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This year, our visual stories covered a range of subjects: the U.S. presidential race and election, the Olympics, artificial intelligence, extreme weather events, and continued war in Ukraine and Gaza. 2024: The Year in Visual Stories and Graphics.
January
February
March
April
May
June
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What Ukraine Has Lost What Ukraine Has Lost “From the start of the war in Ukraine, we looked for ways to use remote analysis technologies to better understand the evolution of the conflict. Through collaborations with scientists, private companies, and the European Space Agency's Copernicus program, we were able to see for the first time the war damage on every building in Ukraine. The amount of information we processed was enormous, with more than 50 terabytes of satellite data and almost a terabyte more in maps, photos, diagrams and other elements that helped us better understand the story we needed to tell. “What Ukraine Has Lost” generated data equivalent to 2,000 times the size of Wikipedia as of October 2024.” — Marco Hernandez
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171,000 Traveled for Abortions Last Year. See Where They Went. 171,000 Traveled for Abortions Last Year. See Where They Went. “After the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022 and at least a dozen states banned the procedure, we began hearing about women who had to travel out of state for abortions. One drove 12 hours alone from Houston to a clinic in New Mexico. Another flew — for the first time in her life — from Mississippi to Chicago. Clinicians in states that protected abortion access told us that their out-of-state patient counts were surging. But it wasn’t until this year that researchers were able to estimate out-of-state abortions for the country, giving us the chance to turn anecdotes into a national picture.” — Amy Schoenfeld Walker
July
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The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century “As the final list of books came together from our survey of more than 500 literary luminaries, I was curious about how many I’d read. Being the sort of person I am, rather than take two minutes to count with my finger, I coded up a simple way to keep track with checkboxes. This opened up exciting opportunities – we could create a way for people to share their lists with friends or competitive literary foes, making use of the visual signature of the project: the well-loved paperbacks that represented how adored these books are by so many. And since this published, the concept has been rolled out across other stories for food, TV and movies — with more to come.” — Aliza Aufrichtig -
How the Trump Rally Gunman Had an Edge Over the Countersnipers How the Trump Rally Gunman Had an Edge Over the Countersnipers “When Trump was shot at his campaign rally in Butler, Pa., we wanted to detail the fairgrounds in 3-D to show what happened and how. Many of the first questions we had were spatial: Where was Trump, where was the gunman, where was everyone else? To collect data for the model, Charlie and I traveled to Butler to fly a drone, and Helmuth used the footage to create a detailed 3-D model of the site. The model, along with traditional reporting, the collection of social media images and videos, and the use of a spatial technique called viewshed analysis enabled the team to show and compare the lines of sight for the gunman and three teams of countersnipers.” — Leanne Abraham
August
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How Noah Lyles Won the Men’s 100-Meter Gold by a Fraction How Noah Lyles Won the Men’s 100-Meter Gold by a Fraction “The 100-meter sprint at the Olympics is over in just 10 seconds, so to understand how one athlete outperformed the others, you really need to look at the data. A close examination allows you to see who was fastest out of the blocks, when the runners hit their top speed and how well they maintained their speed to the finish. For our coverage of the event this year, we extracted speed data from photographs taken throughout the race using computer vision techniques. Then, we visually integrated that data back into a large composite image. In the dramatically close 100-meter men’s race, we were able to see the data and visualization combine to clearly show how Noah Lyles of the United States won by a mere fraction of a second.” — Malika Khurana
September
October
November
December
See visual stories from previous years:
