Long time no see! We are back!

Hello Storybenchers!

Happy Newsletter Friday, and welcome to the first one of the semester, Benchies! We apologize for missing last week — the first week of school gets the best of us sometimes. Anyways, How about that debate?! Par for the course, the internet was on fire in its aftermath, and we've got plenty to report. Plus, we've got even more to share about all things digital since we left off last semester.

Let’s dive in 😎 ⬇️

Here is our featured content this week:

🍂 📰 Your early fall AI journalism updates

While some of us were at the beach this summer, nothing about the face of AI and journalism went on vaca. To help us get up to speed, Northeastern University’s own Assistant Professor of Journalism and Art + Design Rahul Bhargava is here to share all that you may have missed. In addition to being an educator, researcher, designer and facilitator, Bhargava works and publishes on data storytelling and technology design in support of social justice and community empowerment. Don’t miss his latest roundup!

💻 🛰️ Visualizing the destruction of war in Ukraine

In other pertinent data viz updates, we sat down with New York Times Graphics Editor Marco Hernandez to discuss his use of Sentinel-1 data to report on the progression of damage during the war in Ukraine. To complete this daunting project, Hernandez teamed up with Tim Wallace, Editor for Geography at the Times, and two leading researchers on InSar sensing who began using the technology in Ukraine shortly after the beginning of the war. More recently, this tool has also helped with analysis of the development of destruction in Gaza. Catch the full conversation!

How the Washington Post visualized the Republican primary debates 

Ok, finally, for the subject you’ve all been waiting for… that debate. But before we dive into this debate, did you catch this 2023 post on how the Washington Post visualized the Republican primary debates? This gem was the creation of then third-year northeastern journalism student Matty Wasserman who went on to join the Globe as a freelance correspondent since July. While a Husky, Wasserman covered Northeastern athletics for the campus radio station, WRBB Sports, where he is now Editor-in-Chief. Let’s see how he turned a mess of key terms, debate tactics and buzzwords into clean, easily digestible series of visuals explaining the debate’s key themes and narratives.

How did Donald Trump and Kamala Harris refer to each other in their first televised debate?

👀 And while we’re on the subject of debates... Here’s something that jumped out to us: How the candidates referred to each other. Did you notice that Donald Trump never referred to Harris by her name? See for yourself ⬇️

Cool Stuff Corner: What are we reading?

📰 How News Media Covered Trump & Clinton

I think we can all agree that the presidential election has become the Super Bowl of news coverage, and it’s easy to get lost in all the digital chaos. We all remember the last time Trump went head-to-head with a female democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. During that contentious cycle, The Pudding and Russell Samora helped us navigate the digital deluge by analyzing over 12,000 candidate images to break down how news media was covering Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton. Don’t know about you, but I, for one, would love to see a 2024 edition of this analysis. That said, still great old food for present thought. Take a look!

🖥️ 👀 Visualize elections with Flourish

Speaking of sifting through digital chaos – this one goes out to all my data viz buffs out there – have you tried Flourish yet!? We’re loving their election reporting template tutorial. This tool is perfect for smaller outlets that want to cover election data with engaging interactive and easy to understand visuals, but don’t have much in terms of budget or capacity. After all, we can’t all be the New York Times or Washington Post. Give it a whirl!

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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