Storytelling not dead

This is from Rachel Shulman, a student at UW-Madison:

Prof. Sue Robinson recently sent around this story on how the internet is killing storytelling. In it, Ben Macintyre laments the demise of the narrative. He blames the spawn of the digital age – Twitter, Facebook, blogs, smart phone applications – for the imperilment of the long-form story. According to Macintyre, our reliance on a medium of “interactive chatter and noise” is eroding our culture.

When I read this story, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the philosophy of Neil Postman, a media theorist who was most well known for his 1985 book on television, Amusing Ourselves to Death. Postman deplored technology’s ability to distribute more information faster, arguing that it fills our heads with fragments of irrelevant, disorderly, and superficial information. Postman feared that television meant the demise of the written language and reason; he predicted that its rise signaled the demise of cultural values. Sound familiar?

I don’t think that Postman nor Macintyre give the story reader/listener/watcher enough credit. Long-form narratives aren’t dying – they’re just changing. The internet allows users to piece together their own multi-media narratives from many different sources. I don’t think we can ascribe any more value to narratives that follow a prescribed (and often predictable) structure determined by the storyteller than narratives that follow a network-based structure determined by the user.

Uncertain future of China’s muckraking magazine

The following post is from a UW-Madison Journalism student: Yifei Lieu

China’s most influential business magazine has been thrown into turmoil recently: it has received tons of resignation letters, including its general manager, the top advertising executive, and 70 workers in business department. Even worse, the biweekly magazine may also be about to lose its founding editor, Hu Shuli, and her core journalists allies.

It means, the magazine will be left as an empty shell.

The massive exodus is an expression of discontent by the magazine’s employees over the intensive editorial interference by the magazine’s owner, Stock Exchange Executive Council (SEEC), and a dispute about whether SEEC should surrender its majority control and allow other investors, according to The New York Times, The New Yorker and China Daily. The employee uprising against the publisher is not as common in China as in United States. Actually, it never happened before in China. Will it be a sign of the rising power of media employees in China? Or it will turn into a failed attempt? It’s too early to judge now. For me, an interesting point is: in the employee alliance against the publisher, those in business department resign first, seems the journalists still need more courage.

Caijing magazine, known for its bold coverage of corruption, fraud, pollution and public health care, has possessed more freedom than most Chinese media since its foundation in 1998. Two main reasons account for its unique freedom: one is the laissez-faire editorial policy under an oral agreement between the SEEC and Ms. Hu, and more importantly, it is benefited by Ms. Hu’s perfect editorial judgment: she knows when and how to expose the governing problems without enraging the central government. The judgment comes from both her long-time professional experiences and her intimate private relationship with high-level government authorities. However, with the rise of influence and profit of the magazine in recent years, both the owner and the government have felt more discomfort about the incisive coverage and then given more pressure to the magazine. Finally, the war between the power and the magazine breaks out.

The leaving of Ms. Hu will be a big blow for Caijing magazine. Without Ms. Hu and her core journalists, the muckraking platform may turn into a mediocre and humdrum economic journal. However, it may be not a loss for the investigative media industry in China: if Ms. Hu resigns, she may found a new magazine with the help of other resigned colleagues. If it is true, will it be a new front runner in the investigative report in China? Or will it turn into another victim in the battle against business and government forces? No one knows. But at least we know, the 56-year-old woman, who is called “an incurable muckraker” by The New Yorker, will not easily be stopped.

Journalist or Investigator?

The following post is from UW-Madison student Rachel Shulman:

I recently heard a story on NPR’s “On the Media” that was of particular interest to me as a graduate student in journalism.

Journalism students at Northwestern University and the Cook County District Attorney are battling over the students’ investigation of a 1978 murder, a crime for which Anthony McKinney has been serving a life sentence for over 30 years.

Led by professor David Protess, students conducted the murder investigation as part of the Medill Innocence Project, a non-profit directed by Protess that aims to free wrongfully convicted people.

During the students’ three-year investigation, two eyewitnesses responsible for McKinney’s conviction recanted their testimonies, saying that the police bullied them into lying about witnessing the murder. The students presented this finding in addition to other materials suggesting McKinney’s innocence to the Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern’s law school in 2006.

Recently, the Cook County District Attorney subpoenaed these investigative materials, in addition to the students’ grades, performance evaluations, emails, expense reports, and interview notes. Lawyers in the attorney’s office claim that they need these materials to assess whether the students had a grade incentive to find McKinney innocent.

Northwestern’s journalism school counters that, although the Innocence Project has helped release 11 inmates – including five from death row –the project has also had student investigations’ find convicts guilty.

The District Attorney maintains that the students do not deserve the same protections afforded to journalists because the students are investigators rather than reporters.

Northwestern Dean John Lavine says that the students’ investigation is journalism. As journalists, the students would be protected under the Illinois Shield Law, which would give them the right not to reveal their sources and unpublished materials. Federal law also prevents the university from turning over students’ grades to the prosecution.

Lavine says that the journalism students should not be responsible for producing evidence for court. Instead, the students’ job is to produce facts for the university’s law school, which then double checks these facts before handing them over to the prosecution.

This legal battle has implications for journalism students’ pursuit of truth. Students need to know that they can be journalists without fearing that they might end up in court for completing a class assignment.

For more information:

• Prosecutors Turn Tables on Student Journalists
• University's justice project finds itself targeted