Editor’s Corner
February 4, 2008
Do the demands of narrative depend on the medium?
By
Constance Hale
Scrutinizing “The Fight for Sugar Hill,” this month’s notable narrative, we couldn’t help but wonder how exactly to evaluate online narratives paired with pictures, podcasts or other interactive elements. Such elements would once have been considered complementary, but not central, to the narrative. Yet one of the things that recommended this Dallas Morning News story was its slide show, a stunning series of black-and-white images that unfolds over a gospel solo, punctuated by audio from the story’s subjects.
We found ourselves struggling to determine how to evaluate multimedia storytelling in the context of the Narrative Digest. Should text always be held to the same standard, whether or not it stands alone? Or should it be considered within the tapestry of sound and pictures in which it appears—and was conceived? Should we open the editorial floodgates to narratives driven as much by audio and images as by dramatic writing?
Drilling deeper, what exactly elevates a story—no matter how it is told—into narrative nonfiction? The mere presence of a compelling central character is not enough; we want to see that character transform in the course of the story. Photographs may obviate the need for long character descriptions, but we still need reporters to get under a character’s skin—and to take us there. The objective, third-person point-of-view drilled into us by city editors is not adequate: we long for a narrator whose presence is felt through style, tone, or distinctive voice. And simple chronology often fails to provide a real narrative arc—building tension, dramatic climax, and satisfying resolution.
We couldn’t help thinking that such a master of drama as David Mamet—who revels in men down on their luck and destined to fall short of their dreams—would have applauded Paul Meyer’s choice of Pastor Rock as a protagonist. So, too, might Jimmy Breslin, who was described recently by the New York Times as “having mined the lives of small-time crooks and losers, of racing touts and amiable rogues … whose lack of stature in the larger world could not disguise a certain depth of heart.” And yet Pastor Rock’s own human frailties seemed to prevent the transformation we often hunger for in classic narratives. At such times, the narrator may need to do extra work to give a reader the satisfaction of an epiphany, or a sense of transformation.
With the increasing use of multimedia storytelling, we suspect we will be bringing such a critical eye to bear again and again. Particularly as some newsrooms downsize their veteran reporters and editors while they upsize their multimedia staffs, we will be on the lookout for stories that show a print reporter has been given time, space, and great editing as well as multimedia sidebars. We will applaud publications like The Dallas Morning News, which apply their resources to packages like “The Fight for Sugar Hill.” But we will also continue to celebrate those which concentrate their energies on good-old stories told the traditional way.
Questions about the uses and abuses of multimedia will occupy center stage at the upcoming Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, where Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jacqui Banaszynski will ask whether “bells and whistles distract from or deepen storytelling,” and Nieman Fellow Stuart Watson will ask if video narratives do anything that isn’t done just as well by TV.
Please join us if you can. And do send us your thoughts about the questions we’ve raised, as well as examples of stories, old-fashioned or new, that make us think deeply about the nature of narrative nonfiction.