Reporting on impact: What we need to do now
It's the right time to double down on producing great journalism — and why your north star must be the people and communities you serve.
Welcome to Sound Judgment, the newsletter that helps you become a better storyteller in audio and beyond.
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Hi storytellers —
It is Sunday evening. I sit at a United gate in the Newark airport, waiting for my plane home. Next to me is a woman wearing a stunning red dress. I start to compliment her, but I stop when I realize she’s speaking to someone on her earbuds.
“Trump just pulled us out of WHO,” she says urgently. She’s dismayed. But whomever she’s talking to doesn’t understand.
“The World Health Organization?” she asks. “They research diseases…when something happens globally…” She struggles. It’s not getting through. She’s reaching for her own explanation of what WHO does and why Trump’s action matters.
Finally, kindly but with exasperation, she says, “People are going to die.”
And suddenly, a frustration about journalism that I’ve been grappling with, and a solution, snap into place.
It’s no surprise that much of mainstream journalism is failing us. It’s failing the public, and it’s failing its dedicated practitioners (you and me) in myriad ways.
Part of the trouble (and I am hardly the first person to point this out) is that, for decades, reporters have been trained to do two things:
1) Report “what happened” — who, what, when, where, why.
2) To be a blank slate, as supposedly objective and neutral as possible to allow an informed, educated citizenry to decide for themselves what to do with the information they’re provided.
But obviously, the world has changed. This week, it’s changing by the minute.
We no longer need journalists to simply tell us what happened. Information is everywhere. (This doesn’t even begin to touch the difficulty of reporting honestly “what happened” when we are bombarded with mis- and disinformation.)
What the job of a good journalist is now is to help people understand the impact of news and events on individuals, communities, and the planet.
We need to train our gaze 180 degrees away from where we as journalists have been brainwashed into putting it, and focus instead where it will make the most difference. It’s depth, context, understanding, and often history that we need now.
As the brilliant news critic Melanie Sill asserts today, the New York Times’ bias toward detachment leaves “its readers as spectators to battles that engage us all as citizens and as human beings.” That bias, she goes on, keeps “the paper from asking and answering simple questions — do federal workers have 1st Amendment rights, or privacy protections? What services and protections of the federal government will be lost, and who will suffer, from this chaos?”
We need to plumb meaning. We need honest, full representation of those affected by the news.
After all, history is told by the victors. But we need every voice. When the voices change, our understanding and perception of complex issues changes as well. And this is crucial: So does our level of caring and empathy. When policies and politics are reported without the context of human impact, we don’t “see” the people at the blunt end of leaving the WHO, of pausing federal grants, of targeting immigrants, of rising inflation and structural inequality.
But when we see these things through the lens of people’s lives, we have a wholly different experience. We respond with heart, which is the foundation of action.
The crucial ripple effects of our work
A random overheard conversation about the World Health Organization shows how important it is that we do our jobs well — that is, that we help the average citizen understand and be able to explain to others what actually matters. My neighbor struggled to explain that WHO, founded after World War II as a United Nations Agency, exists to ensure that more than a billion people around the world have access to health care. WHO is designed to protect multitudes from health emergencies like the spread of cholera and ebola. Their mission statement expressly says they “serve the vulnerable.”
Indeed, without WHO, as my anonymous friend said, “People will die.”
When we as citizens do not understand the impacts of actions, we do not organize to change things. We are easy to manipulate. We are, effectively, blinded.
But when we do understand, we act. According to a 2016 Pew study, 65% of people who closely follow local news said they “know how to make a difference.” But only 31% of people who don’t follow local news said the same.
This, then, is a journalist’s most important role, now and in the future: to research thoroughly and to report on impact and meaning. This means good, nuanced storytelling about specific people, places, and communities has never been more critical.
If you’re leading a newsroom, a station, a news podcast, or publishing a newsletter, figuring out the news agenda has never been more important. It’s also never been harder.
Start and stay with impact. The audience you’re producing or writing for and about must be your north star.
What people really want from us
Here’s what happens when we fail at this: Marginalized communities, in particular, avoid the news. Shirish Kulkarni and a team from Media Cymru’s News for All Project spent eight months studying why and looking for potential solutions, reports Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Writing in Reuters’ excellent Journalism Today newsletter, Eduardo Suárez and Gretel Kahn report that AI is not going to solve this problem for the individuals in question.
“Not a single one is asking for more, cheaper content. What they want is ‘human connection, collaboration and care,’” they write. (An aside for the audio storytellers here: This is why hostiness matters so much. I promise another newsletter on this particular issue soon.)
Suárez and Kahn quote Abdi Yusuf, a community leader in Cardiff, UK, about news avoidance. “‘Would you sit through something that was dehumanising you, not representing you correctly, misrepresenting you? You wouldn't, you would disengage,’ he said.”
Want good role models?
Look to local nonprofit newsrooms like The Colorado Sun, The Maine Monitor, Brookline News and many others (find hundreds at The Institute for Nonprofit News). Look to national and international outlets like ProPublica, The Guardian and the BBC. Seek out newsletters like The Contrarian, the new Substack published by journalists who have been fleeing the Washington Post and The New York Times.
Support independent sources of news financially if it is at all possible for you. Sign up for monthly, sustaining contributions. We need these outlets now more than ever, and more than most people realize.
Also, take the time to study the state of journalism; learn about emerging solutions and apply them. I follow a number of experts and read several good sources. Scroll down for a sampling.
Finally, reach out to other writers, producers, editors and storytellers who care as much as you do. Collaborate with journalists and institutions that are doing their best to practice independent, in-depth, impact-driven journalism. Now is not the time to fall prey to the ego-driven notion that any one of us can do great work alone. The best journalism requires teamwork.
If you don’t have a team, change that now: There are myriad ways to find at least one other person with whom to collaborate. Not sure where to look or how to make a connection? Post what you’re working on and looking for in the comments. Hundreds of journalists read this newsletter. Don’t want to be public? Email me. I’ll help (but be patient).
*Photo by Dimitri Karastelev on Unsplash.
🏆 Learn from the best
Following is an incredibly incomplete list of good news sources and sources for the study of journalism, some of which I mentioned above. *Please note: This is a running list. Since I first published this issue, I have added sources, mostly crowd-sourced, and I’ll continue to. I’d love to hear from you directly or in the comments with your evidence-based suggestions.
Read:
Local nonprofit newspapers such as The Colorado Sun, The Maine Monitor, Brookline News, and the 400 others that are members of The Institute for Nonprofit News.
Also in Maine, The Beacon podcast, published by the Maine People’s Alliance
Support them financially. Good journalism is critical to a safe, healthy and democratic future.
Also read national and international independent news sources, including:
The Guardian
Christian Science Monitor, particularly their weekly explainers
Tradeoffs — for independent, in-depth news on health policy; a podcast and an online source
Some good and emerging newsletters include:
The Contrarian
Your Local Epidemiologist (for those interested in health)
Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American (a must-read and a masterclass in providing depth and context)
Try The Tangle newsletter, which purports to report unbiased news. (Disclosure: I haven’t read this yet, but it’s recommended by people I trust.)
Listen: I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest listening to and supporting your local public radio station, including community radio stations. NPR has had its difficulties, but there is still excellent journalism being practiced at local stations and the mothership. Many of you reading this newsletter are among those dedicated broadcast journalists.
Listen:
Podcasts are a wealth of this kind of context-driven news. There are too many to name quickly (I’m writing this before jumping on another plane), so here are three recommendations:
Read Ayo Odele’s Substack newsletter, Sounds Like Impact, which will introduce you to reams of podcasts designed purposely for impact, especially narrative podcasts.
Pour over Long Lead, an award-winning multimedia storytelling studio focusing on in-depth journalism. Led by John Patrick Pullen, Long Lead produces articles, multimedia stories, and investigative, gut-punch series like Long Shadow.
Study the future of journalism:
Subscribe to Journalism Today, published by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Read American Crisis, the newsletter by former New York Times public editor and critic Margaret Sullivan. It’s also a podcast.
Check out the grandaddies of journalism coverage, scholarship and training: Poynter and Nieman Lab.
I always read the newsletter by the Solutions Journalism Network. We need much more reporting on solutions, not just on problems.
This story in Editor & Publisher, “Journalism’s funding surge: Philanthropic opportunities grow to address the complex challenges in the news industry” is well worth your time.
Which news and journalism sources would you add to my list? Please add them in the comments!
I hope this issue — a departure from my usual work on storytelling craft — proves helpful. I’d love to hear from you: How are you practicing journalism now? What obstacles are stopping you? What successes are you proud of? And what can we all do together that we cannot do apart?
As always, it is a joy to be with you.
Elaine
Epilogue
This was my epilogue on January 15. I had no idea how true it would prove to be this week, so here it is again.
“Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.”
— Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
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This was great - might I add our publication Documentedny.com? We work to listen to our audience first and foremost.
Great advice and so many links to resources I will now follow. Bookmarking, thank you!