Commentary

The following are reflections on the evolving world of journalism, my experiences in the business, and the future of storytelling.

A brief (but necessary) ode to NBC Left Field, a storytelling unit no more

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On January 10, a Tweet came across my feed that saddened my heart:

“Today is Left Field’s last day,” it said. “Thank you for watching our videos over the past few years. It’s been a thrilling ride and we’ve loved every minute of it. Our stories will live on.”

The Tweet came from NBC Left Field, a video storytelling unit launched in June 2017 with the self-described goal of “understanding human beings through film, technology and heaps of creativity.”

For 31 months, they delivered. I discovered Left Field when one of its early videos, a piece called “Hunting for Addicts” produced by Emily Kassie, won an NPPA Best of Photojournalism Award for solo in-depth storytelling. I clicked on Kassie’s clip, was enthralled by its craft and content, and immediately slid to YouTube to learn more about the unit that green-lit her story.

I was extremely impressed.

Every video brought immaculate photography, creative storytelling, and some innovative move that I’d inevitably file away with the intent of one day incorporating in my own work. In 2018 I received the chance to speak on a panel with Kassie and managing editor Bob Bikel, and my admiration grew greater.

I don’t know why Left Field shuttered, but I want to use this platform to briefly acknowledge the diverse, clever, passionate storytellers whose work brought such inspiration. I invite you to check out their YouTube page, where their stories remain.

In the meantime, here are a few pieces I’d recommend:

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Storytellers: want new-decade inspiration? Watch these stand-up collections

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I began my new year like many inspiration-seeking storytellers: by watching Joe Little’s annual montage of stand-ups.

Since 2008, the San Diego soloist has compiled his most creative stand-ups from the previous year into one giant reel. The original edition barely cleared four minutes; his 2019 collection neared nine. But that wasn’t the only change.

This year, Little’s montage wasn’t the only one.

A few days after Little posted his video onto the TV News Storytellers group, a reporter named Kendria LaFleur did the same. She’s been in the business for five years, more than a decade less than Little. She works in Lafayette, La., a market 1,600 miles east and 92 sizes smaller than San Diego. And her collection of stand-ups lasted 81 seconds. But they all worked. She used sound effects. She put a camera in a trick-or-treat bag. She made herself disappear. Her techniques looked smooth, sophisticated, and – above all – not cheesy.

A few posts down in the Storytellers newsfeed came a story from Will Pitts. He’s a solo video journalist at KPNX in Phoenix. He posted a package that included a flashy, camera-in-a-mailbox stand-up and also slick effects work where he highlighted the words of a handwritten letter.

It was all so impressive. A few years ago, the standard “creative” stand-up or story too often seemed forced. The graphics looked amateurish, the effects cartoonish. Exceptions like Little could squeeze slickness out of limited equipment, but few of us had access to technology that would make creativity seem too much like, well, local news.

That has changed. Today many of us use After Effects and edit on software that offers a myriad of potent effects. Many news departments supply MMJs with GoPros in addition to their traditional cameras. The equipment and technology has caught up to our ambition.

And we’re taking advantage.

I should pause here and say I’m not a huge shooter of stand-ups. I typically produce long-form stories where the characters are so rich that my appearance seems intrusive. My station also prefers we introduce and tag our stories, making a stand-up superfluous without a compelling reason. But that doesn’t mean I’m averse. I have experimented with effects, multi-camera shoots, and green-screen backgrounds to sizzle my stand-ups when necessary. I applaud innovation and don’t put down others’ efforts to shake up their storytelling.

(In the interest of full disclosure, here’s one recent example …)

So when I see a collection like Little’s or LaFleur’s – or I watch a story like Pitts’ – my first instinct isn’t to emulate. It’s to appreciate.

I appreciate the hustle. Any solo video journalist can tell you of the job’s extraordinary demands; you’re doing two traditional jobs as one person. But the workload doesn’t suppress most MMJs’ desires to produce meaningful work – and to take advantage of advanced tools to do so.

I appreciate the defiance. Even nearly two decades into the widespread use of soloists in local news, so many traditional journalists still decry the concept. To be sure, the MMJ life has its issues – and it’s absolutely not for everyone – but it also creates advantages for those journalists (and their managers) who recognize them. Creative autonomy – used in stand-ups like these – is one such benefit.

Mostly, I appreciate the opportunity. When I graduated college in 2003 – in the earliest months in Facebook and before social media existed as we know it – I couldn’t go online and watch a bunch of local TV news stories. Few stations posted videos to their web sites, and few forums existed to showcase people’s work. Today, LaFleur can post her montage and write in the comments how she used Little’s for inspiration, and someone soon will no doubt say the same of hers.

The current media environment possesses so many flaws and issues, all of them worth discussing and examining. But it also enables storytellers to do so much despite limited resources. As the new year and decade begin, I salute all of us who use those resources – and our platforms, energy, and talents – to produce meaningful work.

Cheers. And let’s keep moving forward.

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The Solo Video Journalist is available for purchase. You can find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the publisher’s web site.

Matt Pearl is the author of the Telling the Story blog and podcast. Feel free to comment below or e-mail Matt at matt@tellingthestoryblog.com. You can also follow Matt on Facebook and Twitter.

REPOST: What it’s like when your story goes viral

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This post originally ran in 2014, when I told Bryant Collins’ story for the first time. Earlier this week, my WXIA-TV colleague Nick Sturdivant caught up with Bryant and found the same humble, giving individual whose story went viral five years earlier.

On Friday, a man named Bryant Collins saved the life of a 15-month-old baby girl, whom he spotted on the side of a highway.

On Monday, I interviewed Collins about his unexpected opportunity to become a hero.

Neither of us expected what happened next.

In a span of 25 hours, the story of Bryant Collins — and the baby he rescued — grew from my NBC affiliate in Atlanta to NBC Nightly News, going extraordinarily viral along the way. I have never seen anything like it, at least with one of my own stories.

And if I had to pick a story of mine to go viral, I might just choose this one.

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You don’t need grad school to succeed as a journalist. Here’s why I went anyway.

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Six minutes from the front of the line, six days until graduation, my classmates and I wait at the University of Georgia student bookstore to buy our caps and gowns. We don’t need to do this. Our grad school doesn’t require it. But we have decided to splurge, to indulge in a dash of pomp and a sprinkle of circumstance in this rare setting that encourages it.

The jokes begin. I turn to a classmate, an award-winning reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and wonder aloud how to most pretentiously celebrate our pending degrees.

“What if we change our e-mail signatures to include our degree? What if I signed every message with ‘Matthew Pearl, MFA?’”

“Yes,” he responds, “and you should add a photo in your cap and gown with a serious, academic expression. And you should list your published works underneath.”

We envision this. Then we envision how quickly our coworkers would chuck us out of our respective newsrooms.

In the world of daily journalism, an MFA in Narrative Nonfiction may not seem like much. It won’t add extra digits on my paycheck. It won’t increase access on my stories. It won’t bring a new wave of followers to my Facebook page. I work in TV news, where the average script runs maybe a page. One might question the wisdom of honing the skills to write book-length projects.

But this isn’t about wisdom – at least, of the conventional type. It’s about growth, craft and passion.

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Local news rarely covers climate change. Here’s why we did.

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Late last month, after the first round of Democratic debates devoted just ten minutes to climate change, former NBC & PBS reporter John Larson posted the following in a Facebook group of his peers:

“Is there a Climate discussion in your newsroom? In Broadcast we excel at Breaking News. We’re poor with huge stories that evolve… slowly. … Will anyone bring it up in your next morning meeting? Or better, explore ways to tell the stories? If not, how about you?”

From my desk, I nodded hard. And I couldn’t wait to share what I had brewing.

A few months earlier, I had shared similar frustrations with my news director. “I want to do a special on climate change,” I told her, but I wanted to maneuver around all the pitfalls that keep us in local news from tackling the topic.

It’s too toxic.

It’s too political.

It’s too daunting.

It’s too depressing.

The challenge was laid: how do we cover this subject – among the most important facing our planet – in a way that breaks through the noise and informs our audience?

Here’s what we came up with:

This past Monday, we launched PLAN G, a 20-minute documentary that will run as a half-hour special in our Friday and evening newscasts. Each night in our newscasts, we tell the story of a different Georgian uniquely affecting – or affected by – the changes to our climate. I shot and edited the entire special myself – with the exception of my opening standup – and worked with a graphic artist and digital specialist to handle the overall look and online rollout, respectively.

Mostly, I spoke often with producers and managers about how to attack this subject. We came up with a few foundations:

Dig deep for background. Before I shot a frame of video, I logged at least a dozen conversations with leaders and experts in our state. I learned of tremendous resources that approached the subject in an objective way. I built a compendium of potential storylines before deciding which to make my focus.

Let people tell their stories. Except for my opening standup – and the occasional questions to my interview subjects – I kept my voice out of it. I spoke with people of different backgrounds, life experiences, and even different views about climate change. I spent days with each. I wanted to allow them to speak for themselves – at least, as much within reason, since I still edited hours of footage per person into roughly 4-5 minutes each.

Don’t try to cover every inch. There are so many fascinating stories about Georgians in the center of the climate conversation. Even with 20 minutes of real estate, I knew I couldn’t possibly cover them all. I focused on four and tried to select people who could provide a wide array of perspectives.

Swing for the fences, but don’t be afraid to fail. In some ways, I’m a glutton for punishment. I find subjects that are taboo, that don’t have the sexiest headlines, that don’t get automatic clicks. I feel a journalistic responsibility to cover stories that matter, and I take on the uphill climb of presenting them in a way that will resonate.

In this case, I’m still not totally sure if it worked.

The night the special launched, it received tepid response. Our rollout began slowly, and we waited to reach out to the communities and groups we thought would gravitate to it. But even as we struggle to amplify its reach, I’m glad we took on the task.

As John Larson said, “We’re poor with huge stories that evolve … slowly.” But we can’t abstain from the responsibility.

We must continue to embrace it.

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The Solo Video Journalist is available for purchase. You can find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the publisher’s web site.

Matt Pearl is the author of the Telling the Story blog and podcast. Feel free to comment below or e-mail Matt at matt@tellingthestoryblog.com. You can also follow Matt on Facebook and Twitter.

5 lessons from the 2019 National Edward R. Murrow Award winners

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A few years ago, the RTDNA added a new category for its esteemed Edward R. Murrow awards in journalism: Excellence in Innovation.

But this year, as I survey the national winners that were announced last week, I see innovation everywhere.

It shows on the local level, thanks to ambitious companies including the one (TEGNA) for which I feel proud to work. It thrives on the national level, where everyone from ESPN to Univision is flexing its storytelling muscles. And it particularly shines in the digital realm, where news organizations need not worry about breaking the rules because they’re creating them.

Over the past few days, I carved out hours to watch this year’s winners. Here are five lessons that have already embedded themselves in my own journalistic mindset:

THE STORY: The legacy of the zero tolerance policy (Univision Noticias Digital)
THE LESSON: If you’re focusing on one person’s story, immerse yourself in it.

Per Univision’s research, more than 2,500 children were separated from their families at the US-Mexico border by American officials. This is part of the US government’s “zero tolerance policy.”

This story stood out because the journalists involved focused on one child and dove deep.

The Univision crew follows a six-year-old Guatemalan girl named Adayanci Pérez as she returns home after three-and-a-half months. The details are harrowing. Pérez returns to school and barely smiles, looking shook around her teachers and classmates. Her family can’t read the PTSD diagnosis she received before her return because it’s in English. Revelations like these fill the nine-minute mini-doc, and they unleash so many questions. They were only uncovered because of the commitment and time investment of all involved.

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I wrote last week about connections leading from one story to another. Then it happened again.

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I had thought the time was right to write.

I had just produced a powerful story about a high school student’s graduation that resonated on-air and took off online. I had recognized how that story emerged thanks to a series of “Yes, and …” responses when chances arose. So I wrote a blog entry that detailed the five degrees of separation that led to one poignant piece.

Then a sixth degree showed up.

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I didn’t cultivate connections enough. Once I did, I found a beautiful story.

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I was there to teach. For a week in early April, I flew to San Marcos, Texas to serve on the faculty at the NPPA Advanced Storytelling Workshop. I crafted five presentations for the students at the event and, in one case, the students in a journalism class at Texas State University.

But on Day 1 of the workshop, I quickly realized how much I would learn.

In the second hour of sessions, one of my fellow faculty members presented a philosophy that I quickly embraced – and, this past week, paid huge dividends.

Kristin Dickerson is a National Edward R. Murrow and Gracie Award winner who shines as an anchor and reporter for NBC5 in Dallas. We teamed up (along with the tremendous NBC News correspondent Joe Fryer) for a session on how to enterprise story ideas. I led off, but Kristin seized the hour with a ten-minute video illustrating the importance of cultivating your contacts … and not turning your back after you use them for a story.

I immediately realized my own flaw. I seek sources with enthusiasm, but I rarely keep in touch well enough after I work with them on a story. After Kristin’s inspiration, I pledged to myself to be better.

I didn’t realize how quickly it would pay off.

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Sometimes a great story can be as simple as a table and two chairs

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This article can be found in the March/April 2019 issue of News Photographer, published through the NPPA.

I’m big on new.

In the last few years I’ve worked with drones, gimbals, and a mirrorless camera. I’ve created Instagram-first food segments and half-hour documentaries. I’ve done all of this from a newsroom – WXIA-TV in Atlanta – and under a company – TEGNA – that preaches innovation.

But when I wanted to attempt a new approach and story structure for a segment involving person-on-the-street interviews – a format that seems to funnel towards boring and uninformative – I reached back to a far earlier creation.

First, my producer and I bought a wooden fold-out table and two fold-out chairs at IKEA. Then, we asked our promotions team if we could commandeer an easel. Finally, we begged our in-house graphical guru to create a poster we could place on said easel, with a recurring question: “What’s your untold story about __________?” For each story we would do, we felt, we would fill in the blank with a relevant subject.

It worked.

On Thanksgiving week and requested stories about gratitude. On Mother’s Day and Father’s Day we found stories about parents. And this past Valentine’s Day, we learned stories about kind gestures. Each time, we shot in multiple locations that represented different communities in our region. We set up multiple cameras, from a traditional TV news kit to a GoPro and iPhone. We didn’t leave until we had interviewed at least three people.

Most importantly, when we did those interviews, we took our time. I didn’t ask for the quick sound bite and leave. I sat for around ten minutes, conversing and learning more about the person across the table. Often I discovered a more compelling story hidden beneath the initial back-and-forth.

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Ten years ago I arrived in Atlanta. Ten years later I still can’t believe I’m here.

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My first night in Atlanta, I stepped after sunset onto my Midtown balcony. I leaned against the rail and watched the skyline light up. I spied high-rises, skyscrapers, and the amber glow of windows still alight. A dozen blocks away, a golden spire peeked above the buildings and pierced the night-blue air. I was two days removed from Buffalo, N.Y., four years removed from my first job in Sioux City, Iowa, and two decades removed from the inklings of dreams that became aspirations of working as a broadcast journalist. My new job – as a reporter for WXIA-TV, Atlanta’s NBC affiliate – was days away.

I surveyed the sky, felt the thick Georgia warmth against my skin, and reveled in triumph.

Man … I’ve made it.

I did it again the next night. And the next night. And every night for the next two weeks. Each sunset became a victory lap, a chance to view a city so vibrant it seemed limitless. Professionally I had arrived in a Top 10 market. Personally I had arrived in a city with massive parks, walkable streets, and four pro sports teams. Growing up in New Jersey, I had idolized New York. When I started in TV news, I wondered if I would ever make it back. Now in Atlanta, I had at least reached the ballpark.

And I was thankful. I had sent out more than 40 resume tapes in college before hearing from a station in Sioux City. I had sent another 40 after leaving Sioux City – many during an extended summer of unemployment living with my parents – before a news director in Buffalo called with an offer. I had received tremendous opportunities in Buffalo but wondered if a large-market station would ever take a chance. The industry seemed so brutal, and my experience so tenuous, that I never escaped my own self-doubt.

Finally I could. For the foreseeable future, I didn’t need to worry about where I would head next. I didn’t need to worry about what stories to include in my demo reel. I didn’t need to worry about my career reaching its apex at age 27. From my balcony, I saw a city into which I could endlessly expand.

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