The Washington Post launched its flagship Snapchat Discover channel in 2017, where we adapt our existing articles for a the app’s younger audience. As an editor on the Snapchat team, I write the headlines and display text for our visual presentations. I also collaborate with designers and animators to help strategize the best way to tell the story.
I adapted this story for Snapchat Discover based an article that appeared in The Washington Post Magazine titled: Six black girls were brutally murdered in the early ’70s. Why was this case never solved?
While the original story was in narrative form, I rewrote it for our use to make it chronological true-crime narrative that drove engaged readers who our analytics showed were engaged enough to complete the whole story.
This tile was adapted from a special project from our graphics team, America is more diverse than ever — but still segregated.
While the version of the story that appeared on the desktop version of the story included static maps displaying how America’s neighborhoods remain segregated, I thought of the idea to have the maps animate for the Snapchat version.
Being that our Snapchat Disover audience is mostly under 25, I thought this post by our education writer Valerie Strauss would resonate especially with our audience: ‘Here’s how to cover the next school shooting in four simple steps’: A dark student meditation.
The story, about local high school journalists who wrote a satirical edition of their student newspaper that took a dark look at school shootings, struck me because it indicated how common these tragic events have become for young people and how much it looms in their minds. Because the original story had a low-resolution version of the paper as the lead image, I tracked down the students so that they could send us a version of the image that would display well in the app.
Do men really have it easier? The Washington Post spoke with transgender men, who would know better than most what it is like on both sides of the gender divide. This piece was adapted from this piece, Crossing the divide.
For this article, because the stories of each of the men were separated by vignettes, I thought the best approach would be to have a pull quote as the display text and then prompt the reader to read the full story below.
I adapted this explainer from an article we wrote about the Juul, a vaping device popular among younger smokers: We killed the cigarette. What we got in return is mango-flavored nicotine in ‘party mode.’
Since our stock photos of the Juul were lacking, I suggested that we shoot original video for this story, which we did.