The creative storyteller who seeks solutions and comes with a different, if not original perspective

Predictions can often follow an extrapolated trend of commercial-tech interests in which players gather around tech to support burgeoning journalism forms e.g. VR, Mobile, AI (read Carolyn Marvin’s When Technologies were New).

They have purpose. The noise they too generate (shiny object syndrome) can easily drown out the multiple attention deeply warranted in journalism as politics and nationalism corrode society. Cognitive reflection is required. A conscious debate, local and international, between tech and journalism is needed. Journalism has found no conclusive answers yet.

Politicians have zealously re-discovered the seam to game populations; lies now elicit a chuckle and a shrug amongst a huge swathe of the electorate; the surrealists have found and dug their heels into journalism. AI will save us all, we’re told. This is where we are.

Imagine if Christopher Nolan, or Spielberg did journalism? What might they do differently, which was one of the questions behind cinema journalism. 2019’s well deserved multiple winner Waad Al-Kateab’s For Sama, as I have written previously is an example of this rejuvenated form.

There are others. Innovative, camera-agnostic, creative storytellers will continue to untether their moorings from past formulas.

What if more people that looked liked me, your sister (diversity)etc. were in positions to contribute in impactful ways to bricks and mortar journalism? Having a different perspective isn’t a bolt-on to innovation, let alone journalism. It’s what creativity thrives on; it’s how journalism should function.

What would it take for journalism to invest more in understanding the pragmatics of psychology, depth manipulation and behavioural economics to spot alt right traps and dead cats? Celebrated US journalist Walter Lipmann flagged up our current woes in the 1920s.

There exists a long tail of practitioners now exploring Codiprops:

• Collaborations — greater crossing of disciplines
• Diversity as a solution involving different approaches (e.g. Marcus Ryder)
• Problem finding via design thinking to solve stories in journalism
• Psychologies and behaviour science in presentations
• Storytelling, critical and creative e.g. Adam Westbrook

There’s what the industry follows as a convention in the status quo, and what could be moments or reckoning that bring about radical progressive changes, inviting fresh ways of doing things.

Could 2020 be synonymous with great vision? Momentous change, from incremental shifts, would come about in the 1890s in Art, in the 1900s in literature and physics, and 1930s/60s in cinema.

The US’s pending election will be a barometer for “if we keep on doing what we’ve been doing, we’ll keep on getting what we got”. The change is there to grasp, but that means, “You have to start looking at the world in a new way” (quote from Tenet, Christopher Nolan’s next film).

This piece was written in December 2019 looking too 2020 as part of the Predictions 2020 from one of the UK’s leading Journalism School’s at Cardiff University. More here