Archive for the ‘news media innovation’ tag
Do stories really matter?
Mindy McAdams posted a call for good storytelling earlier this week on her blog. I asked, “How relevant are stories to contemporary journalism.” I believe that focusing on stories, particularly individual’s stories, rather than stories of collective experiences, is problematic in contemporary journalism.
There is no lack of stories on the Internet. Millions of people are pouring their hearts out online about their struggles with poverty, battling cancer and of personal triumphs. If anything, we’re overloaded with stories and we have started to tune them out. The journalist’s role shouldn’t be to tell more stories. Rather, they should start to see existing stories as data points, which the journalist can help the audience visualize in relationship to one another. The journalist can create connective tissue that weaves these individuals’ stories together to show common experiences, trends, etc. and to give shape to a community to spark and sustain discussion.
Just look at how Google is using individuals’ experiences of the flu to track activity of the disease. Undoubtedly untold numbers of stories will be written on this exact subject throughout the winter, but Google’s view of Flu activity is far more comprehensive.
Chuck Peters, CEO of The Gazette Company, has more thoughts on the issue on his blog:
For some time, I have been saying that the problem with the media industry is that we are stuck on stories, or packages, whether they be articles with photos in print or online, or video packages. I have limited time, and limited brainpower, and I want to see current, relevant information, in context, anywhere and anytime. I don’t think we can get there until we create our content, in the first instance, as a “post” or “tweet”, and organize from there.
What he calls for is more conceptual clarity to aid in this type of reporting. This is where I would like to see more academics pick up the exploration of new forms of presenting information rather than assuming traditional forms in their research and teaching.