🧠🎨 AI, Craft & Career Moves: This Week in Digital Storytelling

Hey there, Benchies!

As we head into the heart of the holiday season, this week’s newsletter brings together reporting and resources that show how fast journalism is evolving. 

We’re covering the latest AI shifts, a standout career conversation with Vox’s Swati Sharma, creative musical analysis from The Pudding and, yes — a very timely cookie collection. Plus, our vault tutorials offer tools to strengthen your visual storytelling.

Scroll on for the stories shaping the week.

Here is our featured content this week:

🧠🤖 AI + Journalism: Fall Updates: From tools on the side to systems in the center

Our final roundup for 2025 captures how artificial intelligence is moving from experimental add-ons to core newsroom systems, reshaping workflows across reporting, editing and content production. As AI gets embedded into journalistic processes, editors and developers are balancing new automation opportunities with rising concerns about trust, equity and editorial oversight. Read here

📰👩‍💼 From Northeastern Student to Vox Editor in Chief: Swati Sharma’s Journey in Modern Journalism

Swati Sharma, a Northeastern University journalism graduate, rose to become editor-in-chief and publisher at Vox, leading the brand’s editorial vision and strategy. Her career path spans key roles at The Atlantic and The Washington Post before steering one of today’s major explanatory news outlets. We spoke with her earlier this year at Northeastern’s Reinvent Video Innovation Summit. Read our conversation with her

Cool Stuff Corner: What are we reading?

🎭📊 Motifs

The Pudding’s interactive “Motifs” project breaks down how recurring musical themes operate in storytelling, using examples from stage productions like Wicked, Les Misérables and Hamilton to show how melodic ideas reappear and carry emotional meaning throughout a performance.

🍪📊 11 Holiday Cookie Recipes for Bakers of Every Level

The Washington Post’s annual holiday cookie collection highlights 11 recipes that range from simple, hand-stirred classics like jammy oat bars and snickerdoodles to more inventive seasonal treats. Most of the recipes can be made without mixers or specialized equipment, making them accessible to bakers of all skill levels. 

The interactive also includes options that accommodate various dietary needs, offering inspiration for every holiday dessert table. Also, just one more Friday until Christmas! Are you excited? Because we are thrilled!

From the Vault🏛️

🌱📈 Five Ways Organizations Are Visualizing Carbon Emissions

We use a range of data visualization techniques on a daily basis — from stream graphs to treemaps and animated charts — to show how carbon emissions vary by country and sector over time. These visual methods help reveal patterns in historical and current contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions. Check out this round-up!

🗺️🎨 How to Create Your First Choropleth Map in Mapbox

This tutorial walks through making a choropleth map in Mapbox Studio, guiding users on styling data layers, choosing color scales tied to values and publishing an interactive map that visually communicates geographic data patterns. Try it out and let us know your success story.

That's all we've got for this week! Thanks for reading, and let us know if there's anything you'd like to see in these newsletters or in our coverage at [email protected].

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