{"id":12,"date":"2016-04-01T09:37:30","date_gmt":"2016-04-01T13:37:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fredstories.com\/thebest\/?p=12"},"modified":"2016-05-04T11:49:47","modified_gmt":"2016-05-04T15:49:47","slug":"how-ian-james-made-digestible-long-form-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fredstories.com\/thebest\/how-ian-james-made-digestible-long-form-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"How Ian James made digestible long-form journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Pumped Dry\u2019 captivates even the shortest attention spans<\/em><\/p>\n

By S. L. Fuller<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Conventional wisdom says newspapers are dying, data journalism isn\u2019t proper storytelling, and using a GIF in an online article is just tacky. USA TODAY<\/em> is, then, a journalistic abomination. Standalone long-form is the only type of journalism that is truly impactful, right? And that particular news organization produces its infamous \u201cMcNews\u201d \u2014 easily-digestible, short-form web articles. USA TODAY<\/em> is a bandwagoning, Internet-exploiting disgrace.<\/p>\n

Right? Image-driven, clickable projects can\u2019t be good journalism, can they?<\/p>\n

Well, take for example \u201cPumped Dry: The Global Crisis of Vanishing Groundwater\u201d<\/a>: It\u2019s image-driven; it\u2019s a clickable project. But The Desert Sun <\/em>Environmental Reporter Ian James made sure that his project \u2014 done in partnership with Desert Sun<\/em>\u2019s parent organization, USA TODAY<\/em> \u2014 was good, impactful journalism.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn general, I like experimenting with story forms and ways of telling stories. Telling stories visually can be a part of that,\u201d said James. \u201cI think interactives really add to the journalism. There\u2019s a lot of great data visualization out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPumped Dry\u201d can be found on the USA TODAY <\/em>website under the \u201cMore\u201d tab, then, in that tab, \u201cInteractives.\u201d An interactive is USA TODAY<\/em>\u2019s way of making long-form journalism easily-digestible: And it works. The header image on the project website page is a GIF of water coming out of a pipe. Then, readers can click around the page, reading stories, watching videos and playing around with an interactive map.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not gimmicky. Instead, it\u2019s engaging reporting on a topic that won\u2019t go out of style any time soon. James\u2019 specialty is environmental reporting, and he knew he needed to bring the groundwater crisis to the forefront. If the world continues to mismanage groundwater, it continues to mismanage the future of humanity, to be blunt.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe project was my idea and it sort of grew out of my reporting here in California, and also seeing some of the NASA research,\u201d said James. \u201cSince 2002, [NASA] satellites have been, for the first time, monitoring changes in the water supplies all around the world, and so I was really interested in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

What is a journalist to do when he has a big idea? He goes to his editor. Then, once his editor is on board, he goes to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to apply for funding. Once that\u2019s granted, the last stop is USA TODAY <\/em>to ask for some collaborators. USA TODAY <\/em>provided James with a whole team, including video journalist Steve Elfers. Then, the work began.<\/p>\n

It took eight months of work to complete \u201cPumped Dry,\u201d a five-article project complete with five videos and a slew of other data. Since depleting groundwater supply is, as the title states, a global crisis, James and Elfers traveled to India, Peru and Morocco, as well as reported on what\u2019s happening in the U.S. Traveling, however, is the glamorous part of being a journalist. So much more work had to happen before the plane made its way down the runway. Pre-reporting and mountains of research had to come first.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the reporting happened before making those trips. It was making Skype calls and trading emails with scientists and reading papers; it was talking with government officials,\u201d said James. \u201cAnd also, in the case of a country like Morocco, it was trying to figure out who on the ground could help us in terms of getting to the places we need[ed] to go and what\u2019s the language. We don\u2019t speak Arabic or French, which are the two languages spoken there.\u201d<\/p>\n

And even choosing to go to Morocco was a challenge. James said that one of the most challenging parts of the \u201cPumped Dry\u201d project was doing research to figure out what locations would make the most sense to report on in terms of how well they represent the global situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a number of places we could have chosen to go [in the Middle East and Africa] and actually I had proposed to go to Uganda,\u201d said James. \u201cAnd then after looking more at Uganda \u2014 I\u2019m sure we would have found stories there but it wouldn\u2019t have turned out to be the same type of story that we found in Morocco. And I\u2019m really glad we went to Morocco because there are real symptoms of groundwater depletion there \u2014 farmland that\u2019s been abandoned \u2014 and it really shows how bad it can get.\u201d<\/p>\n

Global depleting groundwater around the world is a huge topic, both in physical miles and depth of the situation. In fact, James \u2014 who has written a book that can be bought on Amazon \u2014 cites \u201cPumped Dry\u201d as his biggest project to date.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re comprobable, but in my mind, this project is bigger in scope. I mean, probably the book is longer if you look in actual words,\u201d said James. \u201cBut it\u2019s not just words, it\u2019s also the video piece of it, and working with Steve on that video documentary. And I don\u2019t think our work is done either.\u201d<\/p>\n

James is not convinced that he\u2019s even begun to exhaust every angle of this story. Even \u201cPumped Dry,\u201d which was published last December, is not done making its mark. The videos from the project are currently being edited together to form a documentary which will be shown at the Environmental Film Fest and the American Documentary Film Festival. The Desert Sun <\/em>is also currently in the process of collecting short Op-Ed pieces from experts, among others, outlining potential solutions to the groundwater crisis. He hopes they will also be published by USA TODAY.<\/em><\/p>\n

Despite the fact that James had his hand in virtually every aspect of \u201cPumped Dry,\u201d he\u2019s the first to acknowledge the team effort. James and the team were always thinking about the story first, and despite the glitz of an interactive map, it\u2019s the story that holds it all together.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a lot of great support from my editor who really believed in the project and we had a lot of support from the team at USA TODAY<\/em>,\u201d said James. \u201cI think the way it came together, seeing the final [project] \u2014 I felt good about that, proud. And it helps illustrate this issue hopefully in a way that can generate more discussion and help people understand it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the intro is important, the images help lead people to the story. So the global map, the clip of video of water pouring out of the wells and all that put together I think produces a compelling package \u2014 I think anyway. I hope it contributes.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Pumped Dry\u2019 captivates even the shortest attention spans By S. L. Fuller   Conventional wisdom says newspapers are dying, data journalism isn\u2019t proper storytelling, and using a GIF in an online article is just tacky. USA TODAY is, then, a journalistic abomination. Standalone long-form is the only type of journalism that is truly impactful, right? … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,2],"tags":[10,6,3,7,9,8,5,4],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-masters-of-the-craft","category-professionals-in-the-field","tag-environmental-reporting","tag-global-water-crisis","tag-ian-james","tag-journalism","tag-journalist","tag-professionals","tag-pumped-dry","tag-usa-today"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.fredstories.com\/thebest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Screen-Shot-2016-04-01-at-9.35.34-AM.png?fit=1583%2C904&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7oNOS-c","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredstories.com\/thebest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredstories.com\/thebest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredstories.com\/thebest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredstories.com\/thebest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredstories.com\/thebest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredstories.com\/thebest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredstories.com\/thebest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/27"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredstories.com\/thebest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredstories.com\/thebest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredstories.com\/thebest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredstories.com\/thebest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}