Tag / journalism

by Cila Warncke

On Writing Towards Progress

The upcoming release of Lee, Kate Winslet’s film about photographer Lee Miller, got me thinking about how much has changed for women in the past century. And how little.

Lee Miller was one of four women photojournalists accredited by the United States armed forces in World War II. Among the many striking images she created, Miller photographed the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau: indelible evidence of Nazi atrocities.

Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

She was one of four women allowed to shoot the war.

The issue of Vogue with Winslet on the cover, promoting Lee, also featured a profile of Karine Jean-Pierre, the first Black person and first openly gay person to hold the post of US Press Secretary.

Why, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, are we still tallying firsts?

Progress, such as it is, is non-linear, unpredictable and subject to reversal.

In 1997, I started my BA at University of Pennsylvania.

It was only the 64th year in the university’s 257-year history that women were allowed access to a full-time, four-year undergraduate degree program. 

In 1998, I became a Daily Pennsylvanian reporter. The first woman permitted to join the illustrious school newspaper did so in 1962. Her name was Sharon Lee Ribner. Ms Ribner (later Mrs Schlagel) had a long, successful career in journalism. She passed away in 2022.

It boggles my mind that my opportunity to become a journalist hung on the balance of 35 years. And that the pioneering female journalist at Penn and I shared a lifetime.

Photo by Michael Rosner-Hyman on Unsplash

Scan any newspaper. It’s plain to see the world is not on an orderly march towards a better future.

This fact affects groups and individuals differently. The more recent one’s rights and privileges, the more parlous.

Women, LGBTQ+ individuals, people of color, immigrants, the poor, the disabled are always the most vulnerable.

In times of economic or social crisis, it is too often their well-being that is considered dispensable.

Progress is parlous because power is not.

When threatened, power does whatever it takes to protect itself. Progress is rarely on that agenda.

As psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argues in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, the best defense against external chaos is internal order. By identifying and pursuing what matters most, people can craft rich, rewarding lives in suboptimal circumstances.

Education is the essential ingredient, here. An untrained mind is a disorderly mind. A mind unaccustomed to effort is a aimless and ineffective.

While education is not a panacea, or substitute for social justice, it is a vital tool for individuals waiting for the moral arc of the universe to budge.

One of the many reasons I’m passionate about teaching writing is that it is yoga for the brain (no Lycra required). Writing hones logic, burnishes imagination and creates structure. And you can do it anywhere.

Structural inequalities are huge barriers to success. We need to dismantle those barriers. We also need to equip individuals to work around them. Writing is a skill that promotes individual success and provides a means to tackle unjust systems.

For more on writing towards success, check out my new Substack newsletter

by Cila Warncke

Writing from Newsroom to Classroom

Things students have said to me:

  • ‘I asked my teacher how long the essay needed to be and he said, “how long is a piece of string?”‘
  • ‘Wait! You can start a sentence with ‘but’?’
  • ‘What is the process for answering an essay question?’

These students attend good schools. They are above-average smart and capable. Yet somehow, despite towers of assignments and torrents of instruction, they lack basic writing skills and confidence.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Reflecting on my own experience and writing practice, this isn’t a huge surprise. The only explicit writing instruction that stuck with me was my seventh-grade teacher’s spiel on five-paragraph essays and, several years later, the guidance of creative non-fiction professor, Paul Hendrickson.

In between times, I was blundering much like my current students: writing without a clue.

In the end, I learned to write in the newsroom, not the classroom. Not because the student editors of the Daily Pennsylvanian were literary geniuses (though some likely grew into such) but because they worshipped at the altar of structure.

Head.

Subhead.

Lede.

Byline.

Pyramid.

The discipline of x-point headers and y-column inches taught me that writing is 95% organization.

Photo by Daniel McCullough on Unsplash

However brilliant or clever or downright earth-shattering ones ideas, they are meaningless until organized and presented in a way that makes sense to a reader.

Put another way: to write well, one needs an audience, a reason to address them and strategy for delivering the message.

Based on my students’ comments, what they are getting, instead of practical, actionable teaching, is either prescriptive nonsense (‘don’t start a sentence with “but” or “and”‘ — er, why not?) or no meaningful guidance at all.

This leads to problematic assumptions, such as ‘you’re either good at writing, or you’re not’ or ‘it doesn’t matter if I write well because nobody is going to read it’ or, worse, ‘I’ll just ask ChatGPT.’

Problematic because students who do not learn to write all too often do not learn to think.

What students ask, day in day out, class after class, are not sophisticated technical questions about writing, but questions answerable with basic reasoning and critical thinking.

  • How do I find evidence in the text?
  • How do I know what a character is like?
  • How can I write more about this topic?
  • How do I explain this example?
  • How do I know what the theme is?

What students need are blueprints and tools: structure.

In the newsroom, there is a basic means of getting information: the interview.

There are then standard, structured ways to render that information into articles.

Neophyte reporters were drilled in whowhatwhywherewhen. We learned our opinions were unwelcome without hard evidence behind them. We were taught attribution and verification; how to search archives and read microfiche. To my mortification, we were taught to go back and ask the same questions again, and if we got yelled at or told ‘no comment’ to write it down, because that was evidence too.

With due respect to my graduate school writing professors and peers, I learned a hundred times more in the newsroom than in the classroom. And it is no coincidence my most significant writing teacher was, yup, a journalist.

Not all students want to spend time in a newsroom, which is fine.

But every student deserves a classroom that gives them an equally fine set of tools.

Photo by Alexander Hafemann on Unsplash

‘[Language] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish,’ George Orwell argued, ‘but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible.’

To reverse the process requires a more structured, disciplined, logical approach to teaching writing.

It is a process in which the good writing produced is one-tenth of the iceberg; the crucial nine-tenths is intangible critical and creative thinking skills.

As an educator, I am committed to continuously developing more effective, engaging, efficient ways to teach students to think and write. Their future success — and the health of our societies — depends on it.

What thinking and writing skills are most important in your classroom? Share in the comments!

by Cila Warncke

Journalism’s Role in Teaching Critical Thinking

This week I’m going to share a podcast recorded last summer (on one very HOT afternoon) for Le Sallay Academy. It features a conversation between myself and the wise, incisive author/journalist/memoirist Kat Lister.

It is shared with the kind permission of Le Sallay, which facilitated and hosted the podcast as part of its Le Sallay Talks series.

Reach Kat Lister on LinkedIn or via Blake Friedmann Literary Agency

***

Here are some highlights from the conversation:

Kat Lister on navigating the media of today

It’s very hard even for those working in the industry to navigate such a fast-changing landscape, and I don’t think there is any one person who is doing it perfectly. And the way that we learn and grow, and familiarize ourselves is by having conversations like this, which have to be very open about the downfalls of social media, but also about what the positives are, and what we can gain from it.

It’s not going anywhere. None of these platforms is going anywhere. The only thing that can change is our relationship with it and that can seem quite chaotic nowadays: it can be a hard place to navigate, it can be a hard place to verify. What is news? What is fake news?

The best way to make our way through this is to think about the original source. You see a video shared a gazillion times on Twitter, and that almost immediately verifies it in your mind, but actually, that’s not the asset to look at. I often have to double-check myself, because I will be almost hitting retweet, and then I’ll be like, hang on a second, where was the video filmed, who filmed it, where was it filmed, are the details correct? Is the date right?
Contextualizing tweets or videos on TikTok or wherever you happen to find yourself, is tremendously important. We’ve all become fact-checkers in a way, and that’s an incredible responsibility not only on the content creators but also the responsibility of the readers, on the audience. As we are saying, look at things more critically, and now, more than ever that’s become quite urgent. And it’s not something any of us are doing in a perfect way, I don’t think.

Cila Warncke on teaching

Yes, these are the traditional 5 W-s: When, Where, When, Who, and Why. And this is something that as a Literature teacher I really emphasize, continually asking students: “Okay, what’s the context of this? Whether it’s an article or a short story, make sure you understand where this is coming from. There is a direct relationship between that kind of critical reading of anything and the ability to navigate the news.”

Click here to listen to the full podcast

by Cila Warncke

My Life in Music

Photo by Hennie Stander on Unsplash

As mentioned in a previous post, I have written for online indie zine Pennyblackmusic for the better part of a couple of decades. One of my recent projects was a series of interviews about my fellow writers, which concluded with one of my fellow writers interviewing me. As my editor, John Clarkson, put it:

“For the last two years in her ‘A Life in Music’ column Cila Warncke has talked to several of our writers and photographers about how music has affected and influenced them. We were interested in finding out in ‘A Life in Music’ what ignited a bunch of obsessives’ passion for music, and discovered that much of our team had lead lives that were just as fascinating as many of the bands. Now that column is coming to an end, and in the last in the series we have turned the tables on Cila and Nick Dent-Robinson has spoken to her about her ‘Life in Music’.”

This may well be the first time I’ve been interviewed in print so thought I’d share.

Cila Warncke: A Life in Music by Nick Dent-Robinson

Cila Warncke is one of the earliest contributors to Penny Black Music magazine, having started writing for them more than two decades ago. Penny Black founder and editor John Clarkson recalls that Cila’s first interview for the magazine was with Cinerama about their “Disco Volante” album. She was the magazine’s first female writer and, as John Clarkson says, he is proud that Cila paved the way for many more excellent female music writers in Penny Black Music over the coming years – as rock music writing was notorious for being too much of a “boys’ club”.

As a professional journalist, Cila says she was attracted by the scope for originality and independence (and lack of male chauvinism) at PBM – and she has produced a fascinating range of articles over her time there. Although she left Penny Black Music in the early 2000s and worked on the glossy London-based music magazine, ‘Q” she was welcomed back in 2012 and has been a regular contributor since then. She has written about the impact of the pandemic on those working behind the scenes in the world of live music, about the eventual demise of ‘Q’ magazine and she wrote a very thoughtful piece about Marilyn Manson. Plus she has produced excellent articles on so many other diverse topics.

Cila also originated the ‘A Life In Music’ series where she probed fellow contributors to PBM about their musical tastes, background and aspirations. – All done with great tact, sensitivity and diplomacy plus insight – key hallmarks of Cila’s style. That series is now drawing towards its conclusion – but not before we turn the tables and seize the opportunity to ask Cila about her own ‘Life In Music”’

Born in 1980 and raised in a small town in Oregon over on the West side of the USA, in her late teens Cila moved to the East Coast to study English at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia – an esteemed Ivy League institution. Subsequently she moved to London to undertake further studies at King’s College before becoming a journalist. She thrived in the UK, enjoying all the many cultural opportunities available just after the turn of the millennium as well as the proximity to Europe. She and her fellow-American husband Chris Hall, a production audio technician in the world of live music, have travelled widely and have now made their permanent base in Valencia, Spain. Cila was at her home in Valencia when I started to ask about her ‘Life in Music’.

What are some of her earliest musical memories?

“Well, my parents weren’t musicians and because my mother was an Evangelical Christian, anything that wasn’t a hymn or soft God-rock was not too popular. It was a cool, rebellious thing to listen to anything other than that. My sister and I would listen to local radio, though and so I got some of the sound of late 80s/early 90s rock and pop culture through that. But my brother – who is around 6 years older than I – loved The Smiths, The Cure and some of the other British post-punk/new wave bands. I enjoyed that sound and I recall some of the record sleeves up on my brother’s wall – brilliant images which made a lasting impression.

The first (non-Christian!) record I remember buying when I was 13 or 14 was Sting’s “Fields of Gold…Best of: 1984-94” and my sister (who was 8 years older and much cooler, always) bought me Green Day’s ‘Dookie’ – which I still think is a great record!”

Read the rest of the interview at Pennyblackmusic.co.uk

by Cila Warncke

5 – Loud, obnoxious, American

This column appeared in The Daily Pennsylvanian 21 years ago, on 31 January 2000.

Speak up!

Loud, obnoxious – and decidedly American

All I could think was that I’ll never be able to open my mouth in this class again. He was ruining it for me, ruining everything with his grating tone, his blatant rudeness, the patronizing way he kept interrupting other students to correct their opinions

If only he was German or French or Dutch or Spanish, I would have been all right. But he was American. Loud, overbearing, inconsiderate, arrogant and undeniably American.

As much as I wanted to light into him, my tongue was tied by the sudden awareness that my voice and accent would betray me in an instant. It wouldn’t matter what I said, my accent would stamp me just as quickly as his had identified him — and equate us beyond my power of control.

Until that mortifying hour in my critical theory class, surrounded by British students who were —justifiably — looking daggers at this specimen of Americana, I hadn’t realized to what extent language shapes and projects our identity.

It was the first time I had ever been afraid to speak because of how I would be branded by my accent and diction.

The worst of it, though, was the fact that my boorish fellow student could not have been French or German or Korean, or anything but a citizen of the dear old U.S. of A., for the simple reason that no other nation so assiduously fosters such linguistic arrogance.

Whatever his name was, the plaid-shirted Washington, D.C., boy was merely projecting a particularly noxious version of the snobbery of Americans toward anyone who doesn’t speak our language. (Granted, Brits and Americans ostensibly share a language, but the differences in manner and expression are so fundamental as to constitute British and American as two separate entities.)

It is a condescension that is manifested in American language education — or should I say the lack thereof. Some young people are fortunate enough to attend high schools that provide the opportunity to seriously study another language, but more often than not, language courses are viewed as something of a joke.

My own high school experience was with Spanish, a lovely and eminently useful language. However, for all the benefits I would have accrued by actually developing a proficiency in it, I was never given much in the way of an occasion or encouragement to do so.

Spanish class was a haphazard affair, a conglomeration of worksheets, flash cards, pop quizzes and lots of goofing off. In my second year, due to lack of funds and interest, it was taught on a semi-volunteer basis by an assortment of half-a-dozen people, some of whom spoke less Spanish than I did (which is saying something indeed). After muddling along with A grades for two years, I moved on to other subjects and was never given reason to use Spanish again.

However, the language problem is a more general one, beyond my own school or secondary education in general. I remember reading over a college application form from the University of Oregon where “foreign language” was merely a suggestion, not even a prerequisite, for study at the university level.

Frighteningly, we’re used to it. No one ever makes a big deal of it—not politicians and not educators, and I imagine parents only rarely. We are conditioned from an early age to regard learning another language as something that may be done, but is never in any way vital.

Sure, it’ll help you get into a better university, but not much else. Or if you wish to go into business, or international law, it might be useful to acquire another language. But the idea that it is a crucial part of educational and social development to partake of another culture through language study simply does not seem to exist in the States.

Hence the arrogance, hence the rudeness, hence the all-too-often-true stereotype of Americans as loud-mouthed, know-it-all morons. Because, you see, we are never forced to identify with another group through the intimate process of acquiring their mode of speech.

“Why should we?,” the argument goes. Everyone speaks English anyway, so why should we learn Spanish or French or what have you? We don’t need to.

Wrong.

We do need to. Not for the sake of mere communication, though.

Learning another language is not about knowing how to ask for directions or tell time or find the loo or order a meal, it is about understanding how to truly identify with someone else. It is about entering into their life through the medium with which we shape our lives – language.

Cila Warncke is a junior English major from Portland, Ore. She is studying abroad in London this semester. Bigmouth Strikes Again appears on Mondays.

by Cila Warncke

4 – Deaf Stereo

Profile of a short-lived indie electro outfit written for Clash sometime in ’06 or ’07

Photo by Rocco Dipoppa on Unsplash (NB: Not Deaf Stereo)

Deaf Stereo

Deaf Stereo has been percolating ever since Luke, Will and Ben met at Westminster Uni on a music course, at the turn of the millennium. It was four years before they had a name and an idea to go with it. “We decided to stop playing stuff we thought we should, and play music we wanted to listen to,” they explain. The music they wanted to play, if their first single is anything to go by, is solid, grooving beat driven indie pop. Disco biscuits with a side order of Jack Daniels, say.

“We’re into bands like the Chemical Brothers, Underworld… we like the peaks and troughs of dance, but we also wanted proper songs,” says Barney, who describes his role in the band as doing “keyboards and laptop stuff.” About a year ago, they completed their set up, with fifth member, Tom, the clean-cut drummer.

Sitting in the trendy bowels of the Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, it’s Will, who plays bass, who keeps up the steadiest stream of patter. A series of wry asides from behind a hand rolled cigarette. “Would I ever sail a giant effigy of myself down the Thames? Shit. If I were as big as Michael Jackson that’s the least I would do. I’d have a whole set of them.”

Ben, (guitars, backing vocals) is small, dark, thoughtful. He takes on the philosophical questions. Or rather, turns questions philosophical. If you had a band uniform, say, what would it be? Luke (singer) runs a hand through his beautifully cut hair and says, “That’s something we’re still thinking about.” But Ben launches into an earnest and articulate explanation of the dangers of embracing style over substance. Absorbing this, Luke effortlessly readjusts his stance on the issue. “We happy wearing what we wear. No one’s told us to change anything yet.”

These small, subtle realignments happen more than once. Not in a deliberate presenting-a-united-front kind of way, but in a fluid manner which suggests long practice in accommodating each other’s ideas and opinions. Disagreements are minor: Barney prefers Addlestone cider, while Ben is happiest drinking mojitos. Will predicts a Dire Straits revival to general eye-rolling. When it matters, they’re in perfect sync. They want the right songs on the album (“we have a reputation as a party band, but we have some slower songs too, we want to showcase that”); they like the same venues (Koko and Fabric, where they played a riotous 3am gig); and perhaps most importantly, they all know what they want on their rider: “You mean when we have a rider? We’ll have as much as we can get! We got sandwiches when we were at Brixton, that was great,” Luke says.

So far, they’ve humped their equipment through calf-deep mud to play at Glastonbury last year. They’ve written a raft of songs which will somehow have to be whittled into an album. They’ve learned to party on backstage freebies because “we can’t afford to go out unless we’re playing.” They’ve been given some good advice: “Get a job, sort your life out, stop wasting your time,” Will guffaws. And what advice would they give someone following in their footsteps? Ben and Will catch each other’s eye and chorus, “Get a job! Stop wasting your time!” They all laugh.

by Cila Warncke

2 – Taste of Myanmar

This was from a 2013 recipe column, written after a trip to Myanmar.

Photo by Chinh Le Duc on Unsplash

A Taste of the Shan state, Myanmar

After fifty years of repressive military dictatorship Myanmar (formerly Burma) is a land of mystery. Most of us Westerners know little about it apart from news images of Buddhist monks, pagodas, and Nobel Peace Prize-winning democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi. Though tourism has increased since a democratic government took power in 2010 Myanmar is still the least-explored part of Southeast Asia. Like many first-time visitors I was bowled over by how large and geographically diverse it is.

Almost twice the land mass of Britain, it drives a slender wedge between Bangladesh and India on the west and China, Laos and Thailand on the east. In the space of 10 days my companion and I went from the heat and clamour of Yangon to lush mountains in the Mon state, the arid plains around Bagan, and the otherworldly beauty of Inle Lake in the Shan state.

Set some 3000 feet up in the mountains in the eastern part of the country, Inle Lake is Myanmar’s answer to Lake Tahoe – if Tahoe were populated by artisans, fishermen and farmers rather than frat boys and Valley girls. The inhabitants of this bucolic water world are the most gracious and self-sufficient people we encountered and we were fortunate to see some of the local craftspeople at work making the region’s renowned hand-woven cloth and cheroot cigarettes.

Inle Lake is also justifiably famous for the quality of its produce which is grown on floating island gardens. Their crops include cucumber, squash and tomato, which are the most flavoursome I’ve ever eaten. Shan rice noodles – the quintessential Myanmar fast food – were my favourite culinary find of the trip. The following recipes are my interpretation of two ubiquitous dishes: tomato salad and Shan rice noodle salad. Due to the language barrier I couldn’t ask many questions about preparation and ingredients, so they are based on observation and repeated tastings.

Photo by Robin St on Unsplash

Myanmar tomato salad

As a starter or side for two

  • 2 large ripe red tomatoes
  • 1 large green tomato
  • 1 small red onion
  • 1/3 cup peanuts, coarsely crushed

Preparation:

  1. Slice the tomatoes, being sure to catch the juice
  2. Sliver the onion
  3. Mix the crushed peanuts with the tomato juice
  4. Thoroughly toss all ingredients. Season to taste.

Shan noodle salad

Serves two

  • 6oz of rice noodles
  • 1 cup cress or other fresh green
  • 1 cup bean sprouts
  • ¼ chopped green onion
  • French-fried onion strips
  • Crushed peanuts

Dressing:

  • Dark soy sauce
  • Fresh bird’s eye chilli
  • Garlic

Preparation:

  1. Prepare the noodles according to packet instructions
  2. When cooked quickly toss with the cress, spouts and chopped onions till the greens begin to wilt
  3. Garnish with French-fried onions and crushed peanuts
  4. For the dressing add finely sliced chilli and garlic to the soy sauce and serve on the side

NB: Use tamari instead of soy sauce to make this gluten-free

by Cila Warncke

1 – The Wrongs of the Religious Right

January 27th is my 41st birthday. To mark the occasion I am going to post 41 pieces of my published writing — one a day for the next few weeks. Some are minor triumphs; others capture a moment; others are naive and flamboyant. But they matter, to me anyway, because they are the warp and woof of my life.

The following column appeared in The Daily Pennsylvanian on Monday, 6 March 2000. The same day, as it happens, that I got my first tattoo before getting blotto at my best friend’s birthday party.

The wrongs of the U.S. religious right

‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’

According to The New York Times, current media-darling John McCain has just put his foot in it — big time. All because he had the gall — the audacity to suggest that maybe Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are not in fact directly related to God the Father.

“Talk about hate-mongering,” sniffs Marion J. Fisher, an elderly Baptist woman quoted in the Times article.

“To me, that’s what he’s doing, throwing mud and bad mouthing people who have faith and beliefs.”

Oh bless. The image of a lonely, chubby McCain figure standing on a platform flinging handfuls of slop at an overdressed granny is almost unbearably funny But that isn’t the point.

Was Ms. Marion J. Fisher — or any of the tiny-minded conservatives who are currently gathering wood to incinerate the political ambitions of the heretical McCain —actually paying attention to what he said? Has anyone had the courage to point out that, if anything, McCain was far too easy on the so-called Christian leaders he took a swing at?

McCain merely called them “agents of intolerance” when he would have done well to point out that their entire faith is founded on intolerance. He called them an “evil influence” on the Republican Party when he should have said they were an evil influence on society.

When, pray tell, did Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson do anything good for America? As much as the religious right would like to convince itself that America’s current host of social problems is a direct result of our collective straying from the fold, they are pointing the finger in precisely the wrong direction.

Fundamentalism, a throwback to our embarrassing Puritan ancestry, is a ball-and-chain around the ankle of American social and political life. When we should be concentrating on improving public education, fundamentalists start quarrels over posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms. When we should be seeking to improve social services for single-parent families, they rant on about the evils of unwed motherhood And so it goes.

My most vivid memory of Robertson’s aspirations for our country is his suggestion that we build a wall along the southern border of the U.S. to keep all those damn foreigners out.

Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority recall Oliver Cromwell and the Roundheads, whose drive for moral purity in 17th century England resulted in terror, regicide and a ban on dancing.

I’m sure God was impressed.

In short, these are not good guys. They would happily drag America back to Puritanism for their own personal gain, and apparently a lot of people love them for it. This is enough to give any free-thinking citizen serious pause.

Imagine life under the religious right. First, women could forget about reproductive rights. Second, we could look forward to children being indoctrinated at school, the tenets of Christianity being crammed down their throats. On the agenda for their education would no doubt be the evils of sex. a primer in xenophobia and a long list of who God disapproves of and why. And if you’re gay — just move to Canada now.

The ultimate drive of the religious right, after all. is not for spirituality, but for hegemony. If all they really cared about were their God and their faith, they would shut up and take themselves off to a prayer meeting. But that, heaven forbid, would be letting all us non-believers get away with it. Because the Christian right, you see, demands not just individual devotion but zealous proselytization, too. It isn’t enough to “walk humbly with God” — they have to make sure everyone else is goose-stepping along as well.

This is where the ordinary, anonymous zealots get their wires crossed with the big name zealots such as Falwell and Robertson.

The rank and file, I reckon, sincerely believe that the prominent leaders of the religious right are their best chance for the mass reform of America, while Robertson, Falwell and Co. are—I would wager—more interested in power than in redemption.

They found a niche in the market and hope that if they stick with it —convincing the faithful of the impending demise of Christianity at the hands of Catholics, Jews, homosexuals, atheists, immigrants and women — then maybe one day their domination fantasies will come true.

But don’t tell the true believers that, or you’ll be making the same cock-up McCain did.

Which is to say, you’ll be giving the religious right credit for more wit than they are actually able and willing to exercise.

Cila Wamcke is a junior English major from Portland. Ore. She is studying abroad in London this semester. Bigmouth Strikes Again appears on Mondays.

by Cila Warncke

Storytelling: Framing

Storytelling is the essence of communication. The elements of storytelling are like letters of the alphabet. When you know how to use them, you can tell your best story.

Element 19: Framing

What a story is about, and the conclusion it reaches, depends on how you frame it.

Case study:

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

hill-trump

Who they are:

Respectively, the Democratic and Republican candidates in the 2016 American presidential election. Clinton won the popular vote by an unprecedented margin. Trump won the majority of Electors and is slated to become the next President of the United States.

Why it matters:

The bitter, split decision presidential election highlighted the fact that there is no single “story”. What we think a thing means and what we believe about people and events, is drawn from a rich mass (or mess) of facts, ideas, information and preconception.

After last week’s storytelling post a reader rebutted my assertion that Hillary Clinton is “a experienced, qualified, sane, humane politician”:

Surely this must be qualified as “by comparison?” Isn’t it a fact that Hillary Clinton:

1) Supported the Iraq War forcefully and was a key proponent as an opposition pol from NY

2) Supported overthrow of Libya forcefully

3) Supported overthrow of Syria forcefully

4) Was endorsed by entire Bush family and most of GWB cabinet officials

5) Received 100s of millions from wall street banks and multi-national corporations

So, if Hillary Clinton wasn’t positioned against Trump and you judged her by her policies she would be a rightwing neo-con Republican.

I think perhaps you should also consider the story telling of the Clinton campaign which would argue that perceived racism and sexism are more important than real policies that have killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries.

 

This is a perfect example of framing. My narrative frames Hillary’s experience and views as a positive; my reader highlights different, but equally legitimate, information that casts her in a different light. Trump can, likewise, be any number of things depending on how you frame him. He is either a robust example of American iconoclasm or a racist shit. He went bankrupt and made billions; the story depends on what facts you put in the picture.

In other words:

“While reality itself does partly determine the meaning we assign to it, it doesn’t insist on any one specific meaning. So, while we all live in the same reality, we interpret it differently. Most of the time, the differences are negligible: at the day-to-day level, we agree sufficiently about most things. But some differences are radical. And that’s what politics is about.

Politics is a colossal magnification of the differences in how we perceive the world around us. And an election is a simplified, brief magnification of that. In an election, time stops, and a complex, gradually evolving jumble of differences of opinion is frozen in a single statistical figure.” Rob Wijnberg via The Correspondent

Practice: “All I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being. All I am going to do right now, for example, is write that one paragraph that sets the story in my hometown, in the late fifties, when the trains were still running. I am going to paint a picture of it, in words, on my word processor.” Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird

Remember: “One person’s craziness is another person’s reality.” ~ Tim Burton

by Cila Warncke

Elements of Storytelling 12: Ethics

Storytelling is the essence of communication. The elements of storytelling are like letters of the alphabet. When you know how to use them, you can tell your best story.

Element 12: Ethics

Great storytellers hook their audience with a clear ethos, worldview, or proposition.

Case study: Kat Lister

kat-lister

What it is:

Freelance journalist Kat Lister has carved a successful career writing for publications including Marie Clare, The Telegraph, Huff Post, InStyle, Vice, and Broadly by championing the ever-contentious cause of women’s equality.

Why it matters:

Journalists have flirted with starvation since at least 1891 (the year George Gissing published New Grub Street*). Modern multimedia journalism is unapologetically fuelled by celebrity and sensation. To survive journalists must be inimitable. Lister nails it. Everything she writes, from investigative pieces on Syria, to reportage on young Muslims, to think pieces on Brexit, “glass cliffs” and IVF is examined through lens of her feminism. Lister’s cohesive, provocative ethical stance, plus ferociously good writing, whets editors’ appetites, and has prompted 40K shares and 140K Facebook Likes (and counting).

In her own words:

I write about women and culture

Read more / Follow @Madame_George on Twitter

Practice: “Put yourself at the center [of your stories], you and what you believe to be true or right. The core, ethical concepts in which you most passionately believe are the language in which you are writing.” ~ Anne Lamott

Remember: “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” ― Elie Wiesel

*Free on Kindle: Amazon.com  and Amazon.co.uk