Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Storytelling from family snapshots reminds us that we all love narratives

Last year's New York Times feature on "The Lives They Lived" was masterful, as always, but the addition of the "crowdsourced" snapshots and short accompanying captions really made this a link to share with media students: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/30/magazine/the-lives-they-lived-2012.html?view=The_Lives_They_Loved&_r=1&#index

I contend that we can teach journalistic writing using almost any photo, even the posed, the slightly out-of-focus, the poorly composed.

The key is to have a chance to interview someone who was involved in the photograph. Questions like "What were you thinking when this was taken?" or "What does this remind you of?" end up opening the gates to great stories, full of emotion and humanity and even love.

And isn't telling stories like that what we got into journalism to do?

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