Our journalism fires on all fronts, combining the rigor of Washington Post reporting with the power of innovative and reader-centered storytelling. Across formats and platforms, our work last year leveraged emerging technology, immersive experiences, and smart design to make journalism more accessible and help our readers make sense of a time that is anything but ordinary.
As news broke, we covered it swiftly, producing a swath, smartly framed and contextualized stories in the moment, staying with it or the days and months ahead.
Our first update following the attempted assassination at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania was published almost immediately, before the source of the loud noises was even confirmed. We updated our story in text, a visual timeline, a video from our photographer’s vantage point just feet from the stage, and days later published an in-depth 3D reconstruction that showed how the shooter slipped into position unnoticed. Still, our investigations continued, revealing more security failures.
We took this same approach when covering Hurricane Helene and the American Airlines collision over the Potomac River in Washington.
Staying with the story doesn’t preclude us from considering how our audience consumes our work. In “Abused by the Badge”, reporters compiled and analyzed records from across the country over two years to expose how police officers exploited their authority to commit sexual abuse against children. Data, documents, and text messages were woven into powerful scenes with a visually striking design that placed survivors’ voices front and center. The interactive package gave readers choices about the level of detail they wanted to engage with. We took a similar approach to our 18-month investigation into Native American boarding schools to draw in readers who otherwise may find the topic too disturbing or dismiss it as ancient history.
We continue to explore the limits of new formats and platforms. We launched Post Next, a platform that celebrates changemakers reshaping society, designed to reach new audiences through immersive visuals and narrative-forward design. Washington Post Universe expanded this work to TikTok and Instagram, blending humor and news literacy for Gen Z. Our premier podcast Post Reports continues to deliver in-depth stories, including reporting from a measles outbreak in West Texas.
In the ‘Borderland Shootout,’ we investigated the slaying of three Tejanos in South Texas, whose family says they were ambushed by Texas Rangers 100 years ago. The story passed down through oral tradition diverged significantly from the official account. To highlight the competing narratives and evoke the distinct iconography of the place and time, we used illustrations, large-format photos, music, and song lyrics to create an experience that placed readers inside the story.
From long-form visual storytelling to mobile-native explainers and open-source investigations, The Post used digital technology not as an add-on but as an essential language of its journalism. Our work this year was recognized with two Pulitzer Prizes and a citation as one of the World’s Best-Designed Digital publications, affirming not just the strength of our stories, but the innovation in how we tell them.
