three main categories: rhetoric, efficiency and impact.
KD: We did a lot of iteration and rapid prototyping to figure out both the structure of our narrative and the user experience of the project. We did a lot of editing to ensure the story was seamless between video, text and graphics. Each element builds on each other and together, they have an elegant and natural rhythm that draws you deeper and deeper into the story.
ZM: It was fascinating to see how each medium could support and be supported by the other.
SG: I think having graphic reporters on the field improves hugely the opportunities to explore new ways of storytelling.
WHAT WE LEARNED
KD: After our first mobile-specific testing round, we ended up completely rethinking and rebuilding the mobile experience. We found a way to include the video in a way that felt natural, especially on newer mobile devices running iOS 10. It was a great reminder that you should never leave user testing out of your process. And if you hear feedback that challenges some of the fundamental approaches you’ve taken, you need to face that feedback, understand its roots, and rethink elements of the project as needed — even if it means you end up pushing back the deadline so you can take time make something better.
KS: Just as developing a good story takes time and requires tough edits, so does designing a good presentation.
AF: I learned about the power of visual storytelling. As a writer, that isn’t my first instinct. But in this project, you can really feel its power, when combined and contextualized with sparingly used words.
KD: I don’t think we have ever done a narrative this integrated at The Washington Post. It shows the power of putting a team together and thinking about a story first, before you decide which medium. Often we start with text and end up editing visual assets around that — this time, we focused on figuring out what elements of the story were best seen, and which best read. It shows that if you dream big, you can redefine the way we tell stories in the digital age.
