Gun Wars is live at gunwars.news21.com
At midnight, the culmination of eight months of work was released into the world as Gun Wars. This website is News21’s investigation on gun rights and regulations in America. Nominated university students and recent graduates from across the country reported on American gun rights and gun control advocates, inner city violence, militias, rural sheriffs’ responses to gun laws and more for the 2014 Carnegie-Knight News21 Fellowship program.
During the fellowship, I wore many hats.
- I wrote a story about sheriffs protesting gun laws.
- I designed a background check quiz for readers.
- I led the newsroom in including digital tools within their stories. I researched Poynter’s News University’s list of innovative reporting, design and social media tools. I assigned several free tools for the Fellows to research and present. I then worked with the Fellows to incorporate some of these tools into their stories, including SoundCite clips, Timeline.JS and StoryMap.JS.
- I served as a liaison between reporters and the graphics team. I worked one-on-one with reporters to brainstorm and create infographics, maps or graphs for their stories, such as the carrying guns in public data interactive.
- I worked as a lead designer and coder on the project. I established the design and color themes for the data interactives. I led a web team in figuring out the ultimate design of the home page and story pages of the site.
- I designed the Americans and their Guns section of the site, which offers a portrait of a nation and its love of guns.
Read the entire report at gunwars.news21.com or follow #GunWars on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. Let me, the other reporters and the editors know what you think of the investigation. We welcome any feedback you have.