The Baltimore Sun, October 2015
ABOUT THE PROJECT
For eight months, Baltimore Sun reporter Liz Bowie and photographer Amy Davis followed a handful of immigrant students at Patterson High School as they tried to make a new life in America.
MY ROLE
As the digital project manager and designer on the piece, I worked with the reporter, photographer, editors and a front-end developer to design an immersive presentation for the series. The Baltimore Sun had done several interactive stories in the past, but this project allowed us to create a new template, incorporating new visual ideas to augment the story.
There are two interactive elements that I conceptualized and partnered with an interactive designer and visual journalist to create. The “Patterson’s many voices” audio element was conceived to allow the user to hear the many voices at Patterson in their native tongues, but also in English. I wanted the user to be able to get a sense of what a hallway in the school high would sound like - where students speak 25 different languages.
The second element is step-by-step map of each students’ journey to the U.S. Each student had to endure significant hardship just to reach U.S. soil, so it was important for the user to be able to see that element of their story.
The second story in the series was the first story we had translated into a foreign language. To ensure accessibility, we hired a translator to create a Spanish-language version. This practice was replicated in many other projects.
Stemming from this story, the school was flooded with donations that helped support the English as a Second Language Program at Patterson High School.
Awards
The project was a finalist for an Online Journalism Award, won second place in the National Headliner Awards and won multiple awards from the Society of News Design.
