When Government Stops, Storytelling Speaks 📰⏸️

Hello there Benchies!

It may be Friday, but the shutdown has the country running on Monday energy. The U.S. government has ground to a halt, furloughing nearly 800,000 federal workers, scaling back agencies, and dividing public opinion over who’s to blame.

Interactive explainers are breaking down the fallout — from workers sidelined to poll numbers shifting — and we’ve rounded them up for you. Plus, we’ve got fresh tutorials, global perspectives, and tools to keep your storytelling sharp.

Let’s dive in!

Here is our featured content this week:

🤖✍️ From ONA25: AI Strategies That Any Journalist Can Try

Based on notes from our own Lisa Thalhamer, who attended the Online News Association conference in New Orleans, this piece highlights how hundreds of journalists discussed AI’s role in reporting — and extracts practical strategies any reporter can try, from using prompts to spark story ideas to repurposing content and optimizing headlines for SEO. Read more

🌐🔍Battle of the Bots: Which AI Translator Is Best? We put three to the test

Our very own, fun and mind-boggling experiment: The Storybench team pitted ChatGPT, Claude, and Google Gemini against each other in a translation showdown - asking them to convert a technical tutorial into Russian and Chinese. Native speakers weighed in, revealing some impressive wins and a few awkward missteps that show AI still has a way to go. Check out behind this scene

Cool Stuff Corner: What are we reading?

📰🏛️ We asked 1000 Americans who they blame for the shutdown

The Washington Post polled 1,000 people to see who’s getting the blame for the federal shutdown — Congress, the president, or both. The interactive breaks it down by party affiliation, showing sharp divides in trust and responsibility across the political spectrum. 

🏛️⛔ How the shutdown is affecting federal services and workers

The New York Times takes a closer look at the nearly 800,000 federal employees sidelined by the shutdown, from park rangers to White House staff. Their interactive maps which agencies are shuttered, which are still open, and how daily life inside the government has been thrown into uncertainty.

💡 Did you know?

Over 11,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees would be furloughed if the shutdown continues, while more than 13,000 air traffic controllers and around 50,000 TSA workers must still show up without pay — putting strain on flight safety and airport operations. Explore more

From The Vault 🏛️

🎤🗣️The Boston Globe opinion section showed what it’s like to be a teenager today using essays, poems and art

In Teens Speak, Kelly Horan and Heather Hopp Bruce handed the mic to young storytellers, producing multimedia pieces that blended audio, visuals and narrative writing. The project highlights the value of teen perspectives in journalism — a reminder that youth voices remain crucial in coverage of education, mental health and civic engagement today. Read more here

🕵️‍♂️📜 Unorthodox Reporting of the C.I.A Torture Report

We dug deep into our vault to bring this round-up back to you. When the CIA torture report was released, journalists experimented with unconventional storytelling to help readers digest its thousands of dense pages.

The Daily Dot turned the “horrific read” into memes, while The New Republic created a detailed infographic showing how the report diverged from the agency’s past statements. These creative approaches highlighted how alternative formats can make even the darkest government disclosures more accessible — a lesson still relevant for today’s data-heavy investigations. Take quick look

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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