Stories that connect📰 🔗: New tools, new formats and lessons from the newsroom

Hey there, Benchies!

Have you thought about today from a different perspective? Valentine’s Day is a reminder that storytelling — much like the holiday itself — is about connection, communication and shared experience. This week’s stories show how that connection is built through audio experimentation, collaborative data work and innovative visual storytelling.

From newsroom tools and audience engagement to digital security lessons and cultural reads, here’s what we’re following this week.

Here is our featured content this week:

🎧 🎶Noctiphany: The cozy late-night WRBB show where two friends trade playlists and discover new sounds

Two Northeastern students co-host a late-night WRBB radio show where they exchange contrasting playlists and rate songs while searching for shared musical ground. The weekly program blends conversation, themed music discovery and audience engagement during its overnight slot. This piece highlights how student media projects can build community through curated audio storytelling.

📊 🧑‍💻How Hearst’s DevHub is helping local reporters tell richer stories through data and design

Check out this Q&A with Darryl Laiu, a data viz fellow. The newspapers’ DevHub supports local newsrooms by combining engineering, design and reporting to expand data visualization and interactive storytelling. This initiative helps journalists who lack coding skills produce richer multimedia projects through shared tools and collaboration. The fellowship program is beneficial as it also trains journalists to strengthen data-driven reporting across local markets.

Cool Stuff Corner: What are we reading?

💌 🕰️From a Whiff of Mystique to Witty Love: Over 200 years of Valentine’s cards

This New York Times interactive traces how Valentine’s Day cards evolved from ornate Victorian paper creations and sentimental handwritten notes to mass-produced commercial designs and modern digital messages. 

Through archival examples and visuals, the feature shows how changing printing technology, culture and communication styles shaped how people express love on paper. The piece uses historical imagery and design analysis to explain how the tradition adapted across centuries.

📱 🤔Are we in a crisis of rudeness?

A Vox analysis explores whether Americans are becoming more rude, finding many experts attribute perceived incivility to distraction, stress and changing social norms rather than a true decline in manners. 

Surveys show many people believe behavior worsened after the pandemic, while etiquette researchers say differing generational expectations shape what counts as rude. The piece argues attention and awareness often drive civility.

Did you know?💡

A raid on a Washington Post reporter’s home offered real-world lessons in digital security for journalists.

Court records from the investigation showed how seized devices can expose sensitive information, but also highlighted protections that worked — including encrypted storage, updated devices and Apple’s Lockdown Mode, which reportedly prevented forensic extraction from one phone. Experts say simple steps such as encryption, secure messaging and regular updates can reduce risks from device seizures, theft or loss.

From the Vault 🏛️

⚖️ 🎨How the Marshall Project sheds light on the quiet work of mitigation specialists

The Marshall Project documented the work of death penalty mitigation specialists, who gather evidence about defendants’ life histories to influence sentencing outcomes. After publishing a long-form narrative, the newsroom collaborated with an illustrator to create a graphic journalism version to reach wider audiences with lower literacy levels. The project reflects broader experimentation with visual storytelling formats.

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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