Have you worked on visualizations such as those in the article, or do you have a different position? I am very interested in this industry, but I haven't met anyone with experience there yet.
Yeah, I can definitely see how these widgets and visualizations make an article significantly more engaging. I am hoping to learn more so I can have some visualizations to present of data for my startup. Since we are improving people's productivity, it would provide significant value to better engage users in their data.
I've worked on numerous elections, data projects, and interactives over the past few years. They're a great asset but the narrative behind them is just as important.
I've had reporters say "I found some data, can we do something with it" and it's not nearly as useful as "I'm writing a story about X, how can we use this data to visualize Y to illustrate X?". It's amazing just how rare that understanding can be from traditional media folks.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/syrian-refugees-technolo...
Useful to tell better stories and retain readers, these widgets are also a great engagement boost. :-)