See the project here.
One of the most ambitious video undertakings achieved by The New York Times in 2019 was aimed at introducing the historically large and diverse 2020 Democratic presidential field to viewers across the U.S. and the world. The project involved more than three months of reporting, interviewing, traveling, editing, designing and programming by a team of more than two dozen people.
The result: 18 Questions. 21 Candidates. Here’s What They Said — a collection of interactive video interviews with nearly every candidate in the Democratic presidential primary race.
The goal was to provide voters with a new and different point of access and engagement to the candidates. We wanted to create a visual, approachable and unique experience that gave people a sense of who the candidates were, and their takes on some of the nation’s most pressing issues. We wanted to surprise our audience and do something digitally native that couldn’t be replicated in TV, audio or even on the debate stage itself. We wanted to level the playing field so all participants had a truly equal opportunity to make their case. And we wanted to make the video accessible to a wide audience to create opportunity for greater civic engagement.
Our questions were designed to explore differences among the primary candidates. We knew we wanted the interviews to be substantive on issues, but also included personal questions to draw in people who don’t typically engage in politics early in the race. This approach helped create a larger public discourse than we usually see with our politics coverage: It drove one of the highest number of subscriptions for the year.
We were striving for a fluid audience experience, allowing readers to seamlessly navigate between pages and easily watch questions and answers from each of the candidates on demand. Are you interested in how the candidates responded to “Does anyone deserve to have a billion dollars?” or do you simply want to know Elizabeth Warren’s answers to all questions policy? With over 500 video assets, viewers could interact with the project in a variety of ways, based on their own curiosities. This maximalist approach combined with our user-friendly navigation gave viewers several entry points and a customized experience.
The project was a true collaboration involving specialists from our politics, video, graphics, design, interactive news, photo and audience engagement desks
The interviews were filmed in four locations from March to June. Each one featured a complex, multi-camera setup. Visually, we wanted to give viewers the perspective of sitting across the table from the candidates — something stylistically intimate and simple without political comment.
We created 40 individual pages — one for each of the 18 questions, one for each of the 21 candidates, plus one landing page. Each of these pages were cross-linked so that viewers could easily switch back and forth between them. Each question page included all 21 candidates’ individual answers. Each candidate page included that candidate’s answers to each of the 18 questions.
On each question page, viewers had a choice of a shorter or longer version of the answers:
1) The Singles, where the audience could watch an uninterrupted version of each candidate’s answer. We wanted them to have an arena where they wouldn’t be cut off by a moderator.
2) The Supercuts, where the audience could quickly compare the candidates’ responses.
3) The Candidates, where the audience could engage with a single candidate and spend time understanding their positions from the questions without other candidates interrupting.
The technical feats of this assignment were impressive in their own right. We made specific versions for desktop, mobile and social, including 16x9 versions for desktop, 1x1 versions for mobile, 9x16 versions for Instagram. We were also mindful of the need for fast-loading pages, so we used custom encoding.
The project overall was incredibly well received by our audience with over 2 million visitors abd received a flood of coverage from other media outlets. It had wide success on social media platforms. Twitter created a moment featuring the project, and many candidates shared it on their own social channels. Our questions created an opportunity for many special interest groups to not only visit the project, but also share it with their community members.
In a crowded media space, we rewrote the rulebook on how we can compare and contrast candidates. This paradigm shift gave viewers an unparalleled window into the minds of the field. Our new format achieved what the TV debate cannot: interactivity between the candidates and the audience.
Months later after many candidates had dropped out — we revisited the remaining candidates.
20 (More) Questions With Democrats.
In this second session, The New York Times reached out to nine Democratic presidential candidates to ask them the same set of questions on video. Seven accepted the invitation.