Last week, I checked in throughout a Poynter seminar, led by Kelly McBride, about the so-called Fifth Estate — that group of former journalists, activists, bloggers, citizen journalists and entrepreneurs who are helping in their own way to inform the public and enrich civic discourse. The Fifth Estaters talked about storytelling, its virtues and limitations. I’ve translated some of their concerns into a set of workshop questions that I engaged the group with to harvest their thoughts. Here is a list of questions, along with my brief takes, a kind of Interview with Myself.
1. We share a collective sense that storytelling is so important that it can feel like a value or virtue. What does that mean?
I’ve heard a theory that suggests that human beings need stories to remember; that we may not be able to remember anything as little kids until we have been exposed to stories. Part of my own sense of memory is that I reach into a dusty file in my brain for the name of an old song or the author of a book. But I also envision my past as a kind of narrative, a movie in which I am the main character.
2. What makes a good story “good,” and a bad story “bad”?
This is a crucial question. In spite of the power and value of stories in our culture, I believe that narrative itself is morally neutral. A story is a kind of contraption, to paraphrase English-writer W.H. Auden, with a person inside. If that person is guided by noble purpose, there’s a greater chance the story will be good. But genocidal tyrants use some of the same strategies of craft that responsible writers use for the general good. And we will argue, of course, over what constitutes a noble purpose.
3. What is the difference between a story and a report? Are there some qualities or characteristics stories share across media platforms?
This distinction is clear — at least in my head. We call too many things we produce “stories.” Many of them are reports: information delivered so that others can act on it. The purpose of a story is not to convey information, but to convey experience. A report tells me how many gallons of oil are polluting the Gulf. A story transports me to a boat where old fishermen are working to save the shoreline. Whatever media platform you work from, you are not creating a story unless you are helping the reader or viewer or listener feel what it is like to be “there.”
4. The Internet has the capacity to present or archive stories that are infinitely long, so why do we tend to talk about the value of “short” stories when we think of writing online?
The Internet has given us many things, but not more time. So we’ve had to create good ways and bad (multitasking) to manage our lives. We know from radical narrative experiments that stories can be delivered in very few words, as can reports. In that sense, I see writing online as more like writing for a magazine than anything else. In general, newspaper length is fairly homogenized. The short stories seem too long, and the long ones too short. Books are long form by definition. But most contemporary magazines seem to want to balance a lot of short, bright, interesting and edgy items, with stories or investigations of significant length.
5. What are the dangers in a community when certain storytelling voices are privileged over others? How can an organization promote stories that are inclusive rather than exclusive?
I think it is fair to say that traditional news media privilege the voices of too narrow a band of stakeholders. This is not to say that the poor, for example, are the ones necessarily ignored. I could make a case that most of the stories I see are framed from the margins between rich and poor, or establishment and anti-establishment, from Wall Street, Main Street, and Back Street, but not the Side Street.
It is not enough to hire a representative cross section of the society to cover a community. If we wait until that happens, we won’t see the inclusion we need soon enough. The storyteller, of whatever background or ideology, must develop skills in covering the world of the other. We sometimes do this more often with foreign reporting than we do in covering our own communities.
6. What are the benefits and cautions when a story is told about a group by a member of that group?
The benefits include being able to see stories invisible to the rest of society; the ability to gain access to sources and key places that generate news; and to a deep cultural and historical knowledge that avoids mistakes and crude generalizations. A member of the group sometimes has to fight expectations from other members, with pressure not to report in a negative manner.
7. What are the benefits and cautions when a story is told about a group by someone outside that group?
Let’s start with the cautions. Anyone who has ever traveled to another country more than once knows how different our perception of a place and people can be the second time around. Journalists parachute into places all the time — for good reasons — but the result can be a distorted or simplistic version of the life and times of that community.
On the other hand, the savvy outsider learns how to find guides and translators in a new community. The best of these learn to develop a double vision that helps them understand a community not just from the point of view of the members, but also with the fresh perspective of an outsider.
8. Where are exemplary stories coming from these days?
The elite places include The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio and The New Yorker. But that represents the low-hanging fruit. Good writers today must find dozens of sources of good stories in order to develop the skills and versatility they need. Nonfiction writers must immerse themselves in long-form storytelling — especially fiction and cinema. Done the right way, this will not be an invitation to the writer to make stuff up. It will be a healthy dipping into the well of narrative in a way that helps the writer understand human character and the world.
9. What are the benefits and limitations of the anecdote as a storytelling and reporting
tool?
The anecdote has become increasingly controversial. Readers and writers tend to embrace the anecdote — or little story — as a way to encapsulate that part of the world they are covering. The little story, if well chosen, represents the whole.
But we all know that anecdotes can be chosen for their dramatic power rather for their representational value. And we know that every politician has a cache of anecdotes they can use to support their own narrow political biases.
10. What is the relationship between the story, the storyteller, and the reader or listener? How can we take advantage of that knowledge in the interest of public service?
A wonderful literary scholar named Louise Rosenblatt wrote that although the writer is the one who produces a text, it is the reader who turns the text into a story. In other words, all good stories are triangular and transactional. This knowledge is very useful in a world where so much information is gained online, and where users expect the ability to talk back to the author. But we still must define what constitutes a healthy transaction so that the triangle doesn’t become a Bermuda Triangle.
11. How can storytellers make a buck?
How can anyone make a buck? All boats sink on a low tide, right? I think the good news is that stories can exist in more forms that ever, and be delivered in many more ways than ever. What might have been a single newspaper story 15 years ago can now be adapted to many different forms for a rich variety of audiences. Mark Bowden wrote “Black Hawk Down” as a newspaper series, with a strong Web presence. It became a television documentary, then a book, and then an award-winning motion picture. Cha-ching.