You may have noticed things look quite different when visiting The Xylom’s website recently — we've turned on dark mode by default, for one. For the first time in over half a decade, we improved the design and functionality of our homepage and how we present our work. Here's what’s changed and why.
The biggest changes you’ll notice on our homepage are structural. As we further refine our topical coverage, we now organize stories by type and geography. We’re also showcasing more of our best readers from the archives so you get to discover reporting you may have missed. Furthermore, we’ve combined our newsletter and membership platforms to help you manage how you engage with us in one place.
We’ve also made improvements to how we present our stories. Did you know that, among other things, our previous content management system did not let us configure stories with multiple journalist profiles or use different templates? Now, we have added more details about our journalists and partners, along with their photos, location, and how to contact them if you want to contribute to our award-winning journalism. You can additionally choose various font sizes, and we are putting the finishing touches on adding alt text to our archival images.
Many of our articles are available in other languages or can be listened to with audio narration (our text-to-speech tool does not use Generative AI). These options are now more prominent, but we’re also working to keep the focus on what matters most: our reporting and visual storytelling.
We’ve also refreshed our About Us page, added ways you can support our reporting, and updated our (No) Generative AI policy. What hasn’t changed: our commitment to covering the world’s most pressing health and environmental disparities, our independence, and the rigor we bring to every story.
The Xylom is an independent nonprofit. We have no owners or shareholders, no corporate interests, and no government contracts. We have no paywalls. Everything we publish is free. Join our community of members and cancel anytime.
More changes will roll out over the coming weeks. We hope you like what you see, and, as always, if you have thoughts, we want to hear them. Please email info@thexylom.com if you notice any bugs or have suggestions for what else we can do.
Many thanks to those who helped conceive this work, including our partners Cathy Sarisky and Lex Roman, and our team: Kang-Chun Cheng provided input on our site’s visual layout, while Laasya Shekhar, Zoe Beketova, Pragathi Ravi, and Rhysea Agrawal helped vet our articles during the migration process. We are also grateful for our colleagues at ProPublica, Floodlight, and the Mississippi River Basin Ag and Water Desk, whose recent redesigns informed our work.
