Our Gainesville is comprised of individual stories of people living, working, praying, performing and more. It tells the stories of who we are, where we are and what we are. It shows what makes Gainesville, Gainesville.
Each page in the project was designed by the individual who reported the story using LongForm. LongForm, a web application I created, gives journalists the agency to decide how their multimedia stories look without writing a single line of code.
Once they finished designing their page, the journalist sent me their LongForm files. Gabrielle Calise and I then took the files and used an early alpha version of a new tool I've been working on to stitch them together.
The result is a consistent amalgamation of many creative visions in an elegant and intuitive platform.
Gainesville.
Maybe best known for the University of Florida and its athletic prowess, the city stands at the intersection of the Old South and a new American city.
It's the birthplace of the sports drink Gatorade.
It's home to The Fest, a world renowned punk rock festival.
It's filled with foodies, eclectic restaurants and micro-brews.
It's a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship.
From dance to theater and photography, the arts are easily accessible, as is the lush Florida landscape.
Still it's so much more.
With a population of nearly 280,000 people, today's Gainesville is welcoming. It's tolerant and accepting of all ethnicities, religions and sexual orientations. It's a safe haven for many.
This summer, WUFT reporters focused on a community-engagement project that highlights the rich diversity of the people who live here.
We asked them why they made Gainesville home. All of them came here for different reasons, but one thing has kept them here — it's a place where finally they belong.
Our Gainesville was produced by undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Florida's Innovation News Center in the College of Journalism and Communications. Editors Meghan Mangrum and Sophia Tarasevich guided the reporting and edited the stories by Cecilia Mazanec, Sydney Brodie, Luke Sullivan, Angela Hyse, Madison Imschweiler, Tyler Jarnagin, Tayler McLamb, Fabiana Otero, Rachel Rockwell, Spencer Thompson, Chris Watkins, Abigail Zavaski and Nick Wisby. The cover video was produced by Emma Green. Andrew Briz and Gabrielle Calise designed and built the webpage and interactive story.
The code for Our Gainesville, including the code behind LongForm, was developed in Hatch at the University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications. To learn more about the products and content Hatch incubates visit https://jou.ufl.edu/hatch.
To build a local version of this project...
Clone the git repository from GitHub.
$ git clone git@github.com:brizandrew/ourgainesville.gitInstall all the dependencies.
$ npm installRun the build command.
$ npm run buildUsing a local server program (like XAMP), Go to the ourgainesville/dist directory on your server:
localhost:port/path/to/directory/ourgainesville/dist/