Northeastern students reimagine digital storytelling with Esquire magazine

Here’s a fun keeping up with changes in media story: PBS MediaShift’s EducationShift spotlights a collaboration between Esquire magazine and the Northeastern University’s Media Innovation program.

As Jeffrey Howe, a Northeastern journalism professor, explains, students in the program are working as a sort of R&D department as they and Esquire explore new ways to tell stories digitally. This takes two forms: StoryLab, a course in “designing the future of magazine journalism,” and Storybench, a website that covers developments in the field.

StoryLab’s first project was for students to take Walking the Border, a 2011 Esquire piece in which Luke Dittrich chronicled his walk of the 1,933 miles from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, along the U.S.-Mexico frontier. The assignment, Howe writes: “Blow up the traditional magazine story, then rebuild it from scratch.” The students formed four teams, each presenting Dittrich’s piece in a different way.

There are live links to three of the four demos. What do you think?