Journalism, COVID-19, and the Opportunity of Oral History

ABSTRACT

As COVID-19 wreaked havoc across the globe during the spring of 2020, journalists increasingly turned to oral history to document and share stories of people coping with tragedy. Journalism and oral history share many commonalities, but as the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates, oral historians often lag behind journalists in making stories relevant and immediate to the wider public. Journalists, likewise, typically lack oral historians’ careful attention and archival methods. Set against the backdrop of COVID-19, this article explores recent developments between oral history and journalism, suggesting how oral historians can evolve to make oral history more accessible, beneficial, and immediate to wider audiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• coronavirus
• oral history
• journalism
• ethics
• methods
• relevancy

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Henry Chu, compiled in Garrett Graff, “Birth, Death, Weddings: An Oral History of COVID-19 Disruptions,” Wired, March 27, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/birth-death-weddings-an-oral-history-of-covid-19-disruptions/.

2. Ibid.

3. Mark Feldstein, “Kissing Cousins: Journalism and Oral History,” Oral History Review 31, no. 1 (Winter – Spring, 2004): 1–22.

4. For example, see Rich McHugh, “An Oral History of a Predator,” Vanity Fair, March, 2020, https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2020/3/an-oral-history-of-a-predator, in which thirty women recounted how Harvey Weinstein sexually abused them.

5. For example, see David Fleming, “Long Live the Butt Fumble,” ESPN The Magazine, December 4, 2017, http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/21401659/butt-fumble-oral-history-new-york-jets-nfl-king-bloopers-five-year-anniversary; Andy Greene, “Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer’: An Oral History,” Rolling Stone, June 16, 2017, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/radioheads-ok-computer-an-oral-history-196156/; and Alan Siegel, “Green Screen: The Oral History of ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,’” The Ringer, March 31, 2020, https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/3/31/21196871/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-1990-movie-oral-history.

6. Andy Greene, “An Oral History of The Office’s Insane Fire Drill Episode,” Vulture, March 24, 2020, https://www.vulture.com/2020/03/the-office-fire-drill-episode.html.

7. Alessandro Portelli, “What Makes Oral History Different,” in The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1991), 45–58.

8. John Frank Weaver, “An Oral History of Oral Histories,” McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, September 25, 2014, https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-oral-history-of-oral-histories.

9. All quotes from Tyler Francke, “‘I’m Scared, To Be Honest’: An Oral History of Canby in the Midst of the COVID Crisis,” Canby Now Podcast, March 18, 2020, https://canbynowpod.com/history/im-scared-to-be-honest-an-oral-history-of-canby-in-the-midst-of-the-covid-crisis/.

10. All quotes from Steve Fennessy et al, “21st Century Plague: 17 Georgians on What Coronavirus Has Done – And What It Can Still Do,” Atlanta Magazine, March 29, 2020, https://www.atlantamagazine.com/great-reads/21st-century-plague/.

11. For examples see StoryCorps, “Stories,” https://storycorps.org/stories/?taxonomy=editorial&term=duty-connection-covid (accessed May 29, 2020); and “The Test,” This American Life, https://www.thisamericanlife.org/698/the-test (accessed May 29, 2020).

12. Justin Hendrix, Twitter Post, March 17, 2020, https://twitter.com/justinhendrix; Allison P. Davis, “An Oral History of a Social-Distancing Birthday Party,” The Cut, March 15, 2020, https://www.thecut.com/2020/03/oral-history-social-distancing-birthday-party.html; Joshua David Stein, “An Oral History of a Zoom Bar Mitzvah,” Grub Street, March 18, 2020, https://www.grubstreet.com/2020/03/an-oral-history-of-a-zoom-bar-mitzvah.html; Madison Malone Kircher, “An Oral History of a Socially Distanced Wedding,” The Cut, March 23, 2020, https://www.thecut.com/2020/03/brides-throw-social-distanced-wedding-on-new-york-street.html; Tony Sizemore, on the death of Birdie Shelton, as told to Eli Saslow, “Voices from the Pandemic,” The Washington Post, March 28, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/voices-of-the-pandemic/; and Monica Hesse and Dan Zak, “‘The Holiday of a Lifetime’: An Oral History of the infected, rejected Zaandam Cruise Ship,” The Washington Post, April 2, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-holiday-of-a-lifetime-an-oral-history-of-the-infected-rejected-zaandam-cruise-ship/2020/04/02/958c2288-7491-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html.

13. Documenting COVID-19, Chicago History Museum, https://www.chicagohistory.org/covid19history/.

14. See the crowdsourced document collecting a list of current projects documenting COVID-19. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v5tso8spFq6SpW53h2OJULcdRoPEbyI6xpah31kW-H0/edit.

15. See https://www.pixstori.com/and “Dow 50 Story Gathering Project: From Demonstration to Commemoration,” University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, https://www.library.wisc.edu/archives/archives/oral-history-program/uwohp-and-outreach/dow-50-story-gathering-project-powered-by-ohms/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Evan Faulkenbury

Evan Faulkenbury is an assistant professor of history at SUNY Cortland. His courses focus on United States history, public history, and oral history. He is the author of Poll Power: The Voter Education Project and the Movement for the Ballot in the American South (UNC Press, 2019).