Reveal Success Story: leverage visual storytelling to wow readers | Setka

Published November 23th, 2021

Discover how Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting leverages the editorial experience design power of Setka to wow and retain readers.

About Reveal

For over 40 years, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) has been “telling stories that change laws and lives.” Founded in 1977 as the first nonprofit investigative journalism organization in the United States, CIR is still one of the country’s most credible and respected media organizations.

“Our award-winning journalists hold the powerful accountable and reveal government fraud and waste of taxpayer funds, human rights violations, environmental degradation and threats to public safety. We consistently shine a bright light on injustice and protect the most vulnerable in our society.”

A recipient of several News Emmy awards, a George Foster Peabody Award, a Webby, and many others, Reveal has also been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, 2013 and 2018, an Academy Award nominee in 2018, and the honoree of the 2012 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

Engaging, Standout Long-Reads

“When we have time to really think about a presentation, we turn to Setka to achieve it.”

Like any busy newsroom, the Reveal team runs on tight deadlines and quick story turnovers. But with their focus on investigative journalism, bigger pieces can take anywhere from a couple of months to a year to produce.

“Long-form, deep investigations present us with the richest visual opportunities to really consider presentation, art direction, photography, graphics, and compiling that all into a story form that really resonates with readers.”

To make the most impressive visual impact, the team decided to try Setka on a piece called “The Happiest Cats on Earth” – an in-depth look at a colony of feral cats living on Disneyland property – and the public health threat that they posed. Then there’s “Inside Hate Groups on Facebook,” an article that weaves in design elements inspired by the social network to guide readers through the story.

“There’s a little bit of a learning curve,” says Michael, “but we definitely see Setka’s value and are using it in-house. It’s allowing us to respond to visual requests from the newsroom a lot more quickly. And when we have time to really think about the presentation, we turn to Setka to achieve it.”

With “Caregivers and Takers” – a long-form investigation that takes a deep dive into the exploitative world of elderly care professionals – they’ve done just that.

The Content Challenge

“We’re starting to explore other kinds of story forms that might narrate and tell a tale in a different way.

“Oftentimes we have quick-turn pieces that need to go up right away, so there isn’t time to really consider the presentation. But when we have at least a week or two before publication, my designer and I are definitely thinking about the design.

“Because we’re an investigative shop and we ship a lot of words, we haven’t been very experimental with our story layouts. Before we can get to a place where we’re really doing that kind of work, I think our writers and editors have a lot to learn in terms of how to formulate their stories so we can try something that goes beyond your standard article on a visual level.

“I’m pretty familiar with CMS management tools and, generally speaking, a lot of publishers. We have these systems that allow us to place stories on different pages, and curate various articles, but beyond that it becomes really difficult and complicated to actually apply great-looking design to an article itself.”

Setka’s solution

“The Setka interface has been really great at optimizing our workflow so that we can hit deadlines.”

“We’re always looking for ways to play off of the grid, so it’s been great to be able to apply it and use it strategically while figuring out how it looks when building in other elements. In the Caregivers package, we wanted to open up with something that was very untraditional. Scrollytelling is beginning to catch on, so we lead with that and into Setka’s grid.

“As far as the components themselves, it’s really useful to be able to break from one long string of text into a bigger asset – and one that doesn’t require heavy lifting. It’s very powerful to be able to do these kinds of tasks in an interface as opposed to searching through lines of code to figure out how to reposition a <div>, or a <section>, or something like that.”

“Setka is an incredibly accessible tool for publishers who are interested in presentation and want to empower their designers – or even non-designers – that want to do more with visual storytelling. There’s no need to code, so you can build the presentation and layout of a story the way you envision. And once we’ve established the videos, photos, and graphics, we can really lean on Setka to help us deliver those visuals in our long-form stories.”

Design Impact

“We saw some incredible success in the first week of engagement on the Caregiver story, with 95-98% scroll-depth. We may not have gotten it in front of a whole lot of people – but time spent on that story was five minutes or better on average. That tells us a lot about the value that was there, with presentation being a key factor in motivating people to really read and scroll through.

“Once you know how to use Setka’s tools, any publisher can be pretty dangerous with them. I encourage editorial teams to try it out and see what they come up with.”