The Pudding is a digital publication that explains ideas debated in culture with visual essays. We often say that our storytelling follows the “spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” method: on the surface many of our stories or presentations can feel fluffy and frivolous, but they often tackle much deeper, sytemic and structural problems.
Our goal is to create a visceral, emotional experience. We’re cultivating curiosity in our audience, and betting in quality over quantity. We have the luxury of not having to follow the news cycle or to adhere to strict deadlines, so we get to experiment with weird, creative stuff a lot.
We use interactive innovation and creative technology in every piece we produce. The 5 stories we included in our submission include gamification, user input, scroll-driven stories, video explainers, choose-your-own adventure data explorations, audio storytelling, investigative reporting, and podcasts.
The Pudding’s storytelling approach is deeply audience-centric, using interactive and emotional experiences to foster empathy. The use of gamification, multimedia, and multiple formats ensures accessibility while maintaining journalistic integrity. In particular, the abortion maze project takes an insanely creative approach to a visually challenging topic matter. The work across the portfolio exemplifies how modern journalism can be both innovative and impactful.
