Ten years into Venezuela’s economic and social crisis, it’s difficult to find new ways to engage audiences: The story is complex and nuanced, and the sheer length of crisis means many people have tuned out. That’s what makes Regina Garcia Cano’s story about couples breaking up because one member is leaving the country so good. It makes a difficult, sometimes dry topic immediately relatable.
But it was not an easy one to tell. It can be difficult to find people in Venezuela willing to speak on the record, and with such an intimate subject, many people cited personal, not just political, reasons for not wanting to be interviewed.
In the end, however, Garcia Cano found three people not only willing to have their names used but to share rich details about their heartbreak. One agreed to speak on video and two agreed to be photographed. One even shared an entire WhatsApp exchange with his boyfriend when the man broke the news that he was leaving the country. Dario Lopez painstakingly built an animation that simulated that conversation, bringing it to life.
This was context journalism at its best, using incredibly human and engaging tales to explain the severity of Venezuela’s crisis.
Unsurprisingly, it got high engagement on Instagram, given its personal touch, even though it ran the day that the global tech outage mopped up most audience attention. But it also was a story that many readers coming to our homepage for other reasons clicked on. (Most of its readership was from direct traffic to apnews.com).
For using heartbreaking examples and beautiful storytelling to create a new entry point for readers who otherwise might ignore a story on Venezuela’s crisis, Garcia Cano earns this week’s Best of AP — First Winner.
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