Evocative. Mind-blowing. Truly… beautiful. The 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner’s cover letter describing the winning entry sums it up in its collation of review taglines (The Pulitzer Prize, 2013).
The publication of seminal multimedia news story Snow Fall, created by John Branch and published by the New York Times (20th December, 2012), has been heralded as ‘a watershed moment for journalism’ (Dowling and Vogan, 2014) in its reimagining and possible saving of long-form reporting. It is also a gold-standard example of digital literature with applications across several subject areas in the Australian Curriculum Version 9.0.
In short, I was absolutely captivated – from the first snowy panorama shown in the background of the title, eliciting giddy anticipation, to the end quote by John Stiftsen that captures the stillness and quiet of the post-disaster landscape and the magnitude of the story’s devastating conclusion.
To achieve this, Snow Fall pioneered the use of ‘scrollytelling’, in which multimedia features unfold as one scrolls through a text-based narrative. The effectiveness of the artefact is largely established in the pairing of a compelling and emotionally evocative true story presented as linear and told from multiple points of view, complemented by data represented in infographic format (Seiser and Ziller, 2018). In line with what is now considered to be best practice, the data presented is predominantly supportive of facts integrated into the narrative (explanatory), with a secondary purpose of providing background information (exploratory) (D’Ignazio and Bhargava, 2018).
The structure of Snow Fall is an interactive feature in and of itself that adds to its effectiveness. At several points during the reader’s scroll, they are given the opportunity to pause or move ahead into the next section of the narrative. I found myself doing the former several times to fully digest all the details included at each stage. It employs the journalistic equivalent of a cliffhanger in each section’s final paragraph, so it is not an interruption so much as a momentary opportunity to inhale as the new content loads after you click through. In part, by breaking up the content thusly, one makes it through 17,000 words of reportage almost without realising it.
As well as being a highly engaging piece of journalism, Snow Fall has clear links with the Year 7-10 Australian Curriculum Version 9. In terms of its application as an artefact for reading and viewing, teachers could credibly utilise it to facilitate engagement with multimodal texts in English at all secondary year levels, as well as investigating geographies of interconnections and communicating ideas in Geography. In addition, it would make an excellent stimulus for units on creation of interactive artefacts in Digital Technologies at Year 9 and 10, and for using media arts concepts to communicate ideas and events in Media Arts at the same year levels (Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2024). Beyond these, though, authentic exploration of Snow Fall also has the potential further students’ fluency in navigating and confidence in analysing real-world examples of transmedia texts, which are desirable skills to be able to transfer from the classroom to the workforce (Hovious, Shinas and Harper, 2020).
The only noticeable limitation of Snow Fall as an artefact of digital literature is in its technical development – it is not optimised for effective use on mobile devices with a screen of less than approximately ten inches. As a result, even when the device is held horizontally, there are limits to the amount of narrative text visible at any one time, and how accessible the interactive elements are (such as the map and the profiles of the team).
Otherwise, once you begin immersing yourself in the experience of Snow Fall, expect to find the experience sweeping you up on a wave of trepidation, emotion, and suspense, and to be borne along in its riveting wake.
References
Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) (2024). English, Digital Technologies and Media Arts Outcomes – Year 9. ACARA. https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/learning-areas/english_digital-technologies_media-arts/year-9?view=quick&detailed-content-descriptions=0&hide-ccp=0&hide-gc=0&side-by-side=1&strands-start-index=0&subjects-start-index=0
Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) (2024). Geography 7-10 Year 9. ACARA. https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/learning-areas/geography-7-10/year-9?view=quick&detailed-content-descriptions=0&hide-ccp=0&hide-gc=0&side-by-side=1&strands-start-index=0&subjects-start-index=0
Branch, J. (20th December, 2012). Snow Fall: The Avalanche At Tunnel Creek. New York Times Online. https://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/index.html#/?part=tunnel-creek
Dowling, D., & Vogan, T. (2014). Can We “Snowfall” This? Digital longform and the race for the tablet market. Digital Journalism, 3(2), 209–224. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2014.930250
Hovious, A., Shinas, V. H., & Harper, I. (2021). The Compelling Nature of Transmedia Storytelling: Empowering Twenty First-Century Readers and Writers Through Multimodality. Technology, Knowledge and Learning, 26(1), 215-229. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-020-09437-7
D’Ignazio, C., & Bhargava, R. (2018). Creative Data Literacy: A Constructionist Approach to Teaching Information Visualization. Digital Humanities Quarterly, 12(4) https://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/creative-data-literacy-constructionist-approach/docview/2555196684/se-2
Seyser, D., & Zeiller, M. (2018). Scrollytelling – An Analysis of Visual Storytelling in Online Journalism. 2018 22nd International Conference Information Visualisation (IV), 401–406. https://doi.org/10.1109/iV.2018.00075
The Pulitzer Prize (2013). The 2013 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Feature Writing: John Branch. The Pulitzer Prize. https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/john-branch