The challenge with this column wasn’t a lack of context or an inexperienced writer. After all, the author is a former publisher of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The storytelling was superb. But the piece was long, and the intersections of the lives of a daughter adopted and her now-dead birth mother could be confusing for the casual reader.
I worked with graphic artist George Petras to create an interactive, also embedded above, that would keep readers engaged in a story that took up 100 inches of type in print.
In the original first-person story, Sentinel staff already had created video and a photo gallery, which I used as bookends on the story — video up top and gallery at the end because a video will automatically play and readers do stick around to page through galleries. But digital readers are notoriously flighty, so also I worked to keep them interested throughout with ample artwork, subheads, quotes, bulleted items and related links.
Last I checked, the package had more than 82,000 page views and an engaged time that was among the site’s highest.
