Quarter Four – Digital Single Story

Judges Comments

There was so much content in the category (not the amount of entries but how deep some of the entries would go online) but overall we kept coming back to well edited, strong images. As judges we had a quarrel about the fact that some of the imagery may have been old(er) but repackaged for the web. Like was the first place entry image from the past year or from years ago, we could not tell. But that was not our purvey so we judged on our emotional connection to the display. Viewfind 1st Place “An Unwanted Nation” Strong images with old school storytelling brings it to the forefront. Judges joked after seeing all the entries – it was obvious the judge hail from an “old-fashioned” photo program NPR 2nd Place “An Emotional Night” Variety of imagery well presented with a variety of layout instead of one long stream of imagery. For a long time the web was restricted to every image size being the same, now design and the weight of images is once again becoming a part of storytelling. CNN 3rd Place “Race Like no other” A massive undertaking for CNN with report after report that dove deep into many topics. Judges were moved by the interactivity of the home page and liked the use of square images as points of entry. Some of the links used photos well but others did not. Judges were looking for more variation in image size but they also noted they were viewing on a 21-inch screen and perhaps CNN design was more centered around mobile viewing. But in the end, we were impressed the amount of editing and organization of the visual content.

Judges: Tim Broekema/Western Kentucky University, James Kenney/Western Kentucky University, Jonathan Adams/Western Kentucky University