Statement of Need: Why attempt to translate literary journalism into a dynamic format?

The dizzying pace of technological, cultural and economic change that has engulfed the news industry. Melissa Ludkte, editor of Nieman Reports, put it this way in the introduction to their Winter, 2006 issue, "Goodbye, Gutenberg:"

"Journalism is on a fast-paced, transformative journey, its destination still unknown. That the Web and other media technologies are affecting mightily the practice of journalism is beyond dispute. Less clear is any shared vision of what the future holds."

When it comes to storytelling, one school of thought is that literary journalism is fast becoming a casualty of change. Jan Schaeffer, executive director of J-lab, an incubator for journalism innovation, told members of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications that one of the problems in journalism education is that, "We reward long-form storytellers and feature writing, even though a lot of newspapers and even magazines don’t run long stories or features." Parodoxically, she noted that citizens feel "rage over the crumbling American narrative."

At the same time, the authors of the canonical text, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and What the Public Should Expect insist that sharing news through storytelling will continue to fulfill a vital human and cultural need.

There is however, a tension between this need and the strengths of Internet-based publishing technologies, best highlighted by the work of journalist-programmer Adrian Holovaty. Holovaty's development of interactive news databases such as ChicagoCrime.org represent a fundamental re-thinking of what it means to deliver the news. Holovaty argues that, stripped to its essence, journalism is the process of collecting, structuring and presenting information, and that much of that process can be automated, if news organizations are willing to "stop the story-centric worldview."

Indeed, tagging, linking, commenting and blogging allow news consumers to select and recontextualize stories to suit their interests. Amy Gahran reports that new tools such as Joey and Zude to contextualize web content according to their tastes.

However, advances in game design technology as well as emerging web standards such microformats suggest that there may be ways of structuring narratives that are compatible with interactive databases. In addition, young people embrace games that pay attention to storytelling in the way that previous generations embraced books and film.

The hope, therefore, is that dynamic, nonfiction storytelling can attract a generation of gamers and thus deepen their understanding of and engagement with issues of the day.