For our latest installment, we were taken with some recent contest winners, including a documentary about a group of adult men with autism and their 65-year-old caretaker, who wants to retire. Veterans step out of society, the married elderly struggle with dementia, at-risk teens strike out on their own, and a photographer returns to Calcutta [...]
Category Archives: images
Drea Cooper on visual storytelling, “California is a Place” and the maker in the middle of the story
Drea Cooper partners with Zackary Canepari on “California is a Place,” a series of films chosen as our latest Notable Narrative. Cooper has done documentary work in Colombia, Kosovo and India, as well as commercials for Apple, adidas and Google, but Cooper and Canepari create the California stories on their own time. In these excerpts [...]
“California is a Place” draws viewers into dizzying, disturbing intimacy with the Golden State
Our latest Notable Narrative is the collected series “California is a Place,” from filmmaker Drea Cooper and photographer Zackary Canepari. Cooper and Canepari have done commercial work and journalism around the globe, but their California series drives a camel through the eye of a needle by capturing the vastness of California in a series of [...]
“Brèves de Trottoirs”: Olivier Lambert and Thomas Salva create a multimedia map of Paris
How do you map the life of a city? A Web documentary from writer Olivier Lambert and photojournalist Thomas Salva, “Brèves de Trottoirs,” (literal translation: “Sidewalk Shorts”) aims to find out. Their videos of Parisians with interesting backstories has appeared online and on television, and is in the process of becoming a full-length documentary film. [...]
What we’re watching: used car sales’ Big Vinny, artists living in uncertain times, and the true price of a dowry
Great visuals can inspire storytellers, even when they’re employed for other ends. Below are a collection of beautiful photos and video used in intriguing ways to evoke a way of life, a community, and even the shadow that hovers over a whole gender. And just to help with integrating all the conceptual ideas into the [...]
Move over Lady Gaga; meet Ron Charles (a.k.a. the Totally Hip Video Book Reviewer)
Has book publishing found its savior? Well, probably not, but in August, The Washington Post’s Ron Charles made his small-screen debut in the role of a cranky, self-important book reviewer. Charles, who is actually deputy editor of Book World at the Post, has put together a handful of additional videos since then, managing to sneak [...]
What we’re watching: in which a battalion deploys, Ramadan ends, and a drawing unfolds to illustrate an argument
Perhaps it’s just the nippy fall weather descending, but we have a multiplicity of crowdsourced, interactive and on-the-horizon projects. So, depending on your constitution, here are some nuggets of future-of-journalism ideas to make you itchy or jazz you up. Either way, you’ll have the weekend to work it out. “A Year at War” from The [...]
What’s in it from me? Crowdsourced magazines and storytelling
As a child, did you ever imagine yourself waiting for a call from people in need, people who were praying that you’d see their signal and come to the rescue? If so, you might have the makings of a modern magazine writer. And editors for some recent crowdsourced ventures are glad you’re out there listening. [...]
From who’s telling the stories to what they’re about: Nieman Reports looks at foreign correspondence
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the fall issue of Nieman Reports for the skinny on “Reporting From Faraway Places: Who Does It and How?” Inside, you’ll find these stories and more: Afsin Yurdakul recounts her experiences covering the Armenian diaspora for a Turkish audience and discusses fairness as the cornerstone for storytelling. Global Voices’ [...]
Christopher Goffard’s “Project 50″ and the hard-core homeless of Los Angeles
How do you take people — ones whom your readers would cross the street to avoid — and make them compelling enough to follow through a four-part series? Christopher Goffard tackles that challenge in our latest Notable Narrative, “Project 50: Four walls and a bed,” in which he and photographer Genaro Molina report on two [...]
