Multimedia long-form stories

Impact stories

These pieces showcase some of the ways in which the European Institute of Innovation and Technology for Urban Mobility is having an impact.

I wrote the editorial guidelines, wrote up the first series, and published them on the company's website.

The stories aim to demonstrate how pan-European initiatives are solving unique challenges in a relatively novel or easily replicable way. I also wanted to focus on different angles. For example, I chose to look at initiatives that supported female leadership in a predominantly male industry and tactical urbanism projects that involved kids. I tried to choose images that also represented a broader group of people than the organisation had previously used in its communications materials.

The other challenge was to include as many of the main stakeholders as possible – local governments and urban planners, start-up founders, students, and citizens that use the interventions and services.

While some partners were easy to interview and access, I often had to go through 3-4 other people before I was able to contact an appropriate interviewee. But then it was smooth sailing. I recorded the interview, used Otter.ai to help transcribe, edited the transcript and selected quotes for the story. I sourced relevant EU policies and initiatives, used facts and figures from other credible organizations, and weaved in some quotes from experts.

I was somewhat limited in formatting the piece as the technical part of the website was managed externally and I had to work around the standard templates, plus high-res images from partners were in short supply. However, the organization had an excellent set of videos that I could repurpose to add more context to two of the stories. I edited the images using online photo editing tools or the basic one built into the website. For basic graphics, I use Canva and I also have Adobe InDesign experience for print materials.

The branding guidelines also stipulated the use of a certain font and colors, although I tried to change the landing page format to make it look a bit cleaner. So while far from perfect, they still managed to convey some of the unique selling points of the projects.

On-the-ground-reporting projects

As part of a content series on health care workers, Duty of Care, our team was tasked with creating a set of multimedia pieces for various partners. The series aligned with the WHO's Year of the Nurse and Midwife and also coincided with the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Part of our brief from one partner was to showcase their telemedicine approach in Brazil during the pandemic. For a second story set in Nigeria, the main focus was on their surgeon training and education initiatives.

However, the beauty of the multimedia stories meant we could include the voices of patients, families, colleagues, mentors, and create sub-stories through photo essays, videos, infographics and drawings or audio clips.

We relied on our fantastic journalists, photographer and videographer teams in Rio de Janeiro and Lagos to record the interviews and footage, under difficult circumstances with restrictions on movement and access to health facilities in 2020.

Once the drafts and raw footage and images were received, I worked closely with the journalists and Naomi Mihara, our video producer, to develop the main storyline and complementary ones. Daniil Golubev, the designer/illustrator, added his magic to create infographics based on the specs we provided, drew cartoon portraits of the main characters and laid out the piece in Readymag before testing it out in different browsers and on mobile.

I restructured certain parts of the story, editing for clarity of expression, and fact-checking statistics, dates, names, titles, figures, and the sources of the facts. I went through the transcripts and interviews to check for any inconsistencies and followed up with the reporters on any queries. I checked subtitles, captions, and copy for infographics/visuals, aligned with AP Style and the company's branding and internal style guidelines.

I also created editorial briefs, negotiated and wrote contracts and non-disclosure agreements, and arranged other paperwork such as letters to facilitate access where needed. I managed invoices and worked with the operations team to resolve any associated legal or procurement issues.

Practice makes perfect

Easy as pie [ENG] /Tão longe e tão perto [POR]

After the original version in English was published, the partner asked us to reproduce it in Brazilian Portuguese. Journalist Flávia Milhorance quickly responded and we had it proofread by an external translator. Although some of the formatting changed the spacing of text and visuals, the most important part was publishing the piece in the language of the key audience. It was the first time this had been done for any of the company's multimedia stories.