News Reporter: Act Four: What it takes to make a year-long reporting project possible

Friday 15 September 2017

Act Four: What it takes to make a year-long reporting project possible

Alyssa Rosenberg on culture and politics

(Credit: Adriana Usero and Chris Rukan/The Washington Post)

It’s that time of year again. Yesterday, we launched the first installment of my big project for 2017, a deep dive into Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s “The Vietnam War.” I’ve been working on the series and the podcast to accompany the documentary for a year and a half. But I didn’t do it alone. And I want you to know a little bit about the people who did it with me, because I think it’s a useful reminder of the infrastructure it takes to do this kind of reporting and criticism.

We recorded the interviews for this series, almost 200,000 words’ worth of them, in a studio here at The Washington Post. To do that, I relied on Adriana Usero, a video producer in Outlook and Opinions, who also is the brilliant editor behind the videos in this series (as well as last year’s series on policing and pop culture). To capture those interviews, I also worked with Carol Alderman, a podcast producer here at The Post who is editing the episodes you’ll get to hear over the next few weeks. Once I started writing, Ruth Marcus, who many of you probably know as a brilliant columnist here at The Post, edited me, in the process turning two pieces into three. Chris Rukan designed the presentation of the series, coming up with everything from the dominant colors we used to the looping videos we are embedding at the top of the pieces. And Becca Clemons, the deputy digital opinions editor, makes sure that everything gets published every day, sometimes as early as 6 a.m.

And that’s just the list of people who touched this project most closely. The point I’m trying to make is that this sort of work is much more time- and labor-intensive than a lot of the quicker pieces I write. I absolutely could not do it alone. I hope that means that projects like this are an illustration of why supporting journalism with dollars, and not merely clicks, is so important. If you’re not a Washington Post subscriber, I hope you’ll consider becoming one. As always, thanks for reading.

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