Dan Conover, Joel Achenbach and Deborah Potter on storytelling

I recommend three pieces on narrative journalism to your attention.

I addressed the future of storytelling in a recent post, Storytellers are challenged, not limited, by Twitter and other digital tools. That post, if you missed it before, might provide some helpful context for this one.

Joel Achenbach, an outstanding writer for the Washington Post, wrote lovingly about long narrative (focusing on Sports Illustrated überstoryteller Gary Smith) and condescendingly about digital communication:

There’s endless talk in the news media about the next killer app. Maybe Twitter really will change the world. Maybe the next big thing will be just an algorithm, like Google’s citation-ranking equation. But Smith is betting that there will still be a market, somehow, for what he does. Narrative isn’t merely a technique for communicating; it’s how we make sense of the world. The storytellers know this.

They know that the story is the original killer app.

Dan Conover, responding to Achenbach and also referencing Smith, wrote one of the most insightful takes I’ve read on where journalism is and where it’s going:

The current mainstream assumption is that we have to dumb down journalism to survive in the digital era. Dave Kindred seems to have reached that conclusion and accepted it in a column that made me want to reach through the screen and shake him. The answer isn’t dumbing down, and Baseball Hall of Fame sportswriters ought to be the first people to understand this.

Did the invention of the box score ruin sportswriting? No? Why not?

Could it be that human beings process different types of information in different ways, with different needs at different times? …

Today’s revolution isn’t about killing narrative, but about inventing box scores for actions that don’t take place in ballparks.

Deborah Potter, responding to my post, wrote:

So, is Twitter a threat to storytelling? Of course not.  And not just for the obvious reason that Twitter is an entirely different medium from long-form narrative. It’s never going to replace good writing.  Checking a Twitter stream is an entirely different experience from curling up with a good book, and most serious readers–even those who are also avid tweeters–wouldn’t trade one for the other.

But here the real reason Twitter isn’t a threat to storytelling: Twitter can make writing better.

I heartily recommend reading all three pieces (and mine, if you missed it earlier).

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