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More Support for Storytelling in a Recession

Posted on February 17, 2009 by KatHansen

I’ve been writing about sharing stories as a way of understanding and coping with the current economic crisis.

Ann Banks understands the value of stories during these tough time. In an article in Newsweek, Banks notes that she was raised on Depression stories. “Hearing them again and again,” she writes, “I became fascinated by the role that stories play during hard times — the way they seem to strengthen people, offering a bulwark against loneliness and feelings of personal failure.”

Her fascination led Banks to do something remarkable. In a dusty Library of Congress storage room, she spent a year sifting through 150,000 pages containing “thousands of interviews with ordinary Americans telling of how they survived the Great Depression.”

Banks explains:

The stories were collected in the late 1930s by the Federal Writers’ Project, a unit of the Works Progress Administration that employed out-of-work writers. But before the intended series of anthologies could be published, the Writers’ Project was Red-baited out of existence. The oral histories — of tobacco farmers, smugglers, midwives, jazz musicians, oil roustabouts and others — ended up crammed in rickety filing cabinets in a remote storage room in the library stacks.

She goes on to discuss how she fell in love with many of these stories.

Banks collected the stories and published them in the book First-Person America.

And she is convinced that we should be doing the same kind of storytelling in the current climate: “Listening to each other’s stories may grant us a sense of common purpose that money can’t buy.”

What Does Our Social-Media Behavior Say About Our Stories?

Posted on February 16, 2009 by KatHansen

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Twitter and how I changed my “Twitter behavior” overnight. In the time since that entry, I’ve gone from following just one person on Twitter to following 200+ today.

At the time of that entry, I tried to explain my Twitter behavior in terms of an assessment, the FIRO-B (Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation — Behavior), that I took at least 10 years ago. It was a pretty convoluted explanation; yet it made a certain kind of sense.

Based on some great information from commenter Eric Bolden, I now think I may have been onto something. I’m now speculating that personality assessments may be possible based on the way people interact with social media. I can imagine a whole new research area opening up if it hasn’t already.

First, let’s make the storytelling connection: Anyone who is involved in any kind of social media — or even anyone who simply has a personal Web site — is engaging in constructing his or her identity online. Thus, they are constructing and telling their stories. One’s online identity may not be exactly the same as one’s face-to-face identity or the identity one constructs when writing for print publication; we construct our identities in various media and venues, and while these identities share core elements, they likely vary from medium to medium. If I may quote from a Q&A interview with Michael Margolis that I have not yet published, in the Internet age, “one’s identity is ever morphing and adaptable to the presiding context.”

For example, I put out a lot of information about myself publicly in the online world. I am neither particularly private in my online life nor terribly cautious about sharing information about myself. I share myself in this blog, a personal Web site, a social-media resume, profiles on numerous social-media venues, several online portfolios — and the list goes one. I am far less forthcoming in my offline life.

Now, let’s get back to the FIRO-B and Eric Bolden. My FIRO-B results* reveal certain aspects of my personality that I don’t especially admire but that are probably pretty accurate. They reveal that I am a “loner” but that I cherish a small, close-knit group of friends. That revelation, I believe, aligns with my social-media behavior. I have at least 100 connections on each of the three major social-media venues I use the most — Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Of those, I most cherish the dear friends and family members that I’ve reconnected with. I’m also developed relatively close connections with some folks I’ve never met. If you offered me an opportunity to meet face-to-face with my close-knit group of connections and reconnections, I’d welcome it but feel considerable anxiety. Through online social media, I can interact with these dear ones in my preferred “loner” style.

The preceding behavior is covered by the “Inclusion” dimension of the FIRO-B. Another dimension is Control, where my results indicate that I avoid self-initiated decisions. Guilty as charged. My husband can tell you that I consistently demand that he make the decisions about, for example, when and where we’ll go on our daily bike ride and which Netflix movie we’ll watch in the evening. This aspect of my personality — my story — I’m convinced, explains both my past and current Twitter behavior. I previously did not follow my followers because I did not want to initiate that decision. I am still in the mode of abdicating the “following” decision because I have set up automatic following through a third-party application. Anytime a new person starts following me, I automatically follow that person without making a conscious decision to do so. I behave similarly with the other social-media venues. It’s not unheard of for me to initiate a new connection, but it’s unusual. Typically, I wait for others to connect to me.

So, it seems to me that researchers could develop a personality assessment based on social-media behavior. Questions to reveal one’s social-media personality might include:

What is your goal in making connections in social-media venues?
Which is more important to you — quantity of connections or quality?
To what extent do you initiate connections with others on social-media venues?
How often do you interact with your online connections?
To what extent do you accept new connections with people you know?
To what extent do you accept new connections with strangers?

What other personality-revealing questions can you think of?

As a side note, I have found the criticisms of my Twitter ways interesting. Some have suggested that I will alienate my existing followers by automatically following each new follower. My response: Do my followers really check that closely on how I obtained my follow-ees? I’m also not completely indiscriminate; I’ve unfollowed couple of people whose values severely conflicted with mine or who seemed overly fixated on selling me something. The idea of sending the same “tweet” or status report to multiple social-media venues also has offended some folks. They contend that each social-media audience is different, and messages should be tailored to each audience. I agree only to a certain extent. I feel as though my tweets to Twitter and Facebook are almost always interchangeable. However, if I want to tweet an item that is purely “professional,” I use ping.fm to send it out to a larger group of social-media venues, including LinkedIn, because most of the tweets I send to Twitter and Facebook are not appropriate for my LinkedIn audience.

* Bolden informed me that results from the FIRO-B do not reflect an inborn type and can change. Thus, my results might be different now from the last time I took the assessment. A Christian-based assessment, the Arno Profile System or APS, is based on the FIRO-B and is intended to show one’s inborn temperament. I’d like to take the FIRO-B again and also try the APS (though Bolden says the assessments are exactly the same but are administered differently). Also, based on my FIRO-B results, Bolden guessed my Myers-Briggs type with 75 percent accuracy (He guessed INFJ; it’s actually INFP).

Finally, it’s appropriate to be writing about online social-identity construction today because this is my 16th anniversary of the day I first went on the Internet.

If you’re interested in learning more about the FIRO-B, you can download a PowerPoint presentation here and see a 9-minute video here. I have not seen clear evidence that one can take the FIRO-B online, but it’s probably available.

Guest Entry: Storytelling that Ruins Relationships

Posted on February 15, 2009 by KatHansen

Stumbled across this article on a free content site (content4reprint.com). I’m a little wary of the author, Melani Ward (pictured below), as she seems almost “anti-story.” In her Changing Your Story Blog, she calls herself a “storybuster.” To her, that means breaking through stories that keep people (especially women entrepreneurs) stuck. It’s not so different from my “change your story, change your life” philosophy. I present her guest article in the interest of offering diverse viewpoints:

Storytelling that Ruins Relationships: What Stories Are You Telling About Other People?

By Melani Ward

I love stories. I love reading them, listening to them, talking about them and creating them. But, for a long time, I used to use the stories I told about OTHER people to make me feel better. Crazy huh? Well it’s true. I was what I now call the quintessential “I’ve Got YOUR Story Straight” Storyteller.

Now I don’t necessarily want to go telling a story about you right now but I would bet that you have first hand knowledge of this storyteller.

This is the person who has your whole life figured out. She will tell you what you should do, how you should feel and what everything you say, think and feel means. You may hear something like this from this storyteller, “If you would just do ___________, you would be so much happier.”

These storytellers usually mean well, in fact I rarely meet any who don’t, it’s just that they have a hard time keeping their ideas to themselves and what they define as help more often than not comes across as patronizing and quite irritating actually. The truth is most of the time these people want to help you or “fix” your situation because if they do, it makes them feel better.

If you are the “I’ve Got You Story Straight” storyteller, you probably have some pretty good ideas about what the people in your life should be doing differently in order to be happier, healthier, fitter, or more likeable, right?

Well, here’s the deal — what you think doesn’t matter.

And to steal a phrase from one of my friends and a totally cool chick Marie Forleo, “nobody made you manager of the world.” It’s none of your business how someone else thinks, feels, or acts.

Let me give you a quick example. I had a friend many years ago who I loved very much but I was not the best at showing it. You see as far as I was concerned she made all of the wrong decisions when it came to men.

(As if I had it all figured out myself, right?) She would say she wanted one thing and then do something that made getting the thing she said she wanted virtually impossible. It drove me nutty and I used to have a whole bunch of advice I was more than happy to dole out, even when she never asked.

The story I was telling about her was that she was not happy or that she could be happy if she just chose a different path. But who was I to say if she was happy or not?

This person is the way she is because of the people who raised her, her environment and her experiences. And she can only be exactly as she is just as I can only be exactly as I am. It not only wasn’t fair of me to expect her to behave, think or feel differently, it also wasn’t fair of me to put that kind of energy on her. I was putting her somewhere (in unhappy land) that she didn’t deserve to be.

One of the challenges for me was that people would come to me a lot and ask me for my thoughts or opinions so I got used to it and decided that since they wanted it than everyone else must have wanted it too. Not true.

But, I truly learned to stop telling stories when I moved away from home. I love my dad very much but we did not have the world’s best relationship when I was growing up. It wasn’t that we ever fought or didn’t get along. It was just that I had such a hard time understanding him that it made it difficult to get close. However, when I moved away, the space gave me the freedom to let go of the stories I was telling about him. I realized that I was trying to do the impossible — understand what it was like to be him and therefore understand how he acted. But, I was never going to understand.

I’d never understand what it was like to go to work as a young kid to help support my family. I’d never understand what it was like to have to pay for everything in my life including college and graduate school. I’d never understand what it was like to have parents who did not support me and encourage me every minute of my life. And I most certainly could not understand what it was like to watch my 8-year-old daughter fight for her life every day for two and a half years.

But that was the whole trick — I wasn’t supposed to understand. I was just supposed to have compassion and let him BE. Once I did that, our relationship blossomed.

In letting go, I created an opportunity for what really mattered to flow in, which has been a gift for both of us.

The real lesson here is that it’s never our business to tell stories about anyone else.

So, the next time your mom starts lamenting her worries or your best friend starts complaining about her current loser boyfriend/husband or your brother complains about his lame job, just listen. Just open your heart and show compassion for wherever they happen to be at that moment. If they want advice, they’ll ask. You’ll be amazed at the results.

Find out what storyteller might be keeping you stuck at Changing Your Story Blog. Melani Ward is a multi-passionate entrepreneur: numerologist, marketer, lifestyle coach, writer, and athlete! She helps women entrepreneurs attract ideal clients and a lot of money doing work they LOVE.

Obama Administration Now Sharing Stories

Posted on February 13, 2009 by KatHansen

I’ve blogged about President Obama’s soliciting stories about his election and healthcare stories but complained that the administration did not seem to offer any mechanism to read the stories that were being sought.

In contrast, on the topic of the economic crisis, barackobama.com is offering stories. States the site: “Tens of thousands of people all across the country have shared their stories of losing jobs, struggling to pay bills, facing foreclosure, and closing family businesses after generations of hard work.”

The stories are presented in a slide-show format with Google maps indicating where each story-writer hails from. Of course, the purpose of sharing these stories is to make the case for the stimulus bill.

At another part of the site, you can share your story.

Pre-Valentine’s Day Wordle

Posted on February 13, 2009 by KatHansen

This week’s word cloud/tag cloud from Wordle.net based on the content of A Storied Career:

If You Build It, Will They Record Their Stories?

Posted on February 12, 2009 by KatHansen

Eric Winick has a dilemma.

He wants to help people tell their stories orally through his company, Yarn Audioworks.

But he’s having difficulty persuading folks to come forward to record their narratives. “I’m just looking for the best incident-based 10-15 minute stories I can find,” he says.

Winick, a full-time marketing director at an off-Broadway theater in New York City, came to storytelling through the medium of theater. “For many years I fancied myself a writer — first of short stories, and then of plays, which is where I found a niche for almost 20 years,” he explains.

In 2005, after becoming a fan of the kinds of stories he heard on public radio, Winick had the idea to record audio pieces myself. “I blew an entire tax refund one year on audio equipment,” he says. “That was the year I started working on my first audio documentary. My model, obviously, is ‘This American Life,'” he says, although Yarn doesn’t follow a particular theme. ”

Three of Winick’s pieces have made it to public radio in the last six months, in places as far-flung as Birmingham, AL, and Urbana, IL, he notes.

Winick wants to expand Yarn by recording more stories — his own and those of others in the NYC metro area (or elsewhere for would-be storytellers with the ability to record a .WAV file). He’d like to get some of these stories on the radio.

After Winick wrote to me, I gave him a few suggestions about his Web site and approach. I told him I think the idea of recording stories is much more intimidating than writing stories. That fear factor may explain his difficulty in getting people to speak their tales.

I now throw this dilemma open to readers: How can Winick coax more folks to record their stories?

In the meantime, Winick has a terrific set of story-prompting questions on his site that are not only good for brainstorming stories to record but for all kinds of other uses:

What was the most frightening experience you’ve ever had?
What was the funniest experience you’ve ever had?
What was the funniest and most harrowing experience you’ve ever had?
Who was the most influential person you’ve met? What experience with this person typifies the influence he/she had on you?
Have you had an experience in which you accomplished something you did not think was possible?
Have had ever triumphed over what you felt at the time were the forces of evil?
Have you had an encounter with a celebrity/well-known individual that made an impression on you?
Have you ever made a complete fool of yourself in front of others?
Have you ever done something you wished you could take back?
Have you ever had a near-death experience?
What was the most ill you’ve ever been? How did it cause you to reflect on your life?
What was the happiest you’ve ever been?
What was the most trying experience of your life?
Have you ever done something for which you did not apologize, but still wish you could?
Have you ever had an experience in a foreign country that taught you a lesson about yourself/your culture?
Have you ever been arrested?
Have you ever been mistaken for someone else?
Have you ever carried out a practical joke that either succeeded or failed?
Have you ever had an experience while working that made you think about the nature of your work/vocation/yourself as a worker?
Have you ever had to make a life-or-death decision for yourself or someone else?
What’s the most impulsive thing you’ve ever done on a date?
What’s the most impulsive thing you’ve ever done in the name of love?
What’s the most impulsive thing you’ve ever done, period?
What was your bravest or most courageous moment?
What was the worst injury you’ve ever sustained?
Have you ever had to make the choice between doing the right thing and the wrong thing?
What was the one moment in high school you’ll never forget, for all the right or wrong reasons?
Have you ever been so lost you couldn’t find your way back?
Have you ever lost or broken something and then not been able to admit it?

Last Newspaper to Publish April 2043: Story-Based Ideas to Save Newspapering

Posted on February 11, 2009 by KatHansen

The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging has extrapolated information from University of North Carolina journalism-school professor Phil Meyer to determine that the very last newspaper will land on doorsteps in April 2043.

I’ve said in a past entry that I’m OK with the inevitable death of newspapers as long as they don’t predecease me. Given that I plan to live to 100, 2043 isn’t quite going to cut it.

Even now, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reports that for 40 percent of survey respondents, the Internet is their primary news source, for 70 percent, it’s TV news, and for just 35 percent, it’s newspapers (the numbers add up to more than 100 percent because respondents could give multiple answers).

Newspaper journalism is moving inexorably online. “Multimedia” and “interactive” are becoming the watchwords. At the Society for New Design, Tyson Evans blogged about interactive and multimedia highlights of 2008, noting “a spectrum of technologies and storytelling methods” that are indeed worth a look. Tyson cites my grade-school pal Jeff Jarvis, who writes:

The story was all we had before — it’s what would fit onto a newspaper page or into a broadcast show. But a discrete and serial series of articles over days cannot adequately cover the complex stories going on now nor can they properly inform the public. There’s too much repetition. Too little explanation. The knowledge is not cumulative. Each instance is necessarily shallow. And when more big stories come — as they have lately! — in scarce time and space and with scarce resources, each becomes even shallower. We never catch up, we never get smarter. Articles perpetuate a Ground Hog Day kind of journalism.

Here are a few story-based methods that may not save the venerable print newspaper but may save news-publishing organizations, even as they change their approaches:

- Blogging: The shift to online journalism seems to be helping many newspapers. Some have cut back on — or completely eliminated — print editions in favor of online formats. LATimes.com, the online incarnation of the LA Times, boosted readership 143 percent, primarily through the use of blogs.
- Exceptional multimedia storytelling: Sites like MediaStorm are “usher[ing] in the next generation of multimedia storytelling by publishing social documentary projects incorporating photojournalism, interactivity, animation, audio and video for distribution across multiple media.”
- Interactive databases: I don’t entirely understand interactive databases, but long-time journalist Steve Buttry says he’s used databases for more than a decade. In a report to Newspaper Next (which costs $19.95), Buttry explains how communication companies can use interactive databases to shape a prosperous future. He also cites iowafloodstories as an example of an interactive database. (Elsewhere on the Web, Buttry offers a primer on the most traditional elements of writing a good journalistic story.)
- Liveblogging. Buttry notes the development of liveblogging as a storytelling form. Liveblogging is popular at conferences, and folks have liveblogged events such as the Hudson River plane crash. I made a lame, technology-plagued attempt to liveblog the inauguration of Barack Obama and am not a bit surprised that the New York Times did a much better job of it.
- Visuals. Seeming to acknowledge that 70 percent that gets its news primarily through TV, newspapers are increasingly it their stock-in-trade to tell stories visually. An article by Dane Stickney last fall in the American Journalism Review debated the merits of the “charticle,” “combinations of text, images and graphics that take the place of a full article.” Stickney reported on Josh Awtry, who has the reputation as a “story killer” because of his “steadfast support for the short, graphic-driven alternate story form,” the charticle. Stickney quotes Awtry as defending the practice: “I’m not out to destroy narrative. Just bad narrative.” Apparently my own local newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel is a hotbed of charticle-ism. The Poynter Institute found that “alternative story forms like charticles did a better job of catching readers’ attention than traditional narratives,” Stickney reports. Opponents note that techniques like charticles that cater to readers’ short attention spans tend to become self-fulfilling. We become so accustomed to short, easy-to-digest forms that longer, word-filled narratives become daunting. But, Stickney notes, “readers also want to be told stories in longer, captivating ways, in compelling traditional narratives.”
- Other Alternate Story Forms: Barbara Allen and Kelsea Gurski blog at the Newspaper Association of America about alternate story forms or “alts,” which according to the Chris Courtney, design director of Chicago Tribune’s free news and entertainment tabloid Red Eye, are “scannable, focused, reader-driven, non-narrative piece in which readers consume information in chunks.” These “alts” are said to yield greater information retention than traditional narratives do. (But are they as enjoyable to read?). Courtney includes charticles on a list that also comprises breakout boxes, timelines, Topic 101 (breaking the idea into key facts). how tos, graphic novels, quizzes, catch-ups (to reorient the reader with previous events), and combinations of these “alts.”
- Capitalizing on pattern recognition and the need for coherence. Howard C. Weaver of the McClatchey newspaper company reprinted in a blog a speech he had given to a group of publishers and editors in the late 1990s. Though newspapers have changed drastically and the market has become exponentially more difficult even since then, Weaver’s words still offer hope for the printed newspaper:
  
  I honestly believe that most of the persistent, misguided talk you hear about the inevitable demise of newspapers is based on one simpleminded fact: that the act of printing words on paper simply seems out-dated. Because these critics and naysayers do not realize that we’re appealing to basic human capacities and meeting basic, primal needs [pattern recognition and the need for coherence], they mistakenly conclude that the service we provide will be easily replaced by some flashier, more beguiling product — any day now.
  
  But the fact is that while text seems old fashioned, it remains by far the most efficient way to transfer complex information.
  
  Weaver notes that the printed word has going for it the fact that it’s asynchronous — “you don’t have to listen to the story in the order it’s spoken. It’s also permanent. Good reporting and writing transfers power because you can read n 10 minutes what took the reporter 10 hours to report and write.

The ultimate power of the written word, though, is storytelling, Weaver asserts. Weaver ends by talking about his time at the Anchorage Daily News:

At the Daily News, we wanted to be Alaska’s tribal fire, the place where Alaskans gathered to tell the stories that defined themselves as a people. That same aspiration is alive and engaged at the newspaper today, and it is one in which you all can readily and profitably share. You’re the storytellers, and the power and the magic of a tale well told rests well within your grasp.

Can any medium other than newspapers tell the stories that define a people? What must newspapers do to maintain that role? The debate continues.

Birth of a Community-Storytelling Project

Posted on February 10, 2009 by KatHansen

In Web and social-media time, it feels like Jennifer Warwick and I have been friends for ages and ages. It’s really been only since 2004, but she’s one of my “oldest” virtual friends, meaning that I have all sorts of warm feelings and admiration for her even though we’ve never met.

One impetus of my admiration is the radical way she has reinvented herself. She was a high-powered, in-demand consultant, blogger, coach, and speaker in fast-paced LA. About three years ago, she moved to Texas and became an actress, singer, director, writer (and other roles that I’m probably inadvertently leaving out), and above all, champion of rural life. Here’s what she said at the time:

After 20-odd years in the hustle and bustle of LA, we moved to a little teeny town of 7,000 just outside Austin to recalibrate our lives and spend more time with each other and doing things we love.

That town is Bastrop, and Jennifer has initiated a story-based project about her adopted little town; thus, writing about her today provides an appropriate followup to yesterday’s entry about Barbara Ganley and community storytelling.

Jennifer’s vision is to collect, preserve, and celebrate Bastrop’s stories.

In a project update, she writes:

… The Bastrop Folklife Project will become a self-sustaining nonprofit
organization, significantly contributing to Bastrop’s quality of life and its cultural and
heritage tourism efforts. We will provide Bastrop residents of all ages with training in
collecting and preserving oral histories as well as in the performing arts, and will entertain thousands of citizens and visitors annually with high-quality live performances, books and recordings, celebrating a history and culture that is uniquely Bastrop.

The Bastrop Folklife Project captures vanished ways of life and specific moments in American history by collecting the folklore, myths, songs and memories passed down over the years by members of our community, and creating illuminating and memorable books, soundtracks, and live performances to keep those stories alive.

It’s exciting to observe this project at its birth. I hope to report on its progress. It’s one thing to note a community-storytelling project; it’s another to see it in its infancy and watch it grow. Watch the development of the project’s Web site, now under construction.

Champion of the Sustained Storytelling Practice: Barbara Ganley

Posted on February 9, 2009 by KatHansen

One of my new heroes is Barbara Ganley, who blogs at (The New) BG Blogging. I find her fascinating because of her work with story in higher education and in community storytelling. She recently left the former to focus on the latter:

Barbara Ganley recently left higher education to set up the nonprofit, Digital Explorations, dedicated to helping rural towns in the United States explore the impact of social media on physical community, through the creation of downtown Centers for Community Digital Exploration.

Her blog is also beautifully illustrated with photos.

Barbara posted a particularly rich blog entry last September, in essence her syllabus for a workshop she co-taught (with Joe Antonioli) at Middlebury College on capturing the stories of a small country town. The entry includes a vast list of storytelling resources.

But in December Barbara lamented that she does not see enough storytelling that does what she believes it should do:

We go on and on about the power of storytelling, its role in human culture, but how are we using the telling, the sharing and the art itself within classrooms and communities? As a classroom teacher and now in my work in rural communities, only rarely do I see sustained, connected use of both stories and storytelling to build healthy bonds and bridges, to synthesize thought and experience, or to imagine a better future. Certainly not in higher ed. Not in community work either. At least not enough.

She cites “a simple storytelling exercise” that has had this positive effect when she’s used it in workshops:

Participants feel closer to one another, trust builds, and differences are honored. People laugh. But it is a tender, fragile trust, one that can easily fade out once the “workshop” or the course ends.

That trust, therefore, needs to be part of a sustained storytelling practice, Barbara writes:

When this storytelling extends, however, through sustained practice, and stories are caught here, commented on, revised, and extended on blogs, on wikis, on sites … where they become threads woven together of a complex story, the moment of person-to-person connection has the potential to deepen, to open up through contact with other stories, and to move others – if the story is told well. Hence the need for practice, for developing a practice where storytelling is used.

She goes on to cite three examples of blogs that represent this kind of sustained practice and “wrap the tendrils of story around whomever happens upon them and takes the time to read.”

My only complaint? I can’t see a way to get in touch with Barbara other than to leave a comment on her blog. I’d love to invite her to do a Q&A.