(Steve Duke)

A real advantage of the Web versus print or TV are the digital tools for visual storytelling, especially complex stories and those involving numbers. If the stories can be made interactive, all the better.

Here are a handful of examples to stimulate your own ideas. Some, such as the example from MSNBC, are pretty straightforward storytelling improved by the visuals. Others use visual storytelling to make sense out of what would otherwise be eye-glazing data.

Some of the examples that follow come from news organizations, but a number of them are from non-news sites that help show how it can be done. (A tip of the hat to Brian Boyer's Sixth W blog for alerting me to a couple of the latter.) Some, such as Many eyes, even provide the datasets and the Web tools for creating the visuals. Be aware viewing some of the examples may require the installation of software plugins, usually available via a link from the site.

Deconstructing an Olympic achievement
This combination slideshow and graphic by the New York Times vividly and succinctly explains how Jason Lezak snatched Olympic victory from the jaws of defeat for the U.S. 4 x 100-meter freestyle relay swim team last month, propelling Michael Phelps to his second gold medal of the games on his march to a record eight medals. It tells a clearer story than words, or even video of the race itself, could.




Understanding Iraq
I've read mountains of newspaper and magazine text on the war in Iraq over the last few years, but got my clearest understanding of the tangled and difficult issues in this 10-minute MSNBC visual story. It uses maps, photos and simple, clear narration to explain how the region's history and politics influence today's decisions.




The Times and MSNBC examples illustrate good visual storytelling. Let's move now to visual storytelling using data. The Internet has made public data more accessible, both to journalists and citizens, but all that data still needs interpretation and explanation. In print we've tried to do that through text and charts, but the Web has provided a rich new toolbox for exploring data visually.


Sinking New Orleans
The Times-Picayune did a remarkable job of serving its New Orleans audience during the devastion of Katrina three years ago on its NOLA.com site (and has come back with a strong repeat performance during Gustav).

One of the best pieces on NOLA in the wake of Katrina was this interactive graphic tracing the rise and disappearance of southeast Louisiana over the last 7,000 years using public data on land mass, river shifts and water levels. It takes seven minutes and you need to have the sound on. It powerfully illustrates the forces impacting New Orleans (and you'll learn something surprising about that map of the Louisiana coastline in your road atlas). I wish the geography classes I took in high school and college had been half this absorbing.




Exploring devastation, house-by-house
Gannett newspapers have taken a deep plunge into collecting and displaying public data on their Web sites. Some is purely utilitarian, but the best goes beyond simple searchable databases of public salaries and home sales prices.

A good example of the possibilities of storytelling through data is this deep, multilayered story from the The Des Moines Register about the May 25, 2008, tornado that killed six in Parkersburg, Iowa, and devastated the town. Explore the map to see before and after photos of damaged and destroyed homes, read the stories of the survivors, see data on the property and much more.




Lessons from non-news sites
Good, interesting journalism can be found on sites that aren't normally considered news media – and I'm not talking about bloggers. For example, consider Many eyes, part of IBM's Collaborative User Experience research group. At Many eyes  where users can view, discuss, rate and create visualizations from data – either datasets on the site or new ones users upload. Many of the visualizations created by users tell journalistic stories, visually instead of with narrative. One example is this graphic showing the costs of major U.S. wars (in 2008 dollars). Roll over the balloons for more information on each war.




Another site using data to produce what would clearly be called journalism if it were on the MSNBC or New York Times sites is Flowing Data. The site's users  explore data to understand "more about ourselves and our surroundings," the site says.

This example tells the story of the Walmarting of America in a way that words and charts could never match. The years tick off in the lower right corner, the number of stores in the upper left corner, and the store locations flash as green dots across the map. Watch it.




Or look at this one on the fluctuation of gasoline prices since 1993:




Gapminder is a "non-profit venture promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels." Gapminder has a point of view, but the visual stories they tell look like journalism to me. More importantly, the site shows how to make important data interesting.

Here's an interactive graphic that illuminates a wide range of global data from carbon emissions to births to income to trade. Slice the data anyway you want.




If all those choices are a bit overwhelming, watch this short video to see how one person selected from the available data choices and used the graphic to show how increasing per-person income impacts carbon emissions over time.




We all enjoy visual stories. That's why we look at newspaper pictures before we read the text, and watch movies instead of reading the books they are based on (or sometimes in addition to reading the books). Web tools give us the opportunity to tell important, difficult stories in better, richer visual ways. Use these sites to inspire your visual storytelling.


By Steve Duke (s-duke@northwestern.edu)
Steve Duke is managing director for training at the Media Management Center and Readership Institute, and an associate professor at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.