The editorial board of New Jersey’s largest newspaper, The (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger, has taken to a new story form to express its point of views: the animatorial.

It’s an editorial that’s in animated video form. The result is amusing, hilarious and a surprisingly effective storytelling method.

The production values are pretty corny. It’s cheesy text-to-speech animated figures on a real-life background. But the story (in this case about toll hikes) is told in a way that anyone can understand. It speaks to the viewer more than a traditional text-based editorial would.

For a video to be an effective storytelling tool, it need not have tons of bells and whistles. Instead, it needs to be well-written and understandable. And that’s exactly what these animatorials are.

via New Jersey Newspaper Animates Editorials – 10,000 Words.