I’ve done 83 episodes of the Telling the Story podcast and, in the process, interviewed nearly as many talented storytellers and journalists.
Episode 84 is different.
This time, I interviewed someone on the other side of the camera – someone who was the subject on an in-depth story I produced late last fall.
Her name is Emily Chan. She’s the co-owner of JenChan’s restaurant in Atlanta. I did a five-minute story about the restaurant last year, spotlighting hers to represent the challenges faced by so many in that industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. I spent six shoots in two weeks with Chan, and I was able to tell a compelling, all-encompassing story as a result.
Last month I learned the story had won an NPPA Best of Photojournalism award for Hard Video Essay. When I posted about it on Facebook, Chan responded with a lengthy comment that included the following sentences:
“This interview still haunts us…and not in a negative way; it simply captured our vulnerability – which is truly every small business owner’s vulnerability during this past year. I went back and watched it last week and it was painful; it still is. We are still fighting week to week and we still see the light at the end of this tunnel. Thank you for sharing our story so thoughtfully and carefully.”
We shouldn’t need reminders of how our stories impact those we interview, but this was a big one. I decided it could be a subject of further exploration.
Chan is my guest on Episode 84 of the Telling the Story podcast.
I’m so grateful Chan took the extra time for this, and I think you’ll find it a worthy listen.
Every life was touched in some way by the COVID-19 pandemic, which remains a constant factor in our activities and decisions more than a year since it began. Video journalists faced a wave of limitations and restrictions as we attempted to stay safe while doing our jobs, in a year where our jobs felt more vital than ever.
Some were shot before the pandemic. Most were shot during. All reflected dedication to the craft of journalism and storytelling – with an extra dose of perseverance.
Here were five lessons I learned from five winning entries:
THE STORY: The Uprising, by Corinne Chin, Lauren Frohne, & Ramon Dompor (Seattle Times) THE LESSON: Cover the macro and the micro.
After George Floyd was killed in late May, protests broke out across the country. So many visual journalists arrived on the scene and produced moving, powerful stories, often through the raw emotion on display. At a time of massive unrest and racial reckoning, these stories were essential in conveying the anger, heartbreak, and frustration of those in the middle.
I particularly appreciated those that found the big picture through the journeys of individuals.
That’s what this trio of Seattle Times photojournalists accomplish here. They cover the evolution of the protests in Seattle, from the days after Floyd’s death to the creation of the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP). But they deliver this narrative through the eyes of three protesters, each with distinct personal histories and outlooks, to show the micro in the midst of the macro.
This time last year, I was interviewing athletes, covering U.S. trials, preparing for the spotlight of the world to hit the 2020 Summer Games. I was spending days of my workweek. They had devoted years of their lives.
And then, the Games were gone. An afterthought, really, as the world became something none of us had ever seen.
Lately I’ve been thinking about all the stories these past 12 months we didn’t get to tell … and not just Olympic dreams. How many trips didn’t we take? How many family gatherings didn’t we attend? How many life moments didn’t we experience to the fullest degree?
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.
Whenever I ask my boss for the go-ahead to fly for a story, I shake a little.
I don’t ask often. But when I do, I know I’m requesting an investment. A plane trip requires extra time, at least one additional workday if you combine both flights. It sends me beyond my market, for a story that must remain relevant for a local audience. Above all, it demands money: hundreds of dollars at minimum for travel, lodging, and food.
I know the stakes. So I never go too far with my requests. I research the cheapest flights and try to minimize my nights away, all while ensuring I give myself enough time to make the trip worth it. And “worth it,” in these cases, means gathering enough footage, interviews, and moments to allow me to tell memorable stories.
I got the chance last month, and I turned 23 hours into seven shoots, for a story that demanded each one.
An e-mail popped into WXIA-TV inboxes from a man in New Jersey who claimed to have found a message in a bottle along the Tuckahoe River. The letter, he said, was written by an Atlanta woman named Mary Carter, but he couldn’t track her down because “Mary Carter” is a relatively common name. He had been touched by Mary’s letter of prayer and didn’t want to give up his efforts to find her, so he reached out to us. I asked him to send me a copy of the letter, and within two hours I had located, contacted, and delivered the exciting surprise to Mary herself. I arranged an interview with her, and the man in New Jersey – a high school athletic trainer named Tom Connors – called in via Skype to say hello.
I hadn’t planned on traveling for the story … until I heard Tom and Mary’s conversation.
Mary’s “message in a bottle” wasn’t a frivolous note. It was a letter of prayer, written by a two-time stroke survivor who at the time was watching her elderly father suffer through pneumonia. On a quick trip with friends to Atlantic City, Mary wrote a series of prayers on paper, folded the paper into a pill bottle, and threw the bottle into the Atlantic Ocean.
Tom found the bottle – and its emotional letter – at his own point of prayer. Around the same time Mary wrote her message, one of Tom’s students had wound up on a ventilator with Guillain-Barre Syndrome. He had spent the last six months visiting his student, Amanda, in the hospital and helping her rehab back to full strength.
When they spoke via Skype, Tom and Mary realized how much they had in common. And so did I.
Driving back to the station, I called Tom to learn more, and I discovered a story that went far beyond Atlanta. I mused that I’d love to fly up to New Jersey for a day and shoot his side, but I didn’t know if I’d get the green light.
But I asked my boss. And I got it – by pitching a short, tightly packed trip that would maximize a minimal stay.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
