Snowfalling

Snowfalling (journalism): presenting a story as a large, multimedia-intensive, heavily-designed, and deeply-reported interactive piece in the manner of the New York Times’ “Snow Fall”

The original Snow Fall defined a new way of presenting newspaper stories on the web. With 21 million page views, it was the most widely-viewed story in the Times’ history.

Snowfalls, though spectacular, offer limited value. The staff who wrote the Times’ 2014 Innovation report observed that “Snowfall” and similar one-off projects require enormous efforts by staff, and that they are not replicable. “I’d rather have a Snowfall builder than a Snowfall,” says Kevin Delaney of Quartz, quoted in the report.