Moving Forward — Issues-focused reporting about transportation in the Metro Vancouver region

GO TO THE MOVING FORWARD WEBSITE

 The challenge

In spring 2015, Metro Vancouver citizens were faced with a plebiscite on a transportation funding decision that would define the future of the region for decades to come. Early in the debate, news coverage focused on political conflict and opinion. The news cycle was stuck in reactive mode and there was a desperate need for issues-focused, evidence-based reporting. But journalists attempting to dig below the competing claims of the Yes and No camps found little data reasonably accessible.

What we did

In answer to this challenge, we created Moving Forward: a crowdfunded, independent journalism project with a temporary reporting beat that contributed context to the debate. Moving Forward is an eight-part series of investigative content packages including written features, data inter actives, infographics and raw data sets, all licensed under Creative Commons with embed codes for any media outlet to use.

Formed research and public engagement partnerships

We developed research partnerships with Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Public Dialogue and academic experts at the University of British Columbia, and painstakingly compiled and analyzed publicly available data. Our team of journalists and data designers produced a series of multimedia content packages, published on a dedicated website. Inspired by organizations like ProPublica, we also licensed content as Creative Commons for use by other media outlets.

Responded to our readers’ requests for coverage

In order to help citizens fill gaps in their understanding, we needed our readers to shape our reporting. We partnered with PlaceSpeak, a public consultation platform where readers posed questions for our reporters to investigate. We responded to over 50 reporting requests throughout six weeks of reporting.

Contributed to public discourse

Over the course of the 10-week project, over 1.3 million people engaged with Moving Forward content on the project’s website, social media and through media outlets. More important than the size of our reach was the depth of our audience’s engagement. Moving Forward shifted media angles from conflict-driven to data-driven in media outlets across the region. Our content generated stories in: Global TV, Atlantic’s CityLab, Streets Mn, Spacing Magazine, The Vancouver Sun, The Tyee, Globe and Mail, Metro Halifax, The National Post, CTV News, News 1130, Montreal Gazette and the Ottawa Citizen. Our Cost of Commute Calculator allowed readers to punch in the length of their commute in Metro Vancouver and see a breakdown of the full cost of their commute to themselves and to society – including externalities such as travel time, pollution and health care savings – by different forms of transportation. The interactive generated media stories and conversations on Twitter and Reddit around the world. “In a debate characterized by at best noise and at worst outright lies about our transit system, Moving Forward shone out as an honest, data driven look at the real challenges of moving people in this region – and the people of Metro Vancouver are better off for it.” – JON WOODWARD, Reporter, CTV News Vancouver

International recognition

Moving Forward was recently named a finalist for the international data journalism awards awarded by Global Editors Network. The awards celebrate work in the field of data journalism in media worldwide, rewarding examples of data-driven investigations, data-driven applications and storytelling with data visualisation, which cover matters relevant to society and aim to have an impact at a societal level.