James Longman, Patrick Reevell, John Kapetneas, and Eamon McNiff report on the torture of gay men in Russia. The torture of gay men in Russia has been reported since 2017. Those who have left the region report that there has been little change. The article has insight from a man that experienced the torture in 2017. Amin Dzhabrailov was in Chechnya, Russia when he was thrown in the trunk of a car. He recalled his painful accounts of torture and how he was pressured to reveal other gay men’s names. Dzhabrailov continued to give his personal account with how he had to live through a staged execution. Even with 200 horrific reports, only two have spoken openly about it, Dzhabrailov being one of them.
The article has some issues with repeating. “Put in the trunk of a car” was repeated twice. While it’s good to reemphasis, in this instance in felt like they just repeated a small detail they didn’t need to. The short article works well with the topic. The short length allowed a sort of urgency to come through the quick story. It got to the point. Dzhabrailov experience was split up strangely. They included his recount as the opening of the article, then split it up with a picture. The split feels strange because they repeat the beginning again. It’s shorter, but they could have included more details if they wanted. The ending “Chechen authorities have denied any wrongdoing.” Is chilling. It communicates how the authorities see themselves in the right.
It’s hard to predict how a web story is going to look, simply because everybody’s computer is going to hve slightly different settings for screen size and resolution. And not everyone will be reading on a computer.
GQ did a really good story a few years ago:
https://www.gq.com/story/being-gay-in-russia
It suggests (if I remember correctly) that Putin was promoting this sort of street justice.