Explanatory journalism or explanatory reporting is a form of reporting that attempts to present ongoing news stories in a more accessible manner by providing greater context than would be presented in traditional news sources.
[1][2][3] The term is often associated with the explanatory news website Vox,[1][4][5] but explanatory reporting (previously explanatory journalism) has also been a Pulitzer Prize category since 1985.
[6][7] Other examples include The Upshot by The New York Times, Bloomberg Quicktake, The Conversation, and FiveThirtyEight.
[8] Journalism professor Michael Schudson says explanatory journalism and analytic journalism are the same, because both attempt to "explain a complicated event or process in a comprehensible narrative" and require "intelligence and a kind of pedagogical flair, linking the capacity to understand a complex situation with a knack for transmitting that understanding to a broad public.
"[9] Schudson says explanatory journalists "aid democracy."