The first of Joe Posner’s videos to go viral, he explains, was a robust, animated description of Europe’s austerity programs—all in about five minutes. He pitched the project, earned a grant from his alma mater, Brown, and collaborated with political economist Mark Blyth to render scholarly ideas about austerity in an accessible, entertaining video. That was 2009.
Today, Joe’s videos deliver facts-in-context at Vox.com, where his approach to creating video matches the mission of the Vox digital platform. Vox.com aims to “explain the news and the world around you.” Videos and features also often explore subjects that may not be covered, or even addressed, by other major media outlets. Vox videos include, for example, “The Rise of Isis, Explained in 6 Minutes,” or “Thin underwater cables hold the internet. See a map of them all.”
Joe is the director of video at Vox.com, and his team of video creators work on projects from the idea phase to the finish. This means taking people out of skill silos and off the video production line. No one on the Vox video team does just one thing. They begin with broad expertise and journalistic drive; animators are reporters, and editors carry cameras and appear on screen. As a result, each video has a fresh look and voice.
“The assembly-line approach [to developing video] is how television works. It’s efficient, and a good process when you need to be on all the time, but what you get at the end is not unique or exciting,” says Joe. “Here at Vox, we’ve gone from the mindset of considering video to be a supplementary thing, to where we consider ourselves journalists. Instead of just adapting some news article, we are the true authors.”
This structure serves the staff—and the viewers—well, as Vox videos explore their subjects deeply, whether Joe is reporting on the New York City Marathon while running it himself, or his colleague Estelle is breaking down the history of rhyme in rap music with painstaking detail. In another case, a colleague proficient in French language and culture created a video that translated the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and the periodical’s mission, in the wake of aJanuary 2015 attack on its office that left 11 people dead.
Launched in 2014 under parent company Vox Media by former Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein, Vox explains complex issues, and its journalists do original reporting on politics and policies, science, business, culture and food. Joe has been there from the start.
In a time when distrust, or even hatred, of “the media” as a whole is propagated by public figures in politics, sports and entertainment, working in journalism can be discouraging, Joe says. As people filter their news consumption based on their political alignment, a lot of conflicting information is pushed out. But Joe is encouraged by some unassailable data.
Vox’s highest-viewed video on Facebook is an explanation of the events leading to the violence and chaos in Syria up until last winter, which was posted just before the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. To Joe, this indicates that people do want to understand issues on a deeper level, beyond the sound-bite loop of cable news.
“Among that terrible distrust of people, institutions and facts, there still is a curiosity, and a recognition that some of the more popular forms of media can be misleading and not fact-intensive,” he says. “I love that our most-viewed items are really substantive, hard-news pieces.”
Always coupling journalism and multimedia, Joe worked on The Milton Paper as a student, and also pursued his interests in music and performing arts. “Being involved in music and performance at Milton and beyond has taught me to relish performing, and that can show up in a lot of different ways.”
At Brown, he combined his interests in performance, art and animation with studies in public policy, and he developed projects that spanned subject areas. Joe took a class taught by documentary filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, who brought in guest documentary directors Alex Gibney (Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief) and Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me).
Eugene Jarecki hired Joe right out of college, and their first major project together was working on a section of the documentary version of Freakonomics. Eugene directed, while Joe worked on animation.
When he was ready to work on his own, Joe secured funding from Brown. “I created my own opportunities,” says Joe. “I had this idea to team up with an international political economist who had something to say, and come up with a new kind of internet video that would combine my animation and the professor’s expertise and presentation.” Hence the career-igniting video condensing Mark Blyth’s scholarly paper on the instability of Europe’s austerity programs into the video that showed the professor interacting with Joe’s animations. Recently, Joe used some of the same techniques on a Vox video interview with President Barack Obama.
He used the Mark Blyth piece to land a series at Newsweek, which is how he met Ezra Klein, who became a fan of Joe’s work. As he was building his plan for Vox, Ezra recruited Joe, who has been making videos for the site since before its official launch.
For Joe, the next step in the “ambitious mission” of Vox video is continued growth. The talented group of video makers can only do so much; expansion will allow the team to better fulfill the organization’s mission—helping people understand what’s happening in the world.
“We want empowered video creators. I don’t think there’s any other way to make something that’s fun, surprising and interesting,” Joe says. “Our ideas are driven by creators. What are they curious about? What do they know about that’s of use to the audience?
“We can’t cover everything, so we aim for quality over quantity,” he adds. “There is no perfect way to do this.”
Joe’s recent work for the site includes a video celebrating Muhammad Ali’s life beyond the boxing ring as a civil rights activist, and an examination of the usability of everyday objects (“It’s not you. Bad doors are everywhere.”). In December 2015, prompted by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s inflammatory remarks about Muslims and a call to temporarily ban Muslims from traveling into the United States, Joe flew to a Trump rally in Des Moines, Iowa, to see whether such comments resonate with voters.
They do. In the video “Fear and loathing at a Trump rally,” statistics flash on the screen showing the increasing American distrust of Muslims, who make up nearly a quarter of the world’s population. Clips of incendiary, anti-Muslim speech from cable talking heads appear before Joe interviews Trump supporters who say they feel threatened by people who follow Islam.
One man, when Joe asks whether it’s fair to say that Muslims are a problem, says, “If you break it down, yeah, they’re a problem. Sorry to say it, but I can’t help but feel that way right now. I don’t feel safe, and I think a lot of the country feels the same way.”
Joe says he was surprised by the level of fear people expressed, but not by the way it is being played for political gain. “A lot of this presidential campaign has been about taking advantage of people’s fears, and Donald Trump does that effectively,” Joe says. “I would like to follow up that initial video. I would love to dive deeper into what is behind those fears.”
by Marisa Donelan