Truthful or Engaging?

Abstract

Storytelling is hyped as an instrument to attract audiences, but its potential to engage simultaneously makes it a source of criticism and concern. The debate seems stuck between what the profession of journalism is supposed to be about (facts, objectivity, truth-telling), and the way these ideals are threatened by the trend of engaging users. In this article we explore how it is possible that the discussion about journalism and storytelling seems to have made little progress over many decades. The problem, we argue, is that the discussion appears to take place in the same discursive space, but in actuality takes its cues from several distinctive repertoires, which are in themselves coherent and make sense but when played off against each other create false oppositions that do little justice to the arguments made on both sides. We will try to open up and enlarge the discursive space to talk about storytelling in the context of journalism by showing how both terms function differently in seven distinct repertoires. This maneuver should enable us to move forward the analysis, the value, the function, and the conceptual development of journalistic storytelling.

Keywords:

• engagement
• interpretative repertoires
• journalism
• narrative
• reality
• storytelling
• truth

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This article is part of the research project “The New News Consumer: User-based Innovation to Meet Paradigmatic Change in News Use and Media Habits”, a collaboration between the VU University Amsterdam and the University of Groningen, sponsored by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Dutch journalism organizations Buitenhof, De Persgroep Nederland, EenVandaag, EO, NCRV, NDC Mediagroep, Nieuwsuur, and NOS Nieuws.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) [grant number 314-99-103].