How The Washington Post Combined Data and Human Stories to Cover Hurricane Helene’s Aftermath

Climate change is both vast and personal, making it an ideal subject for immersive stories that combine visuals, data, and human narratives. Behind these seamless interactive pieces is collaboration, data analysis and firsthand reporting.

We spoke to Brady Dennis, a Washington Post climate reporter about how his team created its immersive story about Hurricane Helene, The Unending Storm, which documented one street in North Carolina months after the disaster.

Dennis spoke about the importance of collaboration, how to narrow in on such a large story, and the importance of constructing a story with data and human experience to make powerful journalism. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Storybench: How does a story like this come together? Does it start with all of the elements in mind or does it evolve?

Brady Dennis: It happens in different ways, but it helps to look for ways to marry these things together. Sometimes, the data leads you to find stories.

Other times, like Hurricane Helene, some disaster strikes and you need to cover it. What are the smartest ways to do that? How can data guide us in explaining what happened here and why this place was vulnerable? That’s the reverse — a story that demanded attention, and then we looked for ways to tell that story. Part of it is just having the mindset to use those tools whenever it makes sense to and knowing that they work well together.

Storybench: What does collaboration look like when working on a story like this?

BD: It’s constant communication, brainstorming, and planning together from the start. It’s not just different people going off and doing different things, then squishing it all together at the end. It works best when people with different skills are all on the same page about the story they want to tell.

As we were planning, I said it would be great to really focus on this one street. What was clear from being there was: Several months go by, the world moves on, but if you’re in a place like this, the storm isn’t over. How do we tell that story? All these other people had great ideas from photographers about how to photograph a story like that. We had a videographer get people on camera talking about their experiences. My colleague Sarah Kaplan helped find all the residents along that street.

Then there was data showing how the flooding had swallowed the street and which houses had been affected. The idea was simple, but all these people had their own way of looking at it and that made it so much better.

Storybench: When telling a story about a large-scale disaster, why focus on something like just one street?

BD: The bigger the story, the smaller the focus. Helene was such a massive disaster. Many people died, thousands were driven out of their homes.

It’s hard to capture that in a way people can relate to. Things become numbers or descriptions of really bad damage. The risk is it seems so far away and massive that you can’t wrap your head around it. People can understand living on a street when the whole street gets wiped out.That’s a more powerful way to tell these stories because the human brain can relate to it.

Storybench: What’s your biggest challenge when covering communities like this? 

BD: You’re meeting people during one of the worst times they’ve experienced, whether it’s a hurricane or some other awful situation. It’s important to be aware and respectful of that. The one way to do this well is to spend as much time as possible there, witnessing what people are wrestling with.

Also be transparent, I don’t ever try to surprise anyone in stories like this… I don’t mean that we show people stories but I double and triple-check everything. There’s nothing that I’ve shared that would embarrass or anger them or that they didn’t want out in the world. That doesn’t mean you write only good things — that’s not real — but you have to go in with humility and honesty about your intent.

Image: Screenshot, The Washington Post

Storybench: What do you hope journalism like this accomplishes beyond just informing a reader?

BD: I have a lot of hopes. And I  hope it can get us past the initial headlines—disaster and destruction — to a better understanding that there are real people and places affected by these events.It’s having people better understand, but also relate and empathize in a way that’s hard to do when something seems so distant.

I hope it illuminates the problems that remain in situations like this—  that aid doesn’t come fast enough and these disasters are not over for people for a really long time. I hope there’s a better understanding of that.

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on Storybench and is reprinted here with permission.

Isabelle Warren is third year journalism student at Northeastern University.