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It's a brilliant piece of journalism and a story most technology sites might have skipped, or failed to notice. Timothy gives us a glance at the soul of a state fighting past the turmoil.
Jessica Conditt, Engadget Senior Reporter
Project details
In 2017 I noticed a trend in my backyard
Michigan was quietly becoming a tech powerhouse, sloughing off a skin left in tatters by The Great Recession.
I criss-crossed the state searching for what and who were driving this transformation in a long-form enterprise feature for leading technology publication Engadget.
Creative process
Over seven months, I dove head-first into Michigan's economic woes and industrial history, immersing myself in reams of data from the U.S. Department of Labor and the manufacturing sector.
I married all that raw information to diverse interviews that ground the numbers in humanity.
I spoke with Governor Rick Snyder (below), tech startups and award-winning game designers to tell the story of the Wolverine State's comeback.
In addition to written reporting, I assisted with page design and used my skills with a DSLR to illustrate the piece.
Final Results
Within a week this article garnered over 200,000 page views and led site traffic for feature reporting.
That response moved Engadget staff to commission a series following Michigan-based tech companies, and an editor's choice award.
Editor: Aaron Soupporis