Interview With Craig Welch
Craig Welch has been writing stories about the environment and natural resources for The Seattle Times for over thirteen years. He is a two-time winner of the Society of Environmental Journalists' top prize for beat reporting and is a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He has published a nonfiction detective story about wildlife smugglers named, "Shell Games". This novel won the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award in 2011. His work for newspapers has spanned over Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and Idaho. He has been writing about the impacts of ocean acidification on Northwest marine life since 2009.
The following interview took place on November 28, 2014 and was conducted through an email conversation. The questions revolved around writing for a digital piece with multiple elements as part of the story for the piece, "Sea Change".
Taylor Campbell: Was Sea Change meant to be a digitally told narrative since its initial inception?
Craig Welch: Yes, The Seattle Times had offered to fund a story that was created by a team of individuals. The main people on the story were myself and a photographer named, Steve Ringman. The two of us went out and conducted the investigative information and sent it home for the developers to work with.
Taylor Campbell: Did the knowledge that the story would not be published as a print article change the way that you go about writing or investigating a topic?
Craig Welch: Not really, my process of collecting information remained the same as did my writing process. I had control over the story so what was published was completely my words. The website itself was built by the developers so once I had my part done the rest was in their hands.
Taylor Campbell: With your experience creating a story such as Sea Change, do you believe a small team of people is a requirement for such a project?
Craig Welch: From my experience I would say yes. The seperation of work allows me as a journalist to focus 100% on my job and the same goes for the programmers and web developers. Of course these things require financial support.
Taylor Campbell: Why are some of the benefits that a scientifically rich story such as Sea Change has as being a digital narrative as opposed to a print article?
Craig Welch: The story gains a lot from the platform actually. There is the opportunity to further explain certain parts of the story through video or imagery which would not be possible in a newspaper for example.
Taylor Campbell: Are traditional forms of journalistic writing, such as creating the hook, take different forms with the amount of flexibility that the digital platform offers?
Craig Welch: I believe so yes. As you can see in Sea Change, the story begins with a video that talks about what the general thesis of the article is and what the reader can expect. Essentially this was the lead for my story but I also wrote the text in a way that addressed the hook for the story.
Taylor Campbell: To what extent did you as the author have control over the story? Was there a leader assigned to the team that worked on the article or did you as the lead journalist call the shots?
Craig Welch: Over the text and the general flow of the narrative I had compete control. My photographer and I worked alongside to ensure that what I wrote was accompanied by imagery. As far as the videos, the maps, and other extra information such as brief summaries on the creatures of the sea, most of that was handled by the team of programmers. I of course, offered my expertise on the subject but generally I stayed more toward the writing and research aspects of the story.
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