Worth Clicking: New Year’s Edition

All links are hand-picked by the MediaStorm staff for your enjoyment this new year. Cheers!

Looking Back and Ahead

  • The New York Times’ epic year in interactive storytelling. [New York Times]
  • 2013 in visual storytelling and data projects. [ProPublica]
  • Nieman Journalism Lab asks media experts to predict what 2014 will bring to journalism. [Nieman Lab]

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Time Lapse: The Making of Darkness Visible Afghanistan

In 2011, along with Leandro Badalotti and Brian Storm, I produced Seamus Murphy’s A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan. It remains the largest, most complex project I’ve ever tackled. Seamus began work in Afghanistan in 1994. By 2010, he had made 14 trips to the country, producing more than 35,000 images and recording 25-plus hours of video interviews. Leandro and I spent the better part of 4 months organizing the vast amount of material. To document our editing progress, I wrote a Python script that generated a jpeg screen grab every five minutes. The result is a time lapse that begins on June 6 and ends November 8, 111 weekdays later. There are approximately 4,300 images in total: one frame for every five minutes of work. You’ll see the entire project take shape, from radio cuts to final output. And if you’d like to learn more about our editing methodology, please join Tim McLaughlin…

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Read more about the article 50 Years of Afghan History Come ‘In Focus’
The entrance to the Karkar coal mine around 12 kilometers northeast of Pulikhumri, the provincial town of the Northern province of Baghlan. The Karkar coal deposit at one time met the needs of Kabul city. (AFP/Getty Images)

50 Years of Afghan History Come ‘In Focus’

The 1950’s and 1960’s marked a unique period of great modernization and relative peace in Afghanistan’s long, tumultuous history. The Atlantic explores mid-20th century Afghanistan on their In Focus blog: This time was [an era] when modern buildings were constructed in Kabul alongside older traditional mud structures, when burqas became optional for a time, and the country appeared to be on a path toward a more open, prosperous society. Progress was halted in the 1970s, as a series of bloody coups, invasions, and civil wars began, continuing to this day, reversing almost all of the steps toward modernization taken in the 50s and 60s. View over 30 high-resolution images at The Atlantic. Then take a deep dive into the history of Afghanistan, picking up where the photo series leaves off. A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan, our collaboration with renowned photojournalist Seamus Murphy, examines thirty years of Afghan history through the stories of ordinary…

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MediaStorm Receives Three FotoWeekDC Awards

We are honored to announce we have won three awards in the multimedia category of the 2012 FotoWeekDC International Awards Competition. A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan, produced with photographer Seamus Murphy of VII photo agency, received first place; Broken Lines, produced during our December 2011 Storytelling Workshop received second place; and Rite of Passage, produced with photographer Maggie Steber, received Honorable Mention. A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan Based on 14 trips to Afghanistan between 1994 and 2010, A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan is the work of photojournalist Seamus Murphy. His work chronicles a people caught time and again in political turmoil, struggling to find their way. Broken LinesJoe Soll has spent half of his life searching for his birth parents, in the process he uncovered a mystery that’s haunted him for years. Rite of Passage When Madje’s dementia proved relentless, her daughter Maggie moved her life to care for her. Maggie documented the liberation from…

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MediaStorm Receives Fourth Emmy

Photo: Katie Sedgwick, Robert Mcmahon, Jeremy Sherlick, Toni Johnson, Hagit Bachrach and Brian Storm accept Emmy for Crisis Guide: Iran. Photo by Marc Bryan-Brown Photography. We are proud to announce the Council on Foreign Relations and MediaStorm have received an Emmy for Crisis Guide: Iran. The Crisis Guide was awarded in the category for New Approaches to News and Documentary Programming: Current News Coverage in the 33rd Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards. A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan, produced with photographer Seamus Murphy of VII photo agency, was also nominated in the New Approaches to News and Documentary Programming: Documentaries category. Crisis Guide: Iran Drawing on the insights of more than twenty-five leading analysts, government officials, and journalists, Crisis Guide: Iran explores the issues and challenges faced by Iran, and offers a range of expert opinions on the policy options for addressing them. A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan Based on 14 trips to Afghanistan…

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