It’s about stories … which stories? And why?
Martin Stabe provides evidence from various sources about the surprising number of journalism students who don’t want to work online, or who want only to write. (He kindly references my earlier post here.)
Journalism isn’t about printing newspapers or broadcasting television programmes. It’s about stories — and finding the best way to tell them. So I have no idea where this romantic attachment to the printed word comes from.
It could have something to do with the fact that many journalism courses still force their students to [choose] between a “print” and an “broadcast” pathway, leading them to identify with one medium rather than thinking about identifying the best one for any particular message.
This brings me back to an idea that comes in and out of my consciousness like the tide — we need to focus more on what a STORY is and why people might find it interesting.
What I mean is, I think sometimes we (educators and editors alike) focus too much on the reporting and the fact gathering. We need to talk more about what makes this story worth the telling. Not how to tell it in terms of structure, different kinds of ledes, various techniques for interviewing — no, instead we must ask WHO is really important in this story? WHY is that person important? WHAT does someone need to know about the background to understand why this or that is important?
Give Me an Example
Okay, here’s an example that leaped to my mind: The minimum wage debate in the U.S. right now.
This has been all over the news because a bill passed on Wednesday in the House of Representatives seeks to raise the national minimum wage (from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour). The Baltimore (Md.) Sun ran a good little story on the topic today.
It’s a good story because, at only 653 words, it manages to pack in all the relevant facts and figures and also personalize the issue with meaningful quotes (rather than predictable throwaways) from a 51-year-old laborer and a 24-year-old man who “works as a security guard at night and as a coffee and doughnut salesman by day.” It’s tightly written and easy to read. But is it really a good STORY — in terms of something you would retell to a friend later today or tomorrow? Or in terms of your own understanding of the world?
Thinking it over, I come to the conclusion that the real story is not ABOUT two men struggling to get by on the current minimum wage. It IS about them — and the thousands of other Americans in the same difficult situation — yes. But it is NOT about their immediate situation, struggling to pay the rent, living paycheck to paycheck.
What’s It Really About?
The U.S. minimum wage story is ABOUT at least two other things:
- Why these two men (and so many other men and women just like them) are IN that situation, while people all around them are making twice as much, even 10 times as much (and let’s not even talk about CEOs’ salaries). I don’t mean why these men aren’t paid more for the work they do — I mean why these two men are not in one of those other jobs. I never read much, if anything, about THAT story. And I know there’s a story there.
- The often-reported “other side,” which is that any increase in the minimum wage “puts a stranglehold on America’s top job creators: small businesses. The overwhelming majority of economists continue to affirm the job-killing nature of mandatory wage increases” (source: National Federation of Independent Business). We hear this every time there’s any talk about increasing the national minimum wage — even NPR repeated this claim this morning on Weekend Edition.
Every time I hear the “small business” claim, it makes me mad. Because Wal-Mart is not a small business, and McDonald’s is not a small business — and I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of job I had to work 20 hours a week from the time I was 16 until I finished college, and I sure never got a penny over the minimum wage doing it. Maybe we can make an argument that high school students don’t need to be paid more than $5.15 an hour, but when I hear that a 51-year-old man doesn’t make any more than that — forgive me for being interested — I want to know WHY.
Get to the Point Already
I don’t mean to start a political argument here. I’m talking about the STORY. The story I get from the news media about a minimum wage increase is always the same story – year after year after year. And it’s not even the repetition that bugs me so much as the fact that there is a story, a REAL story, that never gets told. So this minimum wage story (like the national health care story, or the Iraq war story, or the AIDS in Africa story) never gets to these two key questions:
- What IS the STORY?
- Why might people find it interesting? (That is, why should anyone care about this? I mean, you know, all the Americans who make significantly more than minimum wage. Explain why they should give a damn about this.)
As for how we should handle this story online — I’ll deal with that tomorrow!
Technorati tags: storytelling | narrative | journalism | journalists
Categories: storytelling, teaching
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