I’ve been wrestling with an idea for some time now. I went on a caffeine binge and wrote about a theory I’d been mulling over in my brain, but I never posted it. It sat on my desktop for weeks. To be sure, some of my best work is the product of a good caffeine binge and this seemed like one of those times.

I guess I’m hesitant to publish a statement of absolution, which is what my original post was. Even if it is only my opinion, I feel like it might foster conclusiveness on my part instead of openness to other viewpoints. HutchinsGuts is supposed to help me broaden my thinking and create solutions instead of solidify my own beliefs.

 I think what I wrote originally is very persuasive…and that’s exactly why I don’t think I should post it.

Instead I’d like to take the approach of posting some food for thought. I hope to present both sides somewhat equally and let the people who actually read this—all 30 of you—decide.

The original theory: Over time, our writing, particularly our journalism, has become more sophisticated. Our ability to address multiple issues on a variety of levels shows that our minds have evolved to comprehend multiple facets of an issue at once.

The benefit is that we can more efficiently identify and address problems that stifle advancements in things we value such as technology, race relations and conflict resolution.

We have trouble with things like abortion because we comprehend the issue to be extremely situational. What if rape is involved? Harm to the mother? Religion? Morals? Legislators and citizens struggle to address the issue with brevity and decisiveness because it is easy for us now to constantly put ourselves in other people’s shoes. 

We’ve come from the muck-rakers and the yellow journalism from the 40s to being able to report on religion and sexuality in dignified ways. For those in the J-school in Missouri, you should be familiar with Jacqui Banaszynski, who wrote “Aids in the Heartland” in the 80s and won the Pulitzer Prize. If you haven’t heard of her or read her piece on Dick Hanson and Bert Henningson, make a point of doing so.

There are dozens of journalists that get killed every year on the job. In the last century, this number has steadily increased. These are people in war zones and on assignments in dangerous climatic areas. They are risking life and limb to bring an element of knowledge to people who would remain ignorant otherwise.   

The opposing theory: News sucks. That’s the long and short of it. If journalists were doing decent work, people would read newspapers. Reporters wouldn’t be stereotyped as insensitive droids bent on getting dirt on celebrities and shoving cameras in the faces of parents who’ve lost their children. Reporters wouldn’t stand idly by while people jump off of buildings and kill each other or drown and burn in natural disasters. It is speculated that photographer Kevin Carter committed suicide after winning the Pulitzer for his photo because he stood by and took photos of a starving child instead of giving it food.

I can see how one could argue that we’re not that far away from Yellow Journalism. Our headlines and lead paragraphs are designed specifically to sensationalize our news enough to make people want to read what we have to say. As journalists, if people read what we have to say, we get more money. Obviously it’s a huge motive behind what we publish. If yellow journalism were dead, magazine racks at every grocery store in the country wouldn’t carry publications like The National Enquirer. I don’t know anyone that reads it, much less buys it, but it seems to be going strong while the New York Times is cutting staff by as much as 30 percent. That seems a little messed up to me.

So anyways, I feel like it’s a thought I’ve sat on for long enough, and I don’t think I’ll ever reach a solid conclusion. It makes me apprehensive to go into print journalism because frankly, I’m a little concerned I’ll have to deal with people that have the power to publish things that will only resonate ugly things about the profession, cause it to digress further rather than advance it. Worse yet, I’m afraid I’ll be asked to be apart of that.

I’m also anxious to try to be one of the people that bring pieces to an audience that help us get to know each other better. I’m hoping that my fear of posting a statement of absolution on what I think of the world is a good start to this.

When I read Philip Lee’s ignorant anti-Twitter rant, Notes on the triviality of Twitter, my first reaction was that I needed to write another anti-anti-Twitter-rant rant.

But I’m getting tired of those rants (maybe you are, too). I previously noted how Leonard Pitts, Edward Wasserman and Paul Farhi wrote foolish things about Twitter without bothering to learn what they were talking about. Do I repeat myself just because Lee has echoed their whining, or could I find something new to say?

Lee did say lots of ignorant things about Twitter, but they are things I’ve addressed before, so I won’t dwell on them here. He has tried Twitter out (barely, 34 tweets in nearly a year), which the others noted above had not.

I want to address Lee’s concern about Twitter and storytelling:

My concerns about Twitter journalism reflect my concerns about the future of professional story tellers. Writing is a serious business. Tweets are trivial. We need writers, and journalists to be applying all their energy and brains to what we do, which is to tell stories. The stories will be the salvation of the journalism business.

I admire Lee’s passion for storytelling. In addition to saying lots of ignorant things about Twitter, he passed along this quote from Joan Didion:

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. . . . We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual expreience.

Lee’s passion for stories, and his fear for the future of storytelling, made me think of a recent conversation with Jacqui Banaszynski, a Reynolds Fellow at the University of Missouri. When I visited Mizzou last month, I chatted briefly with her about her fellowship project. Jacqui, a Pulitzer Prize-winning storyteller, is taking on The Future of the Story.

Both in our conversation last month and in an interview for the Reynolds Journalism Institute web site, Jacqui worried for the future of storytelling and mentioned Twitter as one of the forces changing our storytelling landscape. Unlike Lee, Jacqui didn’t lash out at Twitter. She expressed valid fears about whether smaller news staffs will commit to the kinds of stories where she made her mark. Like Lee, Jacqui has barely dipped her toe into the Twitter waters, with just 33 tweets.

Jacqui asked for some of my thoughts on her project and I promised to get back to her, so here I go.

I am a huge fan of long-form narrative journalism. I wrote a 200-inch story for the Omaha World-Herald back in 1997, when you could do such things at a newspaper (it was rare even then). But I do have to admit that the video epilogue I did last year made it even better.

I gladly attended three different Nieman Narrative conferences. I developed a full-day seminar on narrative writing myself, with sessions on gathering details, the storytelling process, narrative elements and structure and short narrative. The Gazette emphasized narrative writing when I was leading the news staff. I mourn the recent loss to newspapers of such great storytellers as Ken Fuson and Tom French. I’m delighted that recent Pulitzer Prizes have honored such great story tellers as Lane DeGregory and Anne Hull.

I hope great journalists keep writing long stories in newspapers for generations to come. But my key point to Philip Lee and to Jacqui is that great storytelling predates newspapers and it will continue if newspapers die. Stories are how we share the human experience and storytelling is not dependent on technology or business models.

Three years ago, I led an American Press Institute seminar on storytelling. While we focused heavily on innovations in storytelling, I made a point of inviting N. Scott Momaday, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and also a Kiowa master of the ancient art of the oral story. He was spellbinding and listening to him underscored for me that the power of storytelling is in the story itself and in the act of storytelling, not in the medium. Great storytellers adapt to the media they try and the tools they use.

My grandmother, Francena H. Arnold, was an accomplished novelist, author of Not My Will and other Christian fiction. I’m proud of her work, display her books on my shelves and credit her with whatever inherent writing ability I might have. But my fondest memories of Grandma are the oral stories she would tell. As a young boy, I would volunteer to “help Grandma do the dishes” after dinner. That meant she would do the dishes and tell stories while I listened in fascination with a towel that never got damp.

We’ve had great stories long before newspapers started publishing great stories. In addition to the oral traditions, storytelling had its roots in cave drawings and epic poems. The Apostle Paul found letters work well for stories. Eventually the novel form developed, then the short story. In journalism, we have had a variety of story forms, from the inverted pyramid to the martini-glass to the multi-part series to the long narrative to storytelling graphics and alternative story forms. Film became a great vehicle for storytelling and the popularity of YouTube underscores the power of stories in smart videos (actually, TV ads demonstrated that long ago).

Songs make great story vehicles as well. In my short-narrative workshop, I cite Don’t Take Your Guns to Town, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll and Johnny B. Goode. French likes to use Eleanor Rigby in storytelling workshops.

Digital tools give us more ways to tell stories, as StarTribune.com showed with its powerful 13 Seconds in August story package on the collapse of the I-35W bridge, as nola.com showed with its Last Chance project on Louisiana’s vanishing coastline and as the Des Moines Register did with its Parkersburg tornado map. (Please add links to some of your favorite multimedia packages in the comments.)

So I say to Philip Lee: Don’t sell the power of stories short. You haven’t learned yet how to use Twitter well, but Ron Sylvester tells riveting live stories of courtroom drama using Twitter. Just last week, I followed Terry Branstad’s announcement that he was considering a run for governor by following Charlotte Eby’s tweets. I’ve used Twitter to tell the stories of many unfolding events and seen other journalists do the same thing, as well as seeing fascinating stories take shape in the aggregation of tweets from multiple sources, journalists and the public. A compelling story unfolded on Twitter from millions of sources in the #beatcancer meme. (And any journalist knows the facts you gather give any true story its power, and I’ve blogged again and again on the value of Twitter for gathering information, especially on breaking news.) I follow Twitter links daily to excellent examples of longer storytelling, and the more people who read a story, the greater its power. Also, as my Tweeting wisdom of the ages series of posts illustrated, many of the most memorable quotations of our literature and culture fit easily in tweets.

And I say to Jacqui Banaszynski: Yes, the story has a bright future. If the narrow-minded business people who run newspapers can’t save the vehicle that has delivered so many great journalism stories, then great storytellers like you will help us develop and learn new tools.

Whatever our tools and platforms, people will tell stories.

There were so many optimistic speakers at the Online News Association’s 2009 convention in San Francisco that it’s hard to summarize what I heard, saw and learned.

But here are two excellent blog posts by other writers who attended that list what they see as the top ideas presented. The first is by Jacqui Banaszynski, Pulitizer Prize winner and former reporter in the Twin Cities.  I was thrilled as chair of the mass comm department at MSU to have Jacqui speak before our students for Media Days back in 1988.

The second is by Steve Meyers, managing editor of Poynter Online. The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, FL is dedicated to improving the professional practice of journalism. I am one who has been fortunate enough to have been chosen as a Poynter fellow, which means I studied and attended workshops for one intensive week a few years ago at the Institute.

I hope you open some of the links suggested by these knowledgeable people as that’s where you’ll find much more information about the amazing ideas that were flying around at the ONA.

Although winning a Pulitzer is the ideal for most journalists, the six Pulitzer winners speaking at RJI this afternoon said their success wasn’t based on a concentration for the prize – it was based on believing in their project and in many cases, a lucky break for recognition.

“Lucky?” you might say – they worked their butts off on a story, how is that considered luck, rather than skill? Well, Jacqui Banaszynski told the Centennial attendees that she happened to be in the right circle of people to get her work recognized.

Other Pulitzer winners (more particularly, those working in the investigative unit at The Washington Post) attributed their Prize-winning to resources.

Steve Fainaru, an embedded reporter in Iraq for the Wash Post, reported on the corruption and violence among American contractors long before the Iraqi civilian story in Baghdad got attention. He was only able to chase the issue so diligently and for so much time because The Washington Post could afford the resources to keep him there. He estimates it cost the Post around $50,000 to send him and then keep him there.

All the winners acknowledged these physical (money) resources, but also the benefits of a supportive newsroom.

“When a lot of people think of the Pulitzer, they think it’s an award for the individual,” said one panelist. “It’s important to remember that the Pulitzer is awarded to an entire newsroom, there are staffs working on these projects.”

The most important aspect of this talk for students was, I think, the emphasis on chasing a story for the story’s sake, not for the chances of obtaining a Pulitzer Prize. In a way, it’s somewhat of a relief to hear winners admit the “luck” factor of the Prize – there are countless reports that are important but have gone unrecognized by the Prize. And that’s ok. If the Prize were the only measure of journalistic greatness, this would contradict the principal duties of the profession, wouldn’t it? And it render the metric of excellence highly political.

I sidste uge havde en af mine kolleger arrangeret, at avisen fik besøg af Jacqui Banaszynski, der blandt andet er en stor kanon inden for fortællende journalistik, ligesom hun underviser på Poynter.

Og jeg blev ganske forbløffet over, hvor spot on-relevant, den af hendes tre seancer, jeg kunne deltage i, var: nemlig den om den nye tids journalistik.

Her handlede det lige præcis om at udvide sine virkemidler med billedfortællinger på nettet. Billeder med lyd på som i de eksempler, vi har ”haft for” siden sidste kursusforløb, og billedserier brugt på en mere undervisningspræget måde – og som også bliver brugt som materiale i skoler i dag – samt serier kombineret med forskellige grader af bonus-info.

Herunder følger nogle af de eksempler, hun præsenterede for os:

En af dem findes under Mediastorm og handler om endnu en soldat. Kan hænde, at hverken krigen i Irak eller Afghanistan står så klart i tekst for os, men de er emner, fotograferne får gode billeder og fortællinger ud af. Hovedpersonen i ”The Marlboro Marine” af Los Angeles Times-fotografen Luis Sinco er ligefrem blevet et ikon på Irak-krigen og de udsendte amerikanske soldater.

Serien er desuden speciel i og med, at fotografen har fulgt den samme soldat i flere år og dermed skabt en reportage, den varer over 16 minutter. Læs hans beretning om, hvordan serien blev til, her.

På den måde bliver den samtidig et bidrag til diskussionen om, hvorvidt det er bedst at fortælle sin historie i én lang uafbrudt fortælling, som i ”The Marlboro Marine”, eller om det er mere læser-/bruger-venligt at dele den op i mindre og mere overskuelige bidder.

Et eksempel på det sidste er ”Final Salute” hos Rocky Mountain News, hvor man kan gå ind på enkelte kapitler. Hvis ellers ens programmer virker, kan man også se siderne fra det særlige tillæg, avisen udgav om sagen om den døde mariner, der vender hjem i en kiste.

Problemet med at opdele i kapitler er, at man giver læseren en undskyldning for at springe fra. Omvendt er det måske en anden undskyldning, at det tager for lang tid, hvis man ikke klipper den op. Interessant overvejelse! Det kan være, at sammenhængen også betyder en del her.

En tredje type med kapitler havde Jacqui Banaszynski med fra Seattle Times, hvor hun selv gennem en årrække har stået for de mere specielle projekter. Her er udgangspunktet en arkæologisk udgravning, der afslørede, hvordan beboerne på en gammel indianerboplads døde som fluer, efter den hvide mand kom til, og det udviklede sig til både en serie, “Unearthing Tse-whit-zen“, i avisen, på nettet med både billeder og tegninger og ’levende’ kort, og undervisningsmateriale. Det har lidt museumsplanche over sig, men en flot udnyttelse af mediets muligheder, synes jeg.

Et andet eksempel er ”Life on the Waiting List” fra samme avis. Her har vi den syge Jack Slaters stemme som ledsager, mens han venter på først en levertransplantation, siden på at dø. På avisens netside kan man også finde de enkelte artikler, der blev bragt løbende, for eksempel denne.

Alle er de forskellige bud på hvordan, og alt sammen meget inspirerende. Især synes jeg, det med at sætte lyd til billederne virker tillokkende – og som et virkemiddel, der skal bruges med omtanke, for her leger vi med klart manipulerende muligheder, fordi lyden går direkte i følelserne.

Men netop når vi på nettet har muligheden for at vise langt flere af de billeder, vores ofte meget dygtige fotografer kommer hjem med, er det så oplagt at udnytte nettet til dem – gerne tilsat lyd.

Hvor meget jeg selv kommer til at sidde med poterne i lydmaskineriet, har jeg svært ved at sige. I løbet af nogle få år sandsynligvis mere, end jeg kan forestille mig lige nu. At tage billederne selv virker dog meget langt ude – så længe jeg er ansat, hvor jeg er. Til gengæld kunne jeg godt forestille mig, at jeg kommer til at arbejde sammen med fotografer om billede-lyd-serier.

Ligesom jeg sagtens kan se forskellige former for interaktion med læserne udvikle sig temmelig hurtigt, blandt andet i kraft af nogle af de redskaber, vi har mødt på kurset, især i blog-universet eller former, der ligner – altså fora med dialog.

Det giver nogle nye udfordringer. Også for journalistikken, for hvilke led skal holde styr på den gennemstrømning af bidrag, man kan forestille sig vil opstå? Hvem har retten til hvad? Hvem sætter dagsordenen? Og hvordan skal læserne kunne gennemskue tyngden i de udgivne indlæg? Hvordan sikres mediets oprindelige troværdighed, samtidig med at det udvikler sig?

Apropos fænomenet blogs refererede Jacqui Banaszynski, at undersøgelser viser, at blogs oftest fungerer bedst, når udgangspunktet er journalister, der blogger om deres erfaringer og metode med at skrive deres historier. Her er nemlig en vis gennemskuelighed, mens mange, mange andre blogs er forvirrende og ligegyldige.

Imens forventes journalisterne og andre medieansatte at have modet og evnerne til at gå videre, samtidig med at stadig færre skal fylde de samme produkter med mere og helst i bedre kvalitet …

Hvordan kommer det lige til at hænge sammen?

For Jacqui Banaszynski er svaret enkelt: Den enkelte journalist må prøve sig frem og dygtiggøre sig uden for arbejdstid – af lyst og af nysgerrighed. Sådan har de gjort i USA, fordi de syntes, det var sjovt at gå på opdagelse i og med de nye muligheder. At forvente, at initiativet skal komme fra cheferne, er den rene illusion, mener hun.

Så må man bare sørge for at sælge sine kundskaber dyrt

Se i øvrigt mere om Jacqui Banaszynski her.