The New York Times: The Truth is Worth It even more when it’s local

Droga5 and production company, Furlined’s, campaign for The New York Times, The Truth is Worth it, won two Black Pencils at D&AD. It is obviously a Cannes Lion contender. In the meantime, The New York Times internal creative team has extended the campaign with a series of installations in New York built around the idea that The Truth is Local. The campaign aims to highlight the importance of independent journalism and encourage people to support The New York Times’ quality journalism as readers and subscribers.

In the experiential arm of the campaign, the team worked with experiential design studio, Local Projects, to fill empty shopfronts with images, headlines and QR codes to access journalists’ audio clips, which bring to life real Times headlines in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. Each installation highlights stories reflecting the impact of New York Times reporting in its borough and will run from June 10 to 24. The audio clips describe the journalists’ experiences and challenges in reporting their stories.

The Brooklyn installation, for example, details how corruption in the police and justice departments, including fake confessions and discredited witnesses, led to the imprisonment of an innocent man. The story, Review of 50 Brooklyn Murder Cases Ordered, by Frances Robles and N.R. Kleinfield, helped to get approximately twelve wrongful murder convictions overturned.

This work coincides with the next instalment of The Truth is Worth It, a 30-second film which details how reporters, Brian M. Rosenthal, Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Michael LaForgia, uncovered how corruption in the MTA led to the system’s failures.