Now that most news organizations are also digital operations, options about how to tell a story are almost limitless.
Buffalo News Chief Photographer Derek Gee had that in mind in the weeks and months after the hate-fueled massacre May 14 at Tops Markets on Jefferson Avenue. He also was thinking about how News Editor Sheila Rayam wanted to incorporate more video into stories.
The result is a mini-documentary created by Gee that is now online at buffalonews.com and is the culmination of a year of coverage from him and a host of other Buffalo News journalists.
How and when did you decide you wanted to tell the story of the past year in this way?
One of the first things Sheila and I talked about when she took the reins was about how we needed to be thinking more broadly about how we use video in our visual coverage. While she has been encouraging everyone in the newsroom to incorporate more video, we realize it falls to the photojournalists to use our unique skill set as storytellers to bring the news to life in innovative ways visually.
Simultaneously, I had been struggling for an entire year with how to make sense of what I had witnessed and what its true impact on the community was. I personally felt like there was nothing I could ever do that would properly honor all those whose lives were changed that day. But I also knew that I had to do something and that success throughout my career has often come from embracing challenges posed by editors and answering them in my own voice, even if at first I’m not sure what it is I need to say.
After much brainstorming I realized that this would be the perfect platform to explain what happened and really explore the profound ways it revealed existing wounds in the community. To explore how those most immediately impacted have been coping, finding ways to heal and to channel their deep grief and pain into deeply positive and lasting impacts on the community. I listened, and asked questions –…
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