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, systemic and structural problems.
Our goal is to create a visceral, emotional experience. We’re cultivating curiosity in our audience, and betting on quality over quantity. We have the luxury of not having to follow the news cycle or adhere to strict deadlines, so we get to experiment with weird, creative stuff a lot.
We craft each of our stories to be memorable experiences. We’re not talking at our audience, we’re talking with them — encouraging them to challenge their own biases, teaching them something new, and changing how they interact with the world around them.
Our stories in this submission include a piece where we attempted to use AI to produce a visual story, plus three other stories where we used AI to clean and categorize data.
Judges appreciated the thoughtfulness and transparency of the main entry story. Rather than jumping straight to conclusions or flashy deployment, it offers a nuanced, work-in-progress exploration of AI’s potential—and limitations—in replicating what journalists do best.
