Joy Sung filmed, produced and edited this mini-documentary about how the investigative team at The Washington Post found the origins of the brains and human remains collection at the Smithsonian. We worked together to assemble the script, coordinated with the reporters and editors to ensure each line was accurate and developed a narrative following the investigation. Joy filmed in St. Louis, and we hired freelancers in Seattle and remote Alaska to film with descendants of people’s whose remains were in the Smithsonian’s collection — something they didn’t know until The Post informed them. The production was a large collaboration between design, photo and graphics and required constant communication to keep each piece moving in the same direction toward publication.

I was running a small team producing travel coverage when the coronavirus was beginning to spread. One of the first major disruptions was the travel industry, and we were following the quarantine of passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship that were stuck in a port in Japan. I assigned Monica Rodman to reach out and interview passengers, and a lot of them said yes. They also had filmed their own videos while they waited for the quarantine to end. Through the short documentary, we were able to show the passengers’ fear of being infected and the agony it caused for their families as they waited for their return.

I was part of the founding team of By The Way, a new travel vertical from The Washington Post. To come up with video series ideas, I watched hours and hours of travel videos from competitors and tried to found a unique lane that we could offer viewers. I came up with two series ideas — Where Locals Go, based on our city guides written by locals, and Travel Tips and Tricks, which offered hyper-specific travel advice. Both series were also developed around popular search terms, because the main audience for these videos was travelers seeking advice on YouTube. The video above was filmed by a freelancer in Rome and edited and produced by Taylor Turner.