The Making of "Snow Fall"

I finally got around to reading The New York Times's multimedia feature "Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek", which has been attracting a lot of attention from web-savvy reporters.

Basically, it's a long, in-depth article about a deadly avalanche in the Cascades near Seattle, illustrated by videos, photographs, audio clips, slideshows and animations that come to life as you scroll down the page.

I really like the format. It combines classic long-form writing with the smooth interactive experience that people now expect from online media, and the graphics and videos make it easier to concentrate on the story and keep track of all the details.

In a team interview with Source, NYT's graphics director Steve Duenes explains: "We wanted to make a single story out of all the assets, including the text. So the larger project wasn’t a typical design effort. It was an editing project that required us to weave things together so that text, video, photography and graphics could all be consumed in a way that was similar to reading—a different kind of reading."

If this is where print journalism is headed, then I'm encouraged - but it's looking more and more likely that I'll need to dust off my computer science degree if I want my career to go anywhere. And here I thought I'd escaped.