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Rieder: Immersive coverage for Arctic climate change

Rem Rieder
USA TODAY
Lara Setrakian.

I guess Lara Setrakian was serious.

Setrakian is the poet laureate of the deeply immersive, single-topic website perhaps best illustrated by her acclaimed Syria Deeply, which she launched three years ago. In  March 2014, she told me that her second site would be Arctic Deeplyfocusing on the melting polar ice caps and set to debut that summer.

Then the Ebola crisis erupted, followed by the California drought, and they became the topics for Deeplies No. 2 and 3.

Now, at last, Arctic Deeply will debut Dec. 8, and Setrakian says she is "extremely excited." The venture is a partnership with the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a Canadian think-tank.

"The Arctic has been a huge priority for us for quite a while," says Setrakian, a former correspondent for ABC News and Bloomberg TV.

The timing seems right: The United States chairs the Arctic Council, and the temperature in the Arctic is rising at twice the rate as in the rest of the world.

The Deeplies are designed to address an all-too-familiar phenomenon in the news business. When a story explodes, there is saturation coverage. Then something else explodes, and the parade moves on, and the aftermath of Explosion  No. 1 is too often ignored. That's what inspired Setrakian, a former Middle East correspondent, to create Syria Deeply, which was widely applauded from the start. On its first day, Fast Company proclaimed, "SYRIA DEEPLY OUTSMARTS THE NEWS, REDEFINES CONFLICT COVERAGE."

Setrakian says there are many other subjects that have a "Syria problem." Setrakian looks for topics that are "generally underreported and extremely consequential for our time."

Rieder: A laser-focused approach to news

 

 

Setrakian says the episodic approach "is how our industry is built. You can't cover everything at the same time." That said, "there are people who want to know what happens on Day Four. We're here to fill in the gaps."

Arctic Deeply will follow the model of its three predecessors. It will offer a mix of original content, links to top-flight coverage from other news outlets, news summaries, maps, op-eds, backgrounders, timelines, data visualization, you name it. All on the Arctic.

Providing that original content will be Managing Editor Hannah Hoag, who has written about climate change for a variety of publications for more than a decade. Setrakian describes Hoag's role as "hyperactive beat reporter."

 

Hannah Hoag is managing editor of Arctic Deeply.

For Hoag, the mission is personal. She has visited the Arctic, and she has witnessed the impact of climate change on the population, the rising sea levels and "villages falling into the ocean."

"I've seen the changes firsthand," she says. Though Hoag will be based in Toronto, she plans to make frequent trips to the Arctic.

Hoag says she was attracted to Arctic Deeply because "it checked a lot of boxes for me." She sees the new gig as an opportunity to take her climate change reporting to a, yes, deeper level. "I want to talk to the people affected by climate change," she says. "It's a chance to focus on a niche issue that's really important now and in the future."

 

 

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Setrakian says that, three years in, she's more convinced than ever that her approach works. "We have fantastic engagement metrics," she says. "There has been a lot of validation of the single-topic model."

Though News Deeply has gotten some grants, it supports itself in part by building platforms for other companies. It has eight full-time employees devoted to all of the sites, including copy editors and digital staffers, and eight for specific projects.

Though traffic spikes at times of crisis, Setrakian says, the sites maintain a devoted cadre of regular visitors. "For the diehards, there is a home," she says.

Should we look for more Deeplies in the future?

Setrakian says, "Refugees Deeply is definitely on the agenda."

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rem Rieder on Twitter @remrieder

 

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