Live coverage is a big challenge for newsrooms. It sits at the intersection of high stress moments and production-intensive story forms. We use a variety of tools to help us with breaking news, but they’re typically not forms we use day to day. And on top of that, we still need to think about improvements and new ways to reach our readers. SRCCON 2017 provided a unique opportunity for us to discuss the pros and cons of story forms we use for breaking news and live coverage.

Even among the many wonderful World Cup interactives and news apps we saw this year, the NYT’s Spot the Ball was a standout, both in conception and execution. We spoke with the team behind it about the project’s design, world-class Photoshopping, and surprising inspiration.

Last month, while the team behind today’s NYT redesign were crunching away on final adjustments, another team at the Times launched Today’s Paper, an infinite-scrolling, offline-caching web app available to the paper’s subscribers. We spoke with three members of the team—a developer, a designer, and an editor—about the project’s challenges and ambitions.