Data visualizations for the production of innovative narrative formats

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News media is going through a severe recession since the beginning of the 2000s, leading to a deep reorganization of the industry. The newspapers sector has seen its circulation and advertising based revenues specifically drop. In Canada, in the past ten years, around 85% of the daily newspapers bankrupted. However, unlike the traditional newspaper sector, online digital news contents see an increasing audience. As in any competitive industry, innovation becomes one of the important levers for each media to hold its own and survive. Among the new practices presently being investigated by the major news media, interactive data visualization, and data journalism in general, are on the top list. Our objective through this partnership and project is to address three directions in the development of innovative approaches and technologies for computer-aided production of data visualization based stories. We will build on the expertise our partnership already accumulated in the last 5 years in data visualization designing technologies, to explore and deepen three aspects that will better support and foster the work of data journalists in Le Devoir's newsroom. First, we will develop novel approaches for the handling and sustaining of live data in the context of automatic reporting. Second, we will investigate models for the automatic decomposition of a visualization design, for a progressive user-centred low-cognitive load transmission. Finally, we will explore new interactive formats and gamification approaches to increase readers engagement, satisfaction and memory retention of information. Le Devoir will integrate the outputs of the project into their production pipeline all along the way. It will therefore publicly showcase and benefit to Canadian news readers. Le Devoir also regularly participates in national and international journalism competitions, which will be also an opportunity to distinguish, promote and spread the project's results inside and outside Canada in the news media industry. In terms of HQP, the project will support the hiring and training of 5 graduate students, 6 undergraduate students, and one research assistant, all of them in tight collaboration with Le Devoir's team.