The Dangers of Narrative Journalism
31st July 2020
So, narrative journalism is basically reporting the news by telling a first-person (usually) narrative about the topic. A narrative is simply “a spoken or written account of connected events; a story.” In narrative journalism, the journalist writes: what’s happening, how I went there, who I talked to, what I saw, how I felt, how the victims and participants in the news felt, what they told me and, for most stories, what I (the journalist) think it all means.
Most ‘jouralists’ today don’t want to report news, they want to tell stories, because it is by telling a story (preferably a tear-jerker) that will get the all-important Pulitzer and a six-figure income