“The Truth Takes a Journalist” is a campaign that tells the story of a small, two-letter word–by–seen on every piece of journalism published in The New York Times.

The work captures lives hidden beneath their bylines, and the word by is always framed next to a different person and journalistic voice. As the word changes typographically, we’re thrown into a new world, creating a compositional narrative that keeps viewers’ eyes fixed on the word and the space beside it.

The scenes weave together into a winding emotional journey, showing the complex, turbulent and rewarding relationship journalists have with their journalism, coming together to represent the 1,700 contributors who live to bring us the truth every day.

The campaign launched at a time when readers were looking to connect to The New York Times in a deeper way, outside the daily news cycles that helped us navigate a pandemic and election year.

The film brings readers closer to journalists, helping readers understand them as human beings and showing how their humanity gives journalism the depth, richness and color that makes it unequivocally The New York Times.

In film, we paint a picture of each subscriber through New York Times headlines, using journalistic imagery, typographic sound design and shot film to 'fill the screen with life'. Toggling between moving image and static imagery—life and journalism—the stories weave together the subscriber's interests, reading history and personality to illustrate their unique life, and show how their interactions with The Times has helped shape it.

The rhythmic prose of the connected headlines is supported by the voices of the subscribers themselves, bringing you closer to their worlds. Every reader's film uses its own distinct music track that helps capture who they are, with found audio punctuating the most impactful words and moments of their stories.

The sound effects were thoughtfully designed to be woven into a tapestry of their lives, threading together their voices, sound design, music, and audio bites into a unique soundscape that makes each subscriber's story richer, while adding more context to every headline and showing how their life collides with our independent journalism.

Just like life, the films are dense with layers, meaning and idiosyncrasies. The more you watch them, the more you learn about the subscriber experience—leaving you with a better understanding about the breadth of The Times’ journalism, and the independence it helps fuel in its readers.