We see homeless people every day but rarely stop to listen to them.

The Sin Techo project is a narrative commitment developed between 11 regional media outlets of Vocento and the Colpisa Agency, the group’s central newsroom, which seeks to give voice to a reality suffered by thousands of people in Spain.

The main story, which is the result of the work of more than 60 professionals, is built with audio, text, video, and infographics.

It comprises a main article that unites all the stories and was published on November 22, 2023. The next day, European Homeless Day, each newspaper published its own local piece.

These stories resulted from months of work accompanying the protagonists on the street.

It is a commitment to innovation that develops around two different — but closely — related phases: the narrative, which includes the design, development and use of the different narrative elements to cohesively bring together the story; and the internal phase, which has to do with the need.

Keeping it local

To respect the local emphasis of each newspaper, the main piece, although including all the stories, highlights the local one at the beginning of each publication. Offering a differentiated product depending on the medium from which it is accessed.

Six narrative elements or tools were developed with simple code that could be used within the group’s content management system. These tools were used in both the main piece and the local stories. They were designed to be easily reused in other articles.

The information published by the Colpisa Agency appears in all the regional newspapers of the Vocento group. To ensure the main news was linked to the newspaper in which it was shown, some dynamic elements were developed: The headline of the main news automatically changes depending on the newspaper in which it is read, and the audio and photographs of that newspaper appear first on the carousels.

Telling stories with graphics

The cardboard is the protagonist of the graphic guideline. This visual style is repeated in all products linked with the Sin Techo project (in the main story, local stories, podcasts, and documentary).

In the main piece, a dark background is chosen, and the narrative elements, carefully linked, invite the reader to continue scrolling down. In local stories, white is chosen, thinking that the visual load will be less compared to the personal story. There is a strong commitment to long-form journalism.

During the development process, we sought to automate the reader experience. We developed a start button that activates the audio as the reader progresses. In this way, the reader is presented with two narrative paths: one linear, in which the audio and videos play automatically as they pass, and another “à la carte,” in which they can decide which testimony they want to hear.

Hitting the mark

Thousands of people accessed some of the articles that are part of the project, but we value that the average time on the pages of the stories (both the main ones and the local ones) was close to nine minutes. However, the most valuable part is that the publication of these stories improved the lives of some of their protagonists.

For example, Rubén, the protagonist of El Comercio, expedited the procedures to get a home, the first step to rebuilding his life and taking care of his children again. Today, an organisation rents him a room with a bathroom at a symbolic price. He visits his children and is happy.

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