Indiana Environmental Reporter, website, 2018
The Indiana Environmental Reporter (IER) was created in April 2018 as an initiative of Indiana University’s Grand Challenges project, Prepared for Environmental Change. In collaboration with The Media School and the Environmental Resilience Institute, the project filled gaps in environmental reporting and information on a statewide basis.
Presenting information on the environment can, unfortunately, be alienating to many individuals. The IER website was intentionally designed to be bright, colorful, and full of images even though the stories covered are often covering serious issues. The goal was to make the site as inviting and exciting as possible so that visitors would want to engage with the content more.
The IER site is built on Kirby CMS—a lightweight but powerful headless and database-less content management system—and deployments to the site are managed via a Github repository. The site also features a continuous podcast player that allows the visitor to browse the site while listening to the episodes.