A picture is worth a thousand words: CTXT and Storyteller
We’ve all heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Independent Spanish media organisation, CTXT, took those words to heart in their new longform pieces created with our Storyteller theme for Newscoop.
Storyteller was originally created as a longform solution for a story about microfinance in the Democratic Republic of Congo, funded by the EU through the Journalism Grants programme. Since then, the Storyteller theme (read more about Storyteller) has come a long way and has been used for numerous purposes beyond the one it was created for, journalistic storytelling. From an art project to end-of-year reviews, our users have been creative in the way they have employed this versatile medium. Recently, though, a relatively new digital newspaper called CTXT has been utilizing the theme to tell a few powerful stories on their site.
CTXT was founded in 2014 by 14 experienced journalists from a number of major newspapers in Europe including El Mundo, El País, and La Repubblica. CTXT, an abbreviation of “Context and Action”, is a digital medium that publishes content for free and primarily receives their funding through sponsorships and donations. When they launched their site, they decided to use open source Newscoop as their CMS. Since then, their site has flourished into a great example of an alternative slow journalism outlet in Spain that uses longform storytelling well.
It’s often the case that a story comes with a large amount of useful media content, rather than let that content go to waste, Storyteller allows news outlets to not only utilize the media content, but showcase it in a way that takes the viewer on a storytelling journey. “We usually decide to use Storytellers when we have a number of good pictures. The two last ones, Children from Chernobyl and the one about flamenco singer Enrique Morente were great experiences overall” said CTXT multimedia content coordinator Adriana Mora. “For us, Storytellers are a great way to give a different perspective on specific topics” she continued. “Not only can we present our texts in a more visual way, but we also have a nice opportunity to pay attention to multimedia elements.”
You can see some excellent examples of the theme in action with their three latest stories below:
Los niños de Chernóbil : (Children of Chernobyl), stories of Ukrainians and Belarusians affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster
Y Morente… ¿qué es lo que ha hecho?: A profile piece on flamenco singer, Enrique Morente
Rompiendo el gran silencio : (Breaking the silence), their newest story about former Israeli military personnel that shares their experience as an occupying power in Palestinian Territories.
Each of these stories are prime examples of how longform journalism can contribute significantly to the editorial excellence of a news organisation. The aim with this free and open source longform Storyteller theme was to give any organisation or journalists, no matter the depth of their pockets, the opportunity to present their stories on a cohesive presentation platform that not only enables the presentation of information in a sequential manner, but also one which encourages interaction and emotion through multimedia.
CTXT is also one of the winners of our FWD:media project. Read more in this blog post: Meet our first FWD:media winners.
Interested in creating your own Storyteller story? Read our full ‘how to’ guide to get started.