The Interactive News, a collaborative project led by Alexander Cheek, went live last week with more than 100 articles that exemplify the transformative capabilities of digital media. Cheek is assistant professor of information systems at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, and an alumnus of CMU’s School of Design and Department of English.

A self-confessed news junkie, Cheek has been collecting multimedia pieces for years that blend text with elements like video, imagery, diagrams and animation. “When news stories were first made digital, the text and image were presented as though they were in print. Around 2008, several news outlets began to explore digital as a different medium, one that can be transformative and generate new insights.”

With seed funding from CMU-Q, Cheek led the team that created The Interactive News. Northwestern University in Qatar’s Andrew Mills, an assistant professor and journalist, consulted on the project. CMU-Q alumnus Ahmed Hashmi built a database and user interface for the site.

Cheek selects long-form pieces that strike a nice balance between effective, engaging and beautiful. He adds, “These rich articles often become buried in the archives of the paper, yet from a my perspective they are important moments in design and journalism history. I built the site as a way to curate the last decade of interactive news, to be a resource for students, researchers, designers, and journalists.”

The Interactive News can be found at www.theinteractivenews.org.