For The New York Times, the Olympics have long been seen as an opportunity to push our journalism in new directions— looking for the right overlap between traditional reporting and new technologies.
In some cases, that means weaving rich stories out of video, graphics and text in ways that surprise readers, even those who are familiar with our multimedia coverage. On other projects, we might probe how to give users a closer view of the games, taking them along to different venues via a series of notifications that feel like text messages.
Traditional Sports journalism has held onto various “game story” formats for decades, and we wanted to tweak that kind of work. By shooting sequences of photos at events like snowboarding, we were able to slow the fast-paced athleticism down for readers, letting them inspect every twist and turn as part of our delivery of the facts.
And certainly, augmented reality would qualify as a new direction for journalism, Our debut project let readers see different athletes up close, and we pushed this new medium into service as a kind of explanatory journalism that unfolds in your living room.
