I felt lonely for the last few weeks or so. Or, more accurately, struggling to connect with others past whatever we needed to get work done on projects. I’ve also felt that connection is a flitting moment that, once you achieve, you struggle to hold on to, as it’s become rare. Over the dinners and drinks I’ve had with various people in the past few weeks, whenever we synced or felt we were on a similar wave length, I realized part of me was wondering how long this will last and whose notifications will be the first to break the bond.
This not just about curtailing our habit of pulling out the phone when out with people. This is also about disconnecting from groups: at work, with school, or in community. This is not about being constantly available for others either. (As an introvert I sometimes overestimate how much social stimulation I can take, and have to withdraw.)
But it is about a general feeling that others are not there or available or that you are not there or available either.
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On walks last weekend I listened to therapist Esther Perel in conversation with Brené Brown making the case that disconnection is wide spread: “I see the multiple expressions of yearning, of longing, of loneliness, of seeking connection, community that is a response or a reaction to the beyond human scale.”
She elaborated on what’s she’s seen in her recent experiences:
[The] longing, the yearning, the quest, the sheer need for connection, for community, for transcending the burdens of the self that have never been heavier, for having freedom that is unprecedented, but also living with the tyranny of doubt and uncertainty – that is unprecedented. That’s what I am working with.
The last few crazy years packed tons of pandemic disconnection that we still have not put together – Zoom was always a little more than a poor substitute –,technology is making interactions friction free (technically better, but also less rewarding and serendipitous), and self-reported loneliness in on the rise.
“I should be feeling connected, open, vulnerable, but in fact, you’re there, but you’re not present”, Esther says, summarizing many interactions where you’re with someone and talking, and they’re nodding, engrossed in their phone. “And I’m feeling a certain kind of loneliness. I’m feeling this as-if. It is almost like what we call ambiguous loss, because instead of feeling connection with you, I am actually grieving, I feel like something is just not happening.
Are you there? Or are you not there? This is what’s happening in many of the interactions at this moment. And that creates a particular kind of loneliness. It’s not the loneliness of being alone, it’s the loneliness of being with people next to whom you should not be feeling lonely, but in fact, you do. It’s not about being physically alone, it’s about being misunderstood, unseen, rejected, ostracized, all of that.”
Sounds familiar?
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Can journalism or other forms of nonfiction storytelling solve for some of this?
This question shouldn’t surprise you; part of the purpose of Draft Four is to match my personal experiences and observations to potential future projects. I have always believed and still believe that stories make us human, that they make us feel less alone, that they help us belong, or, to keep quoting Esther: “I always imagined, if you listen carefully to the stories of others, the more you listen to them, the more you will see yourself.”
I’m interested in the power of storytelling to create connection, infuse care, spark conversation, and help strengthen community. And since I’ve been in journalism for over 20 years, I’ve always wondered how we can do more of this.
DoR was an attempt at this, especially once we purposefully made engaging readers part of our strategy. But there were always questions associated with this: is making space for vulnerability and creating connection a mission of journalism? How many people’s needs can you serve – especially when the media business discourse is largely about scale and growth? Does anyone actually pay for belonging or for feeling they are part of a community? Does this even matter when illiberal regimes are encroaching on freedoms we thought were safe?
Enter How Journalists Engage, a spectacular book by journalism prof Sue Robinson that tackles some of these questions at a time of heightened vulnerability for the profession. Trust is declining, social media didn’t save journalism – and reaching millions through social turned out to be a mirage –, and we’re in competition with everything in our lives, from Spotify, to Netflix, to our friends’ newsletter about cool new restaurants in town.
I’ll briefly run through the ideas in the book because they are a powerful argument for a different kind of journalism – not meant to replace watchdog reporting, or investigations, or more traditional forms – but meant to do its part in healing some of our broken social fabric.
In the next few weeks, I’ll try to think through this as I explore what the role storytelling and engagement can have in creating connection, better experiences, and helping us belong.
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The crux of Robinson’s book is this definition:
Trust building happens through the nurturing of personal, organizational, and institutional relationships that people have with information, sources, news brands, journalists, and each other during what is commonly referred to as engagement. For trust building to occur, engagement needs to be practiced with identity-aware care and enacted through listening and learning.
Let’s break this down. If we want to restore trust, this is one way to think about it:
1. Trust is built through engagement.
2. Engagement means better and closer relationships.
3. These relationships require you to be more aware of your own identity, be more caring, listen better, and learn.
This sounds easy because it’s what we journalists think we do all day. (We don’t).
On the ground level, you can feel the friction. Many reporters think their identity is irrelevant and it doesn’t influence the coverage (they say they are “objective”), but it does. We also think we care – but how many reporters would let their sources (especially from marginalized or vulnerable communities) go over the work before publication? Only a select few, I tell you. We can even take this into the realm of elections: when is the last time you felt the media actually focused on your needs vs. on the candidates themselves? Exactly. (The Citizen’s Agenda is one of the tools that shifts this balance).
So, this simple framework is challenging some internalized norms, many of which come from a time where they served a certain mindset (arguably white and patriarchal), a certain business model (that rewarded neutrality), and a certain status (that came with power).
Much of that is gone, but we are yet to adapt. More engagement, more relational work, Robinson argues as she highlights numerous initiatives (mostly in the US), might help. She adds to this 8 skills that fall under better listening & learning. I’m quoting here:
Radical transparency. Highlighting who was involved in story production, the contributors’ identities, ethical decisions etc.).
Power dynamic appreciation. Acknowledging in reporting and in content production the power dynamics at work in the community/institution/issues. This also refers to the power in the newsroom and within the reporter’s own self, such as understanding one’s identities and places of bias and the newsroom’s problematic practices.
Mediation. Helping people find common ground/values and moving beyond polarization.
Reciprocity and feedback loops. Following through with sources and community members, checking in with people constantly.
Media literacies. Everyone, from K–12 teachers and parents to tech companies and journalists, has to help people recognize good information.
Community offline work. Visiting schools, hosting forums.
Needs/assets/solutions analyses. Proactively helping community stakeholders to listen for a community’s various needs, recognize the existing assets and potential partnerships, connect groups and policymakers, and work toward solutions to problems.
Collaborative production. Partnering with other news media or community groups to develop shared ethical guidelines around information exchange or asking people to crowdsource and even produce content.
With all of this is mind, she is also drafting new roles that we might have to learn to do in newsrooms if our aim is to truly connect to a community, reflect it, and respond to its needs.
Where could all of this lead? A less neutral outlook on the world, a more moral and more involved stance, and better relationships. Writes Robinson:
When engagement toward trust building is embraced in full, journalists move away from an approach based in neutrality, where they operate from a distance with abstract, indirect caring for stories, democracy, and information. These engaged journalists instead become immersed in humanity, approaching people, communities, and knowledge with direct and explicit care. As such, this evidence leads me to argue that trust-building work is about relationship building guided by an ethic of care that results in a fact-based moral voice for journalists.
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What I’ll be doing over the next few weeks – and I’ll report back in this newsletter – is talking about the ideas above with journalists who have chosen the engagement route, or who are challenging the status quo from inside the business, but also with community activists, and others that have thought about how we bring people together and help them connect with a purpose.
I’m then going to try and put these thoughts together in a capstone project for the News Innovation and Leadership program I’m in.
I’ll also draft ideas for experiments or projects where some of these can come to fruition. For example, I always found that events such as the live storytelling shows we did created an almost magical space of connection. DoR Live was not taped, you didn’t even know the line-up, you experienced it once, and the mix of moments in the show were meant to celebrate our common humanity. With the exception of some concerts and plays I haven’t been to many similar gatherings recently, but I’m sure there are some out there – smaller or larger – because the need to be with others exists.
So, if you have any thoughts or recommendations on any of the things I shared above, please reply/pass them along.
To bring this full circle, this is something Esther touched upon in another conversation, this time with comedian Trevor Noah: being in a room with strangers, experiencing something together:
I do think that breathing together, sitting together, talking about love, sex, desire, breakups in a collective actually is the most important way to take us out of the loneliness that we often feel in those experiences.
We feel everything [in a room]. And that experience is not just for me the experience, it's the experience of the people in the room. You are aware of the other people's responses to what's happening. You identify with others who are sharing the same experience, even if they don't say a word, because you see the tears, the whole thing. And for that, I am going back in the world. I want to have that experience, and I want people to have that experience with each other.
SIDE DISHES:
1. So how broken is the media today? This great conversation on the Search Engine podcast goes over the current predicament, but also gives hopeful predictions for subject-specific niche products that can thrive in this new environment.
2. In this essay, Leslie Jamison unpacks “gaslighting”, a term we're overusing to the point it risks to stop describing truly harmful behavior.
3. From April 16 onwards I’m in Perugia for the International Journalism Festival. After last year’s edition I shared some thoughts on what a journalism of hope would entail (you’ll find ideas connected with the ones above).
4. The new album from Vampire Weekend, Only God Was Above Us is amazingly addictive. (This is a band I’ve loved forever, but never got to see live). One song is called Connect; the chorus starts with this: “Now is it strange I can’t connect?”.
We are still reading and it is awesome! DOR live would be amazing to happen yearly, no matter the magazine is not still out there. If you could reconsider this idea, i raise my fingers for joining as fundraising volunteer for the event.
I'm so glad you started sending out these newsletters again! 🤍