Show, don’t tell: The wizards behind The Age’s visual stories

When I started in journalism, we had limited tools at our disposal to tell a story.

Through the years, a journalist’s storytelling toolbox has expanded to include video, audio, animations, interactive maps and a cornucopia of clever visual devices that add not just colour and movement but valuable context to a story.

The Age has embraced this storytelling revolution, setting up a dedicated visual stories team who work with journalists, artists, photographers and editors across the newsroom to bring our articles to life and help break down complex concepts using the power of imagery – they even managed to demystify soccer’s “offside trap”, just in time for last year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup, with a series of striking animations that ended up winning multiple awards.

We know you value the work this team produces – our data tells us our visual stories are among the most popular with subscribers, and have some of the longest read times. So this week I want to throw to our head of visual stories, Mark Stehle, to shed some light on his team of storytelling wizards and how they do what they do.

Mark, what do we mean when we talk about a visual story?
A visual story can take many formats. It’s often a combination of interactives, maps, illustration and video, but at its core is the idea that the visuals are an integral part of the storytelling. Often we start with a visual concept and write the words around it. This is the inverse of more traditional storytelling, where you start with the words and the visuals are an added accompaniment.

What can this kind of story bring to our audience that regular text and photography can’t?
They add another dimension to storytelling. It’s showing, not telling, providing our readers with a better understanding of a story via visual means and giving them something more tangible and less abstract. For instance, we have taken complex data such as global fishing tracking and made it accessible, displaying it in a novel and engaging way.

How many people are involved?
All our projects are team efforts. The core team consists of 10 specialists who look after different parts of a project. There are developers, 3D artists, designers, data journalists and project managers. When required we call on the wider design team, particularly for illustration.

What technology do you have at your disposal to bring a story to life?
We use a wide range of tools – from classic web design applications, mapping and 3D software to our in-house developed software and data processing solutions, like we used for our bushfire data centre. We are constantly exploring new ways of doing things. Experimentation is fundamental.

How do you stay on top of the latest and best tools and ways to tell a story?
We keep a close eye on great visual storytelling from all over the world, including scientific reports, news stories and even advertising. But every story and every project is different. Sometimes you have to blend and experiment with technologies to find the right solution.

What types of stories best lend themselves to the visual treatment?
We look for stories that have great visual potential, such as features and data rich pieces. One area I’m particularly excited about is visual investigations. This is a fairly new thing. We’re very lucky to be in a position to pursue visual investigations – such as our Road to ruin story. It used a series of animated simulations and reconstructions to bring to life new evidence raising questions about Robert Farquharson’s conviction for murdering his three children by crashing his car into a dam in 2005. Very few newsrooms have the expertise available to do this kind of thing.

The visual stories team used the power of animation to explain new evidence raising doubt about the murder conviction of Robert Farquharson.Credit: Mark Stehle

How do you work with journalists and others in the newsroom to devise a concept and bring it to life?
Story ideas often get pitched to the visual stories team or sometimes come from within our team. We work closely with editors from all topics across the newsroom, from sport and culture, to world news and courts and crime. Once we commit to a project, we work through a process starting with developing the concept then story-boarding, design, development and then final-stage production. We involve different reporters, writers and artists as we go.

How long does the process take?
In most cases, they are medium to long-term projects. Some take several months’ work. Very occasionally we can create something special for the next day, but to achieve that it’s usually all hands on deck. There is a high demand, but bespoke visual stories take time. This can rule out many pieces that have a pressing deadline.

What projects are you most proud of?
It’s hard to pick a favourite. But the Road to ruin story would be up there along with this piece we did before this year’s budget, analysing every budget speech since federation to tease out changing priorities. You can see a collection of all of our visual stories here.

Your story on how to lay a perfect offside trap, to coincide with the last year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup, won several awards both here and internationally. What do you think made that one stand out?
For a soccer fan like myself this was a great story to work on, and it really resonated with our readers. As excitement built around the Women’s World Cup, we decided to tackle one of the more confusing aspects of the round ball game — the offside rule — and how it has become part of the defenders’ arsenal in the form of the “offside trap”.

Explaining the offside trap is difficult with words alone. It is a dynamic play requiring deep spatial awareness. To complicate matters, game footage is often from a single angle, yet the required points of focus can occur on opposite sides of the field. To address this challenge, we used innovative AI and 3D technologies to generate 3D models from 2D source material. This introduced a previously untapped perspective of the field of play and how players position themselves. You can see the story here.

Patrick Elligett sends an exclusive newsletter to subscribers each week. Sign up to receive his Note from the Editor.