The stories from the New York Times that I considered to be related to my enterprise project (investigating what goes wrong with students in Amsterdam who try to waive their municipal taxes, because they rarely succeed whereas they should mostly be exempted from paying them) are the following two:
I think they are related, because they both involve government policies that negatively (and probably unfairly) affect students and their finances.
For these stories, I chose the following two articles of which I thought that they amazingly covered the news in a creative and ambitious way:
The subtle ways colleges discriminate against poor students, explained with a cartoon
I absolutely loved this reporting. The way it starts, with the survey that hundreds of college administrators actually did and what the news is about, is unbelievably creative and original: readers can do the exercise themselves, and the article interactively changes according to what you answer! This really grasped my attention, but it also illustrated their point even more.
The fact that I responded exactly the opposite from the administrators, is striking for the point that this journalist of vox.com makes: it feels like they make me prove them right, and I do not only feel like they are right, I also feel an immediate bond with vox.com, as I am meant to be part of their readership. For the rest, apart from the nice interactive graphs and the visuals (I love the cartoons as well, probably the thing for which most people click on the link since it is in the title), the journalist has clearly put a lot of work in the research: there are lots of references to researches and data, all standpoints are well argued, and sufficient links with sources are provided in the text. I absolutely wished to have written/designed/made this article.
The Republican tax bill saves grad students’ tuition benefits
Another story by Vox.com, just to show you how much of a fan I am of them. This story in particular is not that amazing and creative, but I would wanted to have written the entire impressive archive Vox.com has written on the Republican tax bill… This article certainly is good, with again extensive background reporting and lots of links to other sources (which I really like, because then you can click if you want further information or want to know where it came from), but I am especially impressed by the archive at the end of the article.
Once you scroll through these articles, it becomes apparent how deep Vox.com is into this case, and how much work they want to put into one story (constantly following it and touching upon it from different angles and in different creative and original ways). This is why I like to read from Vox.com (it is probably my most favourite and most visited international/American news website): they do not only give the factual news and some background information/analysis, but they really dive deep into stuff and will research stuff that ‘have a bad smell’ to the bottom.
Max van Geuns - Freelance Journalist 