Publication
theage.com.au smh.com.au watoday.com.au and canberratimes.com.au
Year
2017
Category
All Media: Production
The journalist Michael Bachelard and photographer Kate Geraghty brought home incredible stories and images from war-ravaged Mosul, but it was the multimedia team’s job to bring it into readers’ hands and hearts. Before the pair left for Iraq, they consulted with developer Nathanael Scott, designer Mark Stehle, video editor Tom McKendrick and multimedia editor Felicity Lewis on the kinds of visual material to collect from the field, and the importance of focusing on the personal and the particular.
The multimedia team developed and structured a difficult story into a compelling interactive package of vignettes, photographs, documents, maps and “moving portraits”: delivering real human insights into world events. The stories of children, women and men were brought to life with attention to detail, like including the subjects’ names in Arabic script as well as English. The result was a rich experience, sharing many stories to map a massive disaster. Each element brought something new and powerful to the story, and it was all delivered with a speedy turnaround.
The Fairfax Multimedia Team brings depth and impact to Fairfax’s finest independent journalism online. The team – comprising of developers, a designer, a video producer and an editor – collaborates with the newsroom’s top talents in photography, graphics, illustration and writing to bring Fairfax’s best stories to a national audience. The team has received multiple awards for their work on major Fairfax investigations and features.
Judges’ comments:
Interactive, visually rich, heartbreaking storytelling on one of the most important stories of our generation. The curated photography and videos are compelling, compulsory viewing. The way the pictures and videos are layered with the written word provides a rich method of telling a difficult story. The voices of those interviewed literally pop off the screen, and are incredible “moving portraits.”