Above: Kris Granger.
These questions are excerpted from a larger Q&A with Kris Granger to accompany an evaluation of his book, Storytelling for Brands.
Q: How would you use these principles to market responsible journalism to an indifferent public?
A: The book offers a few ways to tackle this question. If we start with the Storytelling Triad (Cultural Relevance, Emotional Engagement and Social Connection), for responsible journalism to make an impact, it would not only have to be true, but it would also have to be anchored in the emotional, social and cultural contexts of its readers.
Cultural relevance: Headlines and articles should connect to the identity of the society within which it is intended. Dao Nguyen of the New York Times (formerly of Buzzfeed), in her TED talk entitled ‘What makes something go viral,’, explained that for content to be resonant, we should not just think about the subject matter, rather we should think, primarily about the job that the content is doing for the audience. One such job is mirroring their identity.
“People are increasingly using media to explain, This is who I am. This is my upbringing, this is my culture, this is my fandom, this is my guilty pleasure, and this is how I laugh about myself.”
When journalism reflects the values, language and lived experiences of a community, it goes beyond information and becomes a cultural affirmation, setting the stage to be trusted, shared and remembered.
Emotional Engagement: Breakthrough journalism makes you feel something. Without a chemical reaction in the brain (dopamine, oxytocin, or cortisol) stories can be glazed over. As a writer or editor, you must view articles through the lens of biochemical triggering, regularly asking the question, what emotional impact is being made in the bodies of my audience?
Elevate yourself above the information to see how it moves the reader. Mature journalism is not only aware of how the story makes people feel when they read it, mature journalism is intentional about it, and responsible. Stories have the power to send a society into panic, relief, or celebration.
Responsible journalism goes beyond asking ‘what’s true,’, its asks ‘how will this truth land in the bodies of my readers?’
Social Connection: Packaging stories in a way that considers peoples wiring for social connection means that the story becomes something that people want to share, or that makes people feel seen, and accepted. When people feel affirmed and included, a bridge is built between them and society. This makes them screenshot articles and share with their friends and family. Journalism validates peoples’ existence and their lifestyles.
Q: You note that messages must be adapted to their audiences. Does one try for a universal understanding of “journalism,” for instance, or should the concept be pitched differently to different age groups?
A: In journalism, it’s about knowing how your story will be received by the audience. For instance, cultural symbolism, phrasing and references land differently in different geographic regions/ countries. And readers who are sensitised to certain types of content (perhaps through social norms or intentional priming) may not be triggered in the same way as readers seeing the same type of content for the first time.Certainly different psychographic, demographic, geographic and behavioural segments have variances in cultural identity, social norms and even emotional sensitivity.
