By Jaleesa Irizarry
Josh Lamberty sifted through his backpack for a few minutes before he found it.
“I chose the snail,” Lamberty explained as he looked for the small statue. “I’m slow to find a story idea. I’m slow to shoot, but like the snail’s shell, I put the story on my back.”
It’s hard not to chuckle with a line like that. But on the first day of the 2021 Advanced Storytelling Workshop (ASW), you heard plenty of them. Workshop Director Anne Herbst had placed a pile of small sea creature figurines for participants to choose from.
“I saw them online and figured it would be a cool way to keep up with the underwater theme,” she explained to the group as attendees picked up their name tags cropped with the workshop’s theme image in the background.
The workshop’s banner image showed an octopus sitting at the bottom of the sea, its tentacles dancing as a reporter and photographer watched from afar. The design has graced the NPPA Advanced Storytelling Workshop webpage since 2019. Little did the creator of that image know that navigating dark and uncharted territories is something journalists would be doing for the next few years amid a global pandemic.
“I felt really alone, and that wears on you,” Josh Lamberty, a workshop attendee, said. Lamberty accepted his first job as a multimedia journalist during the pandemic. “When you’re trying to come up with story ideas every day and find new ways to tell the COVID story that’s not going to be boring or the same thing you did yesterday, that wears on you a lot.”
This week would wash away many of those concerns. ASW was the first in-person (but masked) workshop the National Press Photographers Association had held in nearly two years. The roughly 30 participants came from a variety of backgrounds: From college students to city public relations teams to the traditional reporter-photographer team, many avenues of the communication field were covered. And with names like Chad Nelson, Boyd Huppert and Joe Fryer as faculty, it was difficult not to walk away with pages of notes.
“I think this week has opened my eyes to what I can do and has given me the confidence to take some risks when I get back to my newsroom. This workshop has given me a lot of tools to feel comfortable trying something new, shooting in ways I’ve never shot before,” Lamberty explained. “I’m already excited to go back and find a new story to tell. My motivation is sky-high.”
If participants took away anything, it’s that the foundation of storytelling will never change: Set a scene, introduce a character and establish the focus of the story. Participant Melissa Correa shared what she took away from the week.
“I think maybe just a renewed sense of purpose and passion,” she explained. “Reporting in the pandemic, at least for local news, stripped everything down to what you need to tell a story. Sound, a character, the bare bones, not all the flashy edits, for me at least, and those stories resonated a lot with viewers,” Correa added.
“I think what this Advanced Storytelling Workshop reminds us as we look through different decades of work from these experts, it’s like clean video, solid sound, good characters, focus stories, those are timeless and those stand up to whatever is happening now,” she continued.
During the pandemic, a new facet of storytelling became a mainstay at most TV stations. As people socially distanced, they turned to software like Zoom to do virtual interviews; this week was no exception. Faculty member and KARE 11 storyteller Boyd Huppert was unable to attend the workshop in person.
“I so wish I could have been there in person, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to be part of the workshop remotely,” he shared.
Though Huppert wasn’t able to physically be there, his innovative partner Chad Nelson made sure he always felt included. Using Zoom, Huppert was able to give lessons from afar. One of the sessions Huppert and Nelson partnered for was “The Dance,” showcasing the ability to create memorable stories as a team. The two nailed their routine connecting Nelson’s video camera to Zoom so Huppert could gracefully share how the two work with each other to orchestrate powerful, active interviews even from hundreds of miles away.
Huppert was also able to teach a writing session, explaining to attendees how to write to the edges of a story and how to work reveals to keep viewers captivated.
“What I’ve really appreciated about this workshop is because Boyd couldn’t be here in person, we’ve embraced what was a challenge for us, and we’ve made it work. We found a solution, and we’ve proven we can do hybrid workshops and make it work and make it valuable, and we can still learn a lot even if we’re not all here together,” Lamberty added. “I think that’s what this last year has taught us is that we can all still do our jobs remotely. We don’t all have to be here. Let’s not discount the fact that we’ve been able to lean into it.”
Faculty members hoped participants leaned into a lot of the learning opportunities the week presented. On top of news package assignments given to the weeklong attendees, all were able to get feedback sessions from the wide range of faculty members, including Anne Herbst, Boyd Huppert, Chad Nelson, Rico Romero, Anastasiya Bolton, Joe Fryer, Tiffany Liou and Chris Hansen.
While Romero was able to share the importance of clean editing even on deadline, Hansen encouraged students to try something new, sharing notable pieces in which he asked himself, “Why not?” Hansen also peeled back the curtain and shared the raw footage of a few of his pieces, walking the class step by step through some of his decision-making and when to look for the reaction shot and the action shot.
Meanwhile, Fryer tested participants, literally. The NBC correspondent gave everyone a pop quiz after sharing one of his pieces, to prove there is such a thing as too much information and oftentimes what people remember aren’t necessarily the facts but how the story made them feel.
“I think if you can remember the tenets of why we got in this job and, like, the cores of what make it so strong, then regardless of the GoPros and all of the other stuff that comes and goes, those things always remain,” Correa said.
Fryer is also an NBC News NOW anchor and gave participants a glimpse into what a network day looks like. For a lot of people, the 12-hour-plus shift was hard to fathom. But Fryer showed that with streaming capabilities networks are able to tell stories they never really had time for. He shared a number of long-form pieces he has been able to create for the network’s streaming platform.
Though the workshop focused on the foundation of storytelling for much of the week, participants were also given a crash course on never forgetting to be human. Faculty member and current TEGNA border reporter Anastasiya Bolton took the reins and shared with attendees how to tell hard news with heart. The reporter veteran spent years as a crime reporter at KUSA in Denver. Her experience there also made her address a serious issue within the industry: mental health.
Bolton paired up with psychologist Dr. Anne DePrince during the workshop to break down coping mechanisms and how newsrooms could better address burnout. It’s one of the many issues newsroom management teams are facing as they tackle social and equity issues.
Herbst, along with fellow faculty member and multimedia journalist Tiffany Liou, held an in-depth discussion on covering communities typically ignored in news. Herbst shared a social media post from a colleague in the industry explaining the common mistakes made when newsrooms cover stories involving people with a disability.
She urged people not to be afraid to talk about the “hard stuff” and to make sure the story isn’t just another inspirational piece. In order to do that, she encouraged all in attendance to ask themselves, “If you take away the disability, would it still be a story?”
The duo addressed the racial disparities newsrooms are starting to face. Liou led her station’s coverage on the increase in hate crimes directed toward the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community in the Dallas area. Liou said that, in order to get diverse communities more coverage, everyone in the newsroom has to be proactive.
“We had a productive conversation about covering all communities,” Liou said as she explained how her station began navigating the issue. “Inclusive storytelling starts from the pitches. Everyone in the newsroom should bring DEI stories to the table. Newsrooms should also make sure the team is well-rounded in proper terminology and understand the history of communities they’re covering. We challenged everyone to take what they learned at the workshop back to their newsrooms.”
Matt McCabe will take a notebook full of suggestions back to his newsroom. The University of Missouri junior is also a reporter at KOMU, the university-owned NBC affiliate. McCabe was the workshop’s youngest participant this year. He also embraced the sea theme and picked a penguin as his sea spirit animal.
“My friends say I waddle a lot,” he said with a chuckle. “But I’ve learned a lot, especially around writing, that’s one area where I feel like a fish out of water.”
McCabe attended the virtual news video workshop during the pandemic, and, although he took in a plethora of information, he said nothing compared to learning in person.
“Journalism is an in-person discipline especially for visual journalism,” he said. “There was nothing to not like about the virtual sessions when I went to the News Video Workshop, but we’re learning about cameras, audio and editing and the idiosyncratic behaviors of people during interviews. Those are the types of things you can only really pick up in person, not to mention the networking opportunities. Connecting with people is a bit hard in the environment of a Zoom room, and it’s been nice, too, to not have any distractions. With Zoom, you have so many things competing for your attention, it’s been nice to come here for a week with the sole focus of just becoming a better journalist.”
As with any milestone education, the workshop ended with a graduation ceremony. With sea-themed diplomas in hand, participants were able to shake the hands of faculty members who challenged them all week. Some of those faculty members were reminded how important moments like this are.
“It was so special to have an in-person workshop. While I’m grateful for the virtual options and some successful online workshops over the last two years, this was the energy I needed,” faculty member Liou said. “It was intense, hands-on learning. And most importantly, the bond we all created by the end of the conference can’t be matched. I’m glad we were able to put on this workshop as safely as we could. It is so helpful to be in a room full of people who want to learn and get better. I always learn so much at these conferences. And if I’m being honest, I’ve gone through funks during the pandemic. This is just what I needed to reenergize.”
That was the goal for this year’s workshop: refresh and rejuvenate. There were many moments throughout this pandemic when newsrooms felt like they were drowning, but with new tools in hand, these participants can go back to telling stories with their heads above water.
Jaleesa Irizarry is a multimedia journalist at KUSA in Denver. She can be reached on Twitter at @JaleesaReports or via email at [email protected].
Boyd Huppert tells his own story about a recent diagnosis on his KARE11 segment “Land of 10,000 Stories.” Video by Chad Nelson.
