To cover the ongoing story of Migrants seeking entry to the United States, The New York Times has developed a number of stories in the newsroom with a fresh approach on building stories explicitly for readers on social media. Through the concerted and collaborative efforts of print reporters, photographers, video reporters, graphics editors, desk editors, and social media editors we have created new materials exclusively tailored for TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
Our story following families from Afghanistan as they travel across the world to reach the American Border brought stories directly from the mouths of the journalists on the ground with these subjects. We integrated new maps to visualize the trail and highlighted two different families at different stages of the journey to bring the story to life.
To mark the end of Title 42 we integrated footage from our photographer as he rode the train with migrants with footage from the border from our video colleagues at various locations on the day the law ended. In The Times online we made an article with a number of photos, in print it was an article with photos, but for social media this became a vertical video we were able to share with readers on all the social media platforms directly.
To mark the news and document scenes at the border for Twitter we made a square video with footage from photo and video colleagues in a text-on-screen news format that became one of the highest performers for the year on tha platform.
We covered the dangerous trek migrants make through the Darien Gap with photos and videos shot on phones and insightful commentary from our photographer who made the journey alongside them. We published a standalone vertical video plus numerous instagram photo posts to reach readers in multiple parts of the app experience.
