One Story, Three Ways

The Rivers Casino

1. The first way I would choose to tell the story of the Rivers Casino is through live stream video, possibly the only way to truly show the reader the madness and strange characters in this huge establishment. I would use time-lapse video over a period of, say, 24 hours, to show the comings and goings of the employees, performers, and players at the casino. I would then break up my article text into time increments. For example, "2:00 a.m. The fat, bald man orders another Miller Lite and angrily pumps more one dollar bills into the Kitty Glitter machine." The video would show this in action, but the text would give more detailed descriptions for each person and their actions. Examples of this type of time-lapse video journalism is shown here.
2. Another way to tell the story of the Rivers is through an interactive map of the building itself, similar to what David Dobbs did in "My Mother's Lover". Casinos are often full of more than just the slot machines and table games, so a map would allow the reader to explore the other parts that they may not know that the casino has (restaurants, bowling alleys, bars, etc). I would include features that allow the reader to click on each part of the casino to obtain more information about that particular place.
3. One very interesting way to tell the story of the casino is to choose a few main characters to focus on, rather than exploring the various people there. I would choose maybe five or so characters and follow only those few people, telling their stories along the way. I would include photographs and player statistics about these people as supplementary information. This would change the tone of the story, because it would become more about the people as characters rather than the casino as a whole. This type of piece would focus more on why people gamble, what types of people go to the casino, what is their thought process as they're losing or winning money, and other omniscient tactics.