Artistic Journalism Glossary
Plain-language definitions for the forms of Artistic Journalism and the adjacent terms they are often confused with. Each field term links to its full page.
// THE FORMS
Core field terms
Live Journalism
Reported stories performed for a live audience, often with sound, images, film, music, or other staged material.
Read the full pageDocumentary Theatre
Stage work built from documents, interviews, testimony, transcripts, archives, or reported events.
Read the full pageNewsgames and Playable Journalism
Reported stories built as games, simulations, or interactive systems.
Read the full pageImmersive Journalism
Reporting that uses VR, 360 video, spatial audio, AR, maps, or interactive environments to place the audience inside a reported situation.
Read the full pageComics and Graphic Journalism
Reporting through sequential images, drawing, visual metaphor, and text.
Read the full pageIllustrative Journalism
Reported work that uses illustration, visual annotation, editorial drawing, diagrams, or graphic explanation as part of the journalistic method.
Read the full pageResearch-led Artistic Journalism
Investigative work that uses spatial, architectural, visual, or computational methods to study evidence.
Read the full pagePublic Installations
Journalism placed into public space through walls, objects, projections, posters, physical interfaces, or site-specific work.
Read the full pageAudio and Accessibility
Reporting built around sound, listening, adaptive interfaces, or formats designed for audiences underserved by visual-first media.
Read the full pageLiterary Journalism
Reported nonfiction that uses scene, voice, character, structure, and narrative pressure without abandoning factual responsibility.
Read the full page// NEARBY TERMS
Terms it is confused with
These sit next to Artistic Journalism. Some overlap, some do not. The distinction is method, not subject.
Academic research
Academic research produces knowledge through scholarly methods. Research-led artistic investigation often turns evidence into a public interface, model, archive, or exhibition.
Accessibility compliance
Compliance matters, but accessibility-led storytelling treats access as an editorial choice from the start.
Art investigation
Art investigation can be exploratory or conceptual. The journalistic version needs public evidence, sourcing, and accountable claims.
Artistic style
A beautiful layout is not enough. The artistic form has to change how evidence is encountered.
Arts criticism
Criticism evaluates cultural work. Artistic Journalism may use performance, drawing, sound, or space to report a non-cultural issue.
Arts journalism
Arts journalism reports on culture and art. Artistic Journalism can report any public issue through artistic or public form.
Campaign poster
A campaign poster persuades. A journalistic installation should make claims inspectable and context visible.
Checklist
A checklist catches missed steps. The Playbook is a decision method for choosing and shaping the form of a reported story.
Comics journalism
Comics journalism uses sequence. Illustrative journalism can work through single images, diagrams, annotations, maps, or visual explainers.
Creative brief
A brief describes a project. The Playbook helps decide whether the project should exist in that form at all.
Creative nonfiction
Creative nonfiction usually names a writing tradition. Artistic Journalism includes prose but also rooms, games, drawings, exhibitions, and installations.
Creative writing
Literary journalism uses literary technique, but it remains nonfiction and must answer to reporting.
Cultural journalism
Cultural journalism covers culture as a beat. Artistic Journalism describes a method of public reporting.
Data journalism
Data journalism works from datasets and analysis. Research-led investigation may also use spatial evidence, video, architecture, satellite imagery, and open-source material.
Data visualization
Data visualization turns data into visual form. Illustrative journalism can also explain testimony, places, systems, or reconstructed events.
Digital storytelling
Digital storytelling is one chapter in the lineage. The field also includes pre-digital prose, theatre, drawing, photography, exhibitions, and public work.
Docudrama
Docudrama may fictionalize real events. Documentary theatre keeps the source material and editorial boundary more visible.
Documentary art
Documentary art may work with real material. Artistic Journalism must also keep a journalistic contract with evidence and public accountability.
Documentary theatre
Documentary theatre is usually theatrical work built from documents or testimony. Live journalism can include stage reporting, audio, film, interviews, or mixed forms.
Editorial cartoon
Cartoons often argue or satirize. Comics journalism reports through observation, interviews, documents, and visual sequence.
Editorial illustration
Editorial illustration often accompanies a story. Illustrative journalism makes the visual layer part of the reporting itself.
Empathy machine
Immersion can create feeling, but feeling is not the same as understanding. Context and evidence still matter.
Exhibition design
Exhibition design shapes display. Public installation journalism asks what evidence, context, and encounter the public needs.
Graphic novel
A graphic novel may be fiction or memoir. Comics journalism is accountable to reported reality.
Illustrative journalism
Illustration can be a single image, diagram, or visual essay. Comics journalism usually works through sequence.
Interactive infographic
An infographic lets readers explore information. A newsgame uses rules, choices, and consequences to explain a system.
Interactive longform
Interactive longform may scroll through media. Immersive journalism makes space, perspective, or presence central to the reporting.
Live journalism
Live journalism is a wider journalistic event form. Documentary theatre is a stage tradition that can become journalistic when evidence and context lead.
Memoir
Memoir is built around personal memory. Literary journalism reports beyond the self and verifies the world it describes.
Narrative journalism
Narrative journalism is a close neighbor. Literary journalism emphasizes prose form, scene, structure, and voice.
New Journalism
New Journalism is an important prose tradition, not the whole field.
Panel discussion
A panel can discuss journalism. Live journalism usually stages a reported story with structure, pacing, and editorial design.
Podcast
A podcast is a distribution form. Audio journalism becomes artistic when sound, silence, rhythm, or listening are part of the reporting method.
Podcast taping
A podcast recorded in front of an audience is live media, but it becomes live journalism when the room is part of the reporting encounter.
Production plan
A production plan schedules work. The Playbook comes earlier, when the team is still testing evidence, audience, rights, and form.
Public art
Public art may create civic experience without a reporting base. Public installation journalism carries verified information into shared space.
Serious games
Serious games include education, training, health, and advocacy. Newsgames are specifically grounded in reporting a public issue.
Simulation
A simulation models behavior. A newsgame adds editorial framing, sourcing, and a public-interest reporting purpose.
Sound art
Sound art can be experiential or abstract. Audio journalism keeps the listener connected to reported evidence and context.
Verbatim theatre
Verbatim theatre uses real words from interviews or records. Documentary theatre is broader and can include archives, documents, transcripts, and reported events.
Visual journalism
Visual journalism often explains with images, graphics, or data. Artistic Journalism is broader: it can be live, spatial, playable, sonic, literary, or public.
VR documentary
VR documentary is one immersive form. Immersive journalism also includes 360 video, maps, spatial audio, AR, and interactive environments.
Start with the definition, then the field.
The glossary is the fast route in. The field guide goes deeper into each form, with method, examples, and case studies.