Narrative Journalism in a Multimedia World

By Constance Hale, Program Director,
Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism

The 2008 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism continues its tradition of exploring the dimensions of literary work: how great journalists forage for rich material, structure fluent accounts, and flesh out stories with real-life characters. But this year we will also focus on how literary techniques can be best applied to sounds and images as well as words—and on how storytelling can be reinterpreted for multimedia.

Our goal remains to nurture the best of narrative journalism even as the forms it takes change before our eyes and ears. So this year, major figures in print journalism, film, broadcasting and books will be joined by bloggers, podcasters and producers of extraordinary multimedia. The best narrative journalists will offer trade secrets, and skills-building workshops will focus not just on the craft of writing and the art of editing but also on multimedia storyboarding and how to create podcasts worthy of the best audiences.

This conference takes the successful legacy of previous conferences and builds on it to provide a way for narrative journalists to embrace the challenges and promises of new media. No matter how technology takes us in new directions, the desire for human stories told humanely will never disappear. Ultimately, of course, the conference celebrates the urge to tell stories.

The 2008 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism will be held on March 14-16 in Boston, Massachusetts. For information, visit the conference Web site [see link above].

Class notes
Lead note: Susan Dentzer
End note: David Turnley and Peter Turnley
Table of contents
Printer-friendly format