atlanta

Sometimes to tell stories, we need to confront our own decisions – and address them

“I’m not just reporting on this city and this university. I was a student here.”

That’s how I introduced myself to viewers in dozens of stations across the country. In my first story as a national correspondent with E.W. Scripps, I covered the efforts of advocates in Athens, Georgia to gain recognition for a long-forgotten Black neighborhood. Linnentown existed adjacent to the campus of the University of Georgia … until the city and university used eminent domain to clear it out to build three new dorms. In 2021 the city apologized and pledged reparations to Linnentown descendants. The university wanted no part of their efforts.

Inserting myself into the story felt like a leap. The next lines of my stand-up felt like a pole vault.

“[I was] a graduate student in the journalism school,” I said, standing on downtown Athens’ main drag. “A school named for an old newspaper editor that once declared the white race was superior.”

With that, less than two minutes into my on-air career at Scripps, I had revealed the complexity both of my story and in my heart.

***

In storytelling circles today, you hear two increasingly loud schools of thought about how much journalists should reveal about themselves. One school says we should stay in the background, keep our social media feeds clear of opinion and controversy, and focus on being not personalities but reporters. Then there are folks like Julia Munslow, a senior platform editor for the Wall Street Journal who wrote a recent piece for Nieman Lab titled “Gen Z demands personality from journalists.”

In her essay, Munslow makes the case that younger viewers want to know – or at least be able to find out – more about who’s delivering their news. “Gen Z values authenticity,” she wrote. “They crave reality after growing up among scores of Photoshopped advertisements; they believe strongly in ethical consumption and value high-quality experiences. I believe they’ll demand these things of the news industry, and that it will lead to a call for radical transparency.”

There are two components of how “radical transparency” is taking hold. One is the lane where journalists become mini-celebrities. We post about what we’re doing behind the scenes. We post about where we went last weekend. We post photos of our families, and they become semi-public figures too. That lane comes with its own complications and is worthy of way more than a paragraph.

But that’s not where I’m focused here. I’m focused on how much we are willing to reveal about our identities, subjectivities, and life decisions. Should journalists need to reveal their voting records? Should they discuss how the stories they’re reporting make them feel? Should they project their complexities?

And, per Munslow’s point, in the future, how much will we be given a choice about these questions? Will our audiences demand answers we feel uncomfortable providing?

In my case, the choice was mine. I had lived in Atlanta for a dozen years and spent numerous days in Athens shooting stories. I didn’t go to the University of Georgia as an undergrad, but I spent weeks there during grad school walking around campus and patronizing numerous Athens restaurants. More importantly, I had made the decision to attend the journalism school and gave little thought to the man for whom it was named. I only knew about the program to which I applied. It was diverse and exhilarating. It encouraged me to think deeply and richly about the subjects I covered.

(Seriously, look back at my previous posts about the program. I rave about it. And I still rave about it.)

My time at UGA was filled with many conversations about race and culture, including at the university and its city. I walked away with complicated feelings about both. And when the time came to do a story about race in Athens, I was equipped to cover it with the complexity it deserved.

I also felt I should reveal my experience in the story.

I wrote about not just the actions of the past but the experience of living in Athens in 2021. I noted how the first major sight off the highway was the Plantation Buffet. I shot footage of a downtown restaurant called General’s that until the previous year had been named for a Confederate general.

And for a piece that spoke about the power of institutions, I spoke in my standup about having been a student at this one.

***

I have produced dozens of stories for E.W. Scripps so far, many of which have included standups. I haven’t involved myself anywhere near the way I did that first time.

I didn’t receive any backlash for it. In fact, most people who responded to the story – including fellow University of Georgia graduates – applauded my transparency. But while I stand by my decision, I acknowledge how every story brings its own challenges – and how we bring our subjectivities to them.

But whether I reveal them or not, I always do my best to consider them. I believe in constantly challenging my preconceived notions and biases. I think my work continues to get stronger because I continue to push.

I encourage the same out of my colleagues. Those of us who carry the storytelling mantle owe it to our audiences to think critically about every story we produce.

The Solo Video Journalist is available for purchase. You can find it on AmazonBarnes & 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, Twitter, and his web site, mattpearl.tv.

A new year, the Webb telescope, and a reminder of what’s possible

I can’t stop following the Webb Telescope.

Is it me, or are we as a collective society not making a big enough deal about it?

Just before the end of 2021, a year that saw the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as numerous natural disasters, NASA launched the most powerful telescope in history into space. Over the next month, the Webb Telescope will unfold and reshape itself into an instrument that will potentially be able to explore the most observable distant galaxies in the early universe. It will begin detecting planets and gases and sending back images, according to NASA, by the summer of 2022.

As the Washington Post’s editorial board wrote in a recent opinion piece, “Now we may finally learn just how we ended up here, in 2022, nearly 13.8 billion years after the big bang.”

The audacity is astounding, especially considering it’s been less than 120 years since the Wright Brothers flew a 600-pound “airplane” into the sky that could travel no faster than 30 miles per hour.

To me, during what has been a particularly stifling period of our existence in so many ways, the telescope is a reminder of what’s possible.

As journalists and storytellers, what’s possible can be easy to forget, particularly in a lane that is currently losing much of its workforce.

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PODCAST EPISODE #82: Lynsey Weatherspoon, photojournalist, on capturing heritage and history

Quick confession: I honestly don’t remember when I first heard about Lynsey Weatherspoon.

It might have been last spring, when one of her photos of the George Floyd protests in Atlanta went viral. It might have been in the fall, when she popped up taking portraits of major political candidates across Georgia.

I’m not sure how she came into my orbit, but I’m glad she did. I’ve been inspired ever since.

In this past year, Weatherspoon has documented some of the most important moments and people in Atlanta and America. She took what the Guardian called one of “the best photographs of 2020,” and she contributed to some of the most esteemed media outlets in the country.

All the while, she has remained someone who in her words is “called upon to capture heritage and history in real time.” The third word of her bio is the hashtag #queerblackgirl, and she makes sure to amplify voices of each of those communities. She operates with intention, both in her assignments and with the impact she looks to make on the world.

Weatherspoon is my guest on Episode 82 of the Telling the Story podcast.

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PODCAST EPISODE #78: Neima Abdulahi, culture reporter, WXIA-TV & more

The first time I met Neima Abdulahi, it was her first week at our station, WXIA-TV in Atlanta, and I was asked if she could shadow me for a day.

But I quickly learned: Abdulahi is nobody’s shadow.

She grew up in Atlanta and returned professionally three years out of school. As a one-woman crew, she turned daily stories like everyone else, but she kept her eye on a grander goal: becoming a voice for the city she loved, the music she embraced, and the many cultures she represented. She produced a half-hour special about the Atlanta hip-hop scene. She did a longform story about Migos. She looked back with relentless reports on the infamous Atlanta child murders of 1979-81. This summer, she provided some of the most thoughtful and textured coverage of the death of civil rights icon John Lewis.

Abdulahi is an example on how to develop and amplify your voice. But she hasn’t just done so on-air. She has used that momentum to build up an online following, specifically on Instagram, that has allowed her to go part-time at WXIA while freelancing at places like VIBE Magazine. She approaches social media with a marketer’s mentality and a willingness to experiment and adapt to the demands of her audience.

She is my guest on Episode 78 of the Telling the Story podcast.

I’ve been a huge fan of Abdulahi for a long time, and I appreciated her taking the time to share her story. I’m also excited that she’s among the MMJs I interviewed for my new book, The Solo Video Journalist, 2nd Edition, which is now available for purchase. Both the podcast and the book are worth your time.

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

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

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

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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PODCAST EPISODE #70: Reflecting on ten years at one station in Atlanta

I began to notice it sometime in the last few years. New reporters or interns would arrive at WXIA-TV in Atlanta, meet me, and ask how long I’d been with the station.

“I’m going on nine years.”

Eyes would widen, followed by a six-letter word that was either being used as a question or a comment: “Really …”

I immediately felt the need to defend myself. These days, having reached ten years, I still occasionally get the impulse. But whenever I do, I come back to a fundamental truism of my outlook about my job:

I just want to keep growing.

Weeks like this one remind me how much. On Tuesday, my work received four Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards. I had won Murrows before but never more than one in a given year. These stories reminded me how much I’ve grown since I arrived in Atlanta ten years ago.

I share similar perspective on Episode #70 of the Telling the Story podcast.

This is a non-traditional episode, featuring the reading of a recent blog post instead of a longform interview with a journalist or storyteller. Those episodes will resume soon, but I wanted to use this one to spotlight the growth we all hope to achieve in this industry. I hope you enjoy.

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

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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I spent a week covering the aftermath of Hurricane Michael. Here’s how I coped.

Somewhere along the back-road highways on the Florida panhandle, sometime during my third day of enduring images of destruction, I realized I needed to talk to someone.

I had been sent down three weeks after Hurricane Michael to produce a series of stories on its aftermath for my station, WXIA-TV in Atlanta. The cameras always evaporate when the attention dissipates, we thought, so we wanted to divert it back. We wanted to show the very real – and very early – stages of recovery. We wanted to remind our viewers how those in the storm’s eye now face a seemingly permanent new reality.

The first few days went as expected. I interviewed pecan farmers and walked through orchards of leveled trees. I spent a day in Georgia’s hardest-hit city, Donalsonville, where the majority of houses featured blue tarp over their roofs. I surveyed the scene in Panama City and Springfield, neighborhoods in Florida where storefronts and home fronts had been peeled off.

And I drove. A lot. 1200 miles in five days. For large swaths of those rides, I scanned a consistent diet of devastation. I saw piles of felled limbs atop sidewalks, gas stations and mom-and-pop restaurants hollowed out, and mile after mile of trees bent backwards like upside-down check marks.

On the morning of Day 3, I witnessed the worst. I never made it to Mexico Beach, the coastal community in Michael’s direct eye that had been all but flattened in a few hours. But I drove within minutes of it and saw the struggle of communities just beginning to reckon with the aftermath of a hundred-year storm. As I headed back to south Georgia, itself speckled with hard-hit towns, I began to realize how a few short days – spent largely by myself – had gradually worn me down. I struggled to envision how these areas would fully recover. I shook my head at the magnitude and spread of the damage. A few times, I held back tears.

That’s when I picked up the phone and called my parents.

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