last July all of us were taken aback by
some heartbreaking news that disrupted
our lives a couple of teenagers in
caracal were allegedly kidnapped by a
local man and then abused and later
probably murdered and this was a
terrible collective story and we in our
newsroom at door felt that we needed to
find a way to tell the story now we've
been telling complicated stories for 10
years and we've been telling stories
that many of us don't really want to
hear and we wanted to find a way to tell
this one but tell it differently this is
already all over social media this was
all over television we didn't want we
didn't want to add to the panic to the
disinformation or to the sense of
hopelessness that we get in situations
like this where you feel you can't walk
out of your house because you can't
trust anyone so we did what we've been
doing in recent history we turn to our
community for guidance and ask them what
kind of story would they want us to tell
and this is what we heard please don't
tell another murder story
please don't tell another story about a
failing state bureaucracy please don't
tell another hopeless story that makes
us want to pack up and leave Romania so
my colleague Anna took a different
approach she decided to go and ask
teenage girls what this event meant to
them what were they saying about it most
importantly what were they saying to
each other about it
so what Anna and a bunch of other
colleagues did is they set up discussion
groups across the country from Baco to
Bucharest to brazo to talk to young
women about what was going on in their
lives and what we heard is that violence
and abuse and fear were things that they
were already living with the fear was
already here
is what one of them told us and that
became sort of our mantra for this story
and this fear is something that was
following these young women around as
they walked the streets at during the
day during the night at parties at
festivals and in other places where they
might leave their lives and this fear
was there maybe not a fear of violence
but certainly a fear of verbal abuse or
who knows what kind of unsavory
encounter and they told us this is how
young women grow up in Romania they want
to make their own choices and leave
their own lives but fear is always
somewhere in the background and what
happened during the story is that Ana
while talking to these young women
remembered there was an episode in her
own past that had to deal with abuse
something she had undergone as a
teenager herself and this is a story she
buried out of fear yes but also out of
shame but being around these young women
ana felt that this is a safe place to
tell her story so she did and she told
it in the article as well and something
interesting happened when Anna told her
story very recently after she got a
message from another journalist on
Instagram who told her and this is what
Ana related back to me the article
relieved her she didn't know anyone who
would confess to having endured
something she felt less alone and less
broken after reading and almost nine
months later we still get messages ana
still gets messages about this story and
this actually is from this week someone
wrote to Ana your story encouraged me to
confess my own experience of abuse to my
boyfriend and then to those closest to
me so what is this about
well this is largely about a very simple
but profound truth that has to do with
telling stories and it's best
exemplified in a movie about the writer
CS Lewis where he says we
read to know we are not alone and he was
talking about fiction but this is true
of any story in any format in any medium
whether imagined or true it's true for
literature it's true for film it's true
for YouTube story time and it's true for
journalism and stories play many many
functions in our lives but arguably at
least for me the most important is this
that stories allow us to be less alone
they allow us to belong they bring us
together and they show us how many
things we have in common with each other
now any storyteller who does his craft
responsibly knows that stories carry
tremendous power and here's some of the
things that stories do really powerfully
they guide us through our struggles they
heal our wounds they open us up to
others they make us feel that we are
enough and once again they show us that
we are not alone that they can bring us
together and I know some of you might
think yeah yeah this is just feel-good
stuff but recent research has shown that
there are two things in the way we tell
stories that correlate with our
well-being and it's these two agency
which is the feeling that you are in
control of your own life and communion
which is your ability to have good
relationships with others when Anna told
her story she tapped into both of this
she gave these young women a space in
which to talk about the experience they
had undergone and take control of their
stories she herself had the opportunity
to tell her story regain control over it
and change that narrative from one of
shame into one where she does no longer
feel like anything that happened was her
fault
that's agency giving people the
opportunity to be in control of
narrative communion goes like this we
tapped into communion when we did the
story by bringing groups together
communion was very important when we
received all the feedback that I showed
you before but communion was also very
important after we published the story
because we reprinted it in hundreds of
genes and took it to high schools mostly
around Bucharest where Ana spent hours
talking to students and teachers about
abuse about violence about bullying
about what they can do to leave better
lives and this is what a 10th grader
told Ana after one of her visits after
you left this was the first time we
spent on break together talking we
listened to one another and there were
no more rivalries we needed to listen to
one another and know each other
differently than before there's a 10th
grader that's just amazing so what does
this mean for journalism now for those
of you in the audience that are
activists or social entrepreneurs or aid
workers or caregivers of any kind
nothing that I've said so far is new to
you you know how the system works but
for journalists this is new this is a
new way for us to do our work so my idea
for you today is that the role of the
modern journalist and the way they
interact with the community is changing
or should change
traditionally what we've done as
journalists is go after bad people tell
you who's a threat to democracy tell you
where the latest virus outbreak is tell
you who you need to hate mostly because
it's safer and I hope that we will keep
doing that and I hope we will keep doing
that responsibly but I also think that
sometime this role of watchdog of
democracy that we have taken on as
journalists as journalists makes us
forget that our power comes from you
our responsibility is to you and our
purpose is to help you leave better
lives
you are public the citizens and so on
and shouting about everything that
doesn't go well in life is sometimes not
incredibly helpful there's been a lot of
studies recently that have shown that
people all of us are turning away from
news and the main reason they're turning
away is because it makes them feel bad
now here's what's happening
journalism is failing sometimes at
giving you agency which means it is
telling you stories that make you
hopeless about your own ability to
change the environment around you not
just your life but your community's life
and it doesn't do communion very well
either
because instead of connecting you at
others it's isolating you by spreading
fear and this is why around the world
there's a new crop of journalists that
says we're doing the watchdog role we're
doing investigations those are important
but we need to find ways to reconnect
with the people that give us our power
and that gives us our the license to do
our job and that is you so and this
scares many of my colleagues are role
now should include many of these things
we need to be facilitators moderators
mediators true listeners students of
better ways of doing things in the world
and partners with the people that are
trying to create change and this means
that we need to start building
communities around small stories and big
stories for us in our work at door this
has been something that we've been
thinking about for 10 years although we
didn't really know what we were going
after we wanted to understand our
community be relevant to them while at
the same time telling them sometimes
uncomfortable stories that might help
them see Romania in a
more complete light but absolutely we
wanted we wanted to make them feel like
they were part of the community they
belong in we brought them into our
newsroom and gave them cookies and wine
we taught classes we taught them
everything we know about storytelling
with it workshops we hosted
conversations with other professions in
rooms large and small we went to Yash to
clues to Telugu Moorish and met with
communities there and figured out how
they do things and what they're about
over there
we brought hundreds and hundreds and
then up to thousand people together for
live storytelling shows in order to
connect better with the audience and put
them bring them closer to stories but
what we're doing differently in terms of
the idea that I mentioned now is right
now with stories like the one Anna did
we are doing something even more
consciously and that is trying to find
ways to do journalism that's empowered
by you and that means asking our public
how we should cover a story that means
sometimes going out into the field
together with the people that were
writing about and especially it means
having as many conversations as possible
around that topic and I'll share a
couple of more examples with you one on
our team has been writing about domestic
violence for years now last year she did
a story about a support group in Santa
Madre
where a local police woman brings
together survivors of domestic abuse and
they share they shared their stories and
they share the stories of what this
trauma has done to their lives and now
you understand that the power of a
storytelling space is to validate
someone's own experience and then make
them feel like they're not alone so one
I said okay let me try to do that off
the page with my stories too so she
started bringing people into the
newsroom readers survivors of abuse and
at one point she actually had the whole
ecosystem working around this problem
around the same table that means police
prosecutors social workers therapists
these people had never been around the
same table together they had no idea
what the others were doing for the same
problem and it was a journalist that
brought them together and in a very
non-traditional way it was just one and
six people around the table not on a
page not on the screen and Juana said
it's a miracle that we as journalists
can do our job like that
bring people together connect them and
hopefully they will find ways to do
their jobs better and we don't do this
just with serious stories and I only
share one example these people that we
brought into our newsroom a month ago
had only one thing in common
last year in 2019 they all turned 30
that means they were all born in 1989
the year of the Romanian revolution and
sort of they're as old as Romanian
democracy that's the only thing they had
in common we brought them together they
talked about what freedom means to them
what they learned during these 30 years
and they just wouldn't leave so they
stayed late into into the night and one
of them wrote to us after this was done
and I just want to pull this out because
it's a longer quote I'm a journalist I
have notes so one of them said this I
walked home after the meeting and I kept
thinking what I would have missed if I
didn't show up how many things like this
I missed without knowing I recall the
moment from when I was five years old
hanging from a tall fence the other kids
had all jumped the fence to get cherries
I was too scared but starting today I'm
all in it must have been all those
amazing people together we have started
to measure our impact like this yes
journalists want to see people in jail
they want to see bad companies disappear
from the face of the planet they wanna
you know bring justice to the world but
I would like us to also do
smaller things like this remind people
that they are not alone remind people
that we have more things in common that
separates us and bring everyone together
so what can you do do you have to become
a journalist no although if you do we
can we can talk over lunch here's the
thing the complex problems of the world
we live in today require some really
complex solutions and complex solutions
only come from people talking to each
other creating ideas together and then
crafting a better future together
the problem with being together in a
world where each of us lives in their
own bubble is that it's very hard to
connect and be vulnerable in order to
create the good news is that stories
create the space for vulnerability so
here I will leave you with these three
things share your story at any point you
can your fears your failures your
victories your obstacles share them with
your co-workers your friends your family
and then create spaces at meetings
dinners gatherings where others can do
the same and you will experience the
same kind of energy of a small community
that was formed around the common issue
that you can later nurture and create
amazing things together with those
people because as you probably all know
when we act together we're more powerful
than when we act individually thank you
[Applause]