The mother of all modern stories
Taking journalism as an example for storytelling is not a very eye-opening thing to do. But some stories in the media are iconic, and we think this one needs to be featured at Triggertales. Newspaper The New York Times did take storytelling to a new level in the maturing digital age, as part of their strategy to find new ways to attract audiences online.
We especially love the one story we all know, which they produced a couple of years ago, that set a new standard in the use of several media techniques to tell a story: "Snow fall: the avalanche at Tunnel Creek" published in december 2012, both in print and online.
We would like to share this story, a true long-read by author John Branch, again with you because it became more or less iconic. It's a detailed story about an avalanche that occurred in February 2012 in a mountain pass through the Cascade Mountains in Washington, U.S. The avalanche killed three skiers and injured one out of a group of sisteen very experienced skiers, some of them well known. At that time, the U.S. nation was shocked by the accident.
At first sight, the story looks like just text, but it's not. It's a rich and diverse mix of media types, like slides shows, audio fragments, video interviews with survivors, live footage made by gopro cams, animated charts, beautifull moving snow mountain views and so on. The reader is sucked into a compelling story of a group of friends that is ripped apart by a terrible accident. One can and step into the story at various levels and browse at will, getting to know the actors and get carried away by the tragic evolvements.
Different forms of the story were published on other platforms like Youtube, inceasing the reach.
And hey, can't you say that you've become really big when pastiches appear?