‘Pumped Dry’ captivates even the shortest attention spans
By S. L. Fuller
Conventional wisdom says newspapers are dying, data journalism isn’t proper storytelling, and using a GIF in an online article is just tacky. USA TODAY is, then, a journalistic abomination. Standalone long-form is the only type of journalism that is truly impactful, right? And that particular news organization produces its infamous “McNews” — easily-digestible, short-form web articles. USA TODAY is a bandwagoning, Internet-exploiting disgrace.
Right? Image-driven, clickable projects can’t be good journalism, can they?
Well, take for example “Pumped Dry: The Global Crisis of Vanishing Groundwater”: It’s image-driven; it’s a clickable project. But The Desert Sun Environmental Reporter Ian James made sure that his project — done in partnership with Desert Sun’s parent organization, USA TODAY — was good, impactful journalism.
“In general, I like experimenting with story forms and ways of telling stories. Telling stories visually can be a part of that,” said James. “I think interactives really add to the journalism. There’s a lot of great data visualization out there.”
“Pumped Dry” can be found on the USA TODAY website under the “More” tab, then, in that tab, “Interactives.” An interactive is USA TODAY’s way of making long-form journalism easily-digestible: And it works. The header image on the project website page is a GIF of water coming out of a pipe. Then, readers can click around the page, reading stories, watching videos and playing around with an interactive map.
It’s not gimmicky. Instead, it’s engaging reporting on a topic that won’t go out of style any time soon. James’ specialty is environmental reporting, and he knew he needed to bring the groundwater crisis to the forefront. If the world continues to mismanage groundwater, it continues to mismanage the future of humanity, to be blunt.
“The project was my idea and it sort of grew out of my reporting here in California, and also seeing some of the NASA research,” said James. “Since 2002, [NASA] satellites have been, for the first time, monitoring changes in the water supplies all around the world, and so I was really interested in that.”
What is a journalist to do when he has a big idea? He goes to his editor. Then, once his editor is on board, he goes to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to apply for funding. Once that’s granted, the last stop is USA TODAY to ask for some collaborators. USA TODAY provided James with a whole team, including video journalist Steve Elfers. Then, the work began.
It took eight months of work to complete “Pumped Dry,” a five-article project complete with five videos and a slew of other data. Since depleting groundwater supply is, as the title states, a global crisis, James and Elfers traveled to India, Peru and Morocco, as well as reported on what’s happening in the U.S. Traveling, however, is the glamorous part of being a journalist. So much more work had to happen before the plane made its way down the runway. Pre-reporting and mountains of research had to come first.
“A lot of the reporting happened before making those trips. It was making Skype calls and trading emails with scientists and reading papers; it was talking with government officials,” said James. “And also, in the case of a country like Morocco, it was trying to figure out who on the ground could help us in terms of getting to the places we need[ed] to go and what’s the language. We don’t speak Arabic or French, which are the two languages spoken there.”
And even choosing to go to Morocco was a challenge. James said that one of the most challenging parts of the “Pumped Dry” project was doing research to figure out what locations would make the most sense to report on in terms of how well they represent the global situation.
“There were a number of places we could have chosen to go [in the Middle East and Africa] and actually I had proposed to go to Uganda,” said James. “And then after looking more at Uganda — I’m sure we would have found stories there but it wouldn’t have turned out to be the same type of story that we found in Morocco. And I’m really glad we went to Morocco because there are real symptoms of groundwater depletion there — farmland that’s been abandoned — and it really shows how bad it can get.”
Global depleting groundwater around the world is a huge topic, both in physical miles and depth of the situation. In fact, James — who has written a book that can be bought on Amazon — cites “Pumped Dry” as his biggest project to date.
“They’re comprobable, but in my mind, this project is bigger in scope. I mean, probably the book is longer if you look in actual words,” said James. “But it’s not just words, it’s also the video piece of it, and working with Steve on that video documentary. And I don’t think our work is done either.”
James is not convinced that he’s even begun to exhaust every angle of this story. Even “Pumped Dry,” which was published last December, is not done making its mark. The videos from the project are currently being edited together to form a documentary which will be shown at the Environmental Film Fest and the American Documentary Film Festival. The Desert Sun is also currently in the process of collecting short Op-Ed pieces from experts, among others, outlining potential solutions to the groundwater crisis. He hopes they will also be published by USA TODAY.
Despite the fact that James had his hand in virtually every aspect of “Pumped Dry,” he’s the first to acknowledge the team effort. James and the team were always thinking about the story first, and despite the glitz of an interactive map, it’s the story that holds it all together.
“I had a lot of great support from my editor who really believed in the project and we had a lot of support from the team at USA TODAY,” said James. “I think the way it came together, seeing the final [project] — I felt good about that, proud. And it helps illustrate this issue hopefully in a way that can generate more discussion and help people understand it.
“I think the intro is important, the images help lead people to the story. So the global map, the clip of video of water pouring out of the wells and all that put together I think produces a compelling package — I think anyway. I hope it contributes.”