This year’s Narrative Journalism conference, sponsored by Harvard’s Nieman Foundation, was titled “Telling True Stories in Turbulent Times.” With magazines folding and newspapers shrinking, these are hard days for narrative journalists: they need space, time and funding to do their work, all of which are in short supply in today’s web-driven media economy. ThoughtCast spoke with several of the presenters at the conference, including keynote speaker and Pulitzer prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz, award-winning author and journalist Adam Hochschild, and Nieman’s own Joshua Benton. The title does indeed appear to be apt…
To watch this ThoughtCast program on the Forum Network, click here!
A good summation of the main point of the conference. I think Amy O’Leary nailed it: the narrative hook at the beginning of an article – especially in the case of a shorter, web-based article – has become more important than ever. Though I think Sydney Trent and Maria Carrillo struck a chord with the argument that masterfully written longer – even serialized – narrative pieces might just be entering a new renaissance. There has got to be a backlash against the writing-for- short-attention-span trend. Writers still write, right?
Hoping to make it next year, but the cost (even at a discount) made attending the Nieman Conference prohbitive on the eve of our Depression.