A couple of months after the Newtown school shooting, Judy Rodgers, founding director of the nonprofit Images and Voices of Hope, read a story in The New Yorker that she couldn’t shake. “Local Story,” by Rachel Aviv, followed the inner workings of community newspaper The Newtown Bee as reporters and editors tried to bring their community closer while the town was flooded with outsiders, and to find a meaningful way of moving forward in the aftermath of the tragedy.
“The Bee is delivered to the homes of two-thirds of the residents in Newtown, and after the shooting Clark [editor of the Bee] found himself thinking about its ‘purpose.’ He wanted the paper to draw the community together, to reclaim its routine,” wrote Aviv, who defined the paper’s journalism as a conscious dedication to “crafting a redemptive narrative.”
That definition resonated with Rodgers, she says, and made her think about the potential of exploring redemptive narratives as a genre, connecting it to emerging research on positive emotions and news consumption.
“After a tragedy happens, the media often moves on, and we don’t necessarily hear those stories about recovery and rebuilding,” says Mallary Tenore, Ivoh’s managing director.
The nonprofit, which aims to make media agents of positive change, started to look for similar stories in the media and coined a new term for a genre that might enable conversations about this type of storytelling.
“‘Redemptive’ sounded a bit religious to us, so we decided to go with ‘restorative narratives,’” Tenore says.
Ivoh is now taking its attempt to create what they call ‘a new storytelling movement’ one step further. The organization just awarded a new fellowship to five veteran journalists, funding they will use to explore the potential of restorative narratives over the course of six months. On Monday, Ivoh launched an Indiegogo campaign to help support the fellowship, but regardless of its success, each of the fellows will receive a $2,500 stipend from Ivoh’s existing funds to work from December to May on their projects, which will explore how journalists can tell these kinds of stories, develop a curriculum and training, and track their impact.
It’s still unclear if journalists will embrace this new genre, but the call for change at least raises questions about whether new categories are useful tools to sharpen awareness around storytelling or are superfluous rhetoric that apply new words to old practices.
The category of restorative narratives was developed through summits in 2013 and 2014, where Ivoh brought together journalists with an interest in stories that fit within the new category, including Andrea Elliott and Ruth Fremson, who produced the The New York Times’ “Invisible Child” story, and David Bornstein, co-founder of The Solutions Journalism Network and co-author of The New York Times’ “Fixes” column. Summit attendees found that there was great interest in exploring the idea of restorative narratives, Tenore says.
She cites studies concluding that stories reflecting how people can constructively handle problems tend to invoke commitment and action in readers. “They’re not happy-go-lucky feature stories. They really explore the tragedy and crime but highlight resilience and what is possible in a way that can maybe help people respond to crisis,” Tenore says. That is, restorative narratives are not necessarily about disruptions like shootings or natural disasters; they can also focus on ongoing social problems.
“It was important to build momentum around this idea as a new narrative,” Tenore says. “A name gives it more oomph and makes people more drawn to it. I think it has helped to grow excitement around it.”
Bornstein agrees that concrete labelling can be helpful.
“You need a category so you can populate that with tools. In our case, the value of the term ‘solution journalism’ was that we’ve debated a lot,” Bornstein says. “It created a framework for a conversation.”
He would like to see journalists take advantage of multiple angles when reporting any one story—solutions journalism and restorative narratives are just two prisms through which a story can be told. The more angles available, the more comprehensive stories can be, he says. The problems faced by society today are increasingly complex, Bornstein says, and it’s no longer adequate for journalists to point to problems without showing readers how people are trying to solve them.
“I think the major changes is not in journalism but in the world, and journalism has not kept up,” he says. “It’s not that different than it was 30 years ago.”
Missouri journalism professor Jacqui Banaszynski, who will serve as story coach for the Ivoh fellows, says the newsroom scramble to catch up to digital realities has removed focus from story craft, which is central to the idea of restorative narratives.
“Whose perspective do you choose to tell a story through? How will you craft it so a reader will get engaged and find it relevant to their life, stay with it and think about it?” she asks. Her question may highlight how the genre of restorative narratives can potentially set itself apart in an increasingly diversified journalism environment: through focusing on impact, engagement, and relevance to readers over form.
That focus can seem controversial in journalism, says Ben Montgomery, Tampa Bay Times reporter and one of the five Ivoh fellows, who says he had to take some time to consider if he wanted to be part of the project.
“Should we as journalists have a mission in mind of helping restore or build communities? It seems contrary to what I was taught in journalism school in the late ’90’s. You report the facts and chips fall wherever they may.”
That skepticism has been around for a long time, says Banaszynski, and what may be termed purposeful journalism is often confused with advocacy or positive news stories.
“I never understood that,” she says. “I started doing journalism in a smaller community where you’re aware all the time that you do have an impact. So I’ve never been bothered by saying, why shouldn’t we give people what we used to call mobilizing information, and highlight what works.” Many within investigative journalism are already doing that kind of work without labelling it anyway, she adds.
Montgomery decided he was comfortable exploring restorative narratives when he realized that his journalism was already focused on building a better society, he says, reciting the words in Joseph Pulitzer’s 1883 New York World editorial, “There is room in this great and growing city for a journal […] that will expose all fraud and sham, fight all public evils and abuses—that will serve and battle for the people with earnest sincerity.”
“That’s a purpose,” Montgomery says. “That’s not just reporting facts; that’s saying something.”
Lene Bech Sillesen is a CJR Delacorte Fellow. Follow her on Twitter at @LeneBechS.