Inside Stacker, a new tool for creating mobile-ready journalism
Meet Stacker: a new digital medium for creating journalism that incorporates eye-catching visuals with mobile-friendly design.
Stories made with Stacker, or “stacks,” allow the reader to move at his or her own pace and drive more interaction and engagement. Stacker reports that 60 to 70 percent of readers actually complete stories between 600 and 800 words in length, because they weave animation, photos and interactive features into the narrative. You can embed your stacks anywhere, and update them at any time, all without needing a developer.
Several news outlets have already begun to use Stacker as a storytelling platform. Stacks have been embedded on sites like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Upworthy, The Atlantic and more. Want to see how it works? Here are just a few examples:
The Commonwealth Fund’s “Thinking Outside the Mailbox”
On the island of Jersey, in the English Channel, residents’ daily mail deliveries are unlike anywhere else in the world. The Commonwealth Fund’s stack covers The Jersey Post’s eldercare program, which delivers healthcare and the mail to frail, elderly residents. Postal workers check in on the elderly, deliver their medications and give them reminders of upcoming appointments. The stack appears in a brightly-colored comic book format, allowing readers to see just how the program works in action.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s “How Empowered Women Change the World”
“How Empowered Women Change the World” is a look at how advances in women’s reproductive rights over the course of the 20th century have led to societal advances on a broader scale. The stack gives an overview of how improved contraception access allows women to become more educated, pursuing careers and helping the economy grow. Using graphs and other visuals, the stack brings this concept to life.
Newsbound’s “Get to Know Your Aquifier”
Newsbound, the company that created the Stacker platform, created “Get to Know Your Aquifier” as an explainer on aquifiers, which are large deposits of groundwater found deep below the surface. As humans have increasingly tapped these aquifiers for drinking water and irrigation water, they’ve begun to dry up -- and climate change is only making the problem worse. By using simple language and easy-to-interpret visuals, Newsbound’s stack helped demystify aquifiers for general audiences.
It’s free to sign up for a Stacker account and start creating stacks, but you’ll need to pay a monthly fee if you intend to publish your stacks. Currently, Stacker is available to use by invite only. To request an invite, enter your email address at stacker.cc.
-Sam, IJNet social media and editorial intern
Image CC-licensed on Flickr via mbeo.
