Telling a Story 7 Ways and Other Things I Learned at EPA

Fridaynight I returned from a three-day trip to Colorado Springs for the nationalconference of the Evangelical Press Association (EPA). 

As editor in chiefof Kindred Spirit, I alwaysbenefit from the fab workshops and speakers at EPA. And normally, I stay in thehotel where the conference is held, but this year the site was Focus on theFamily headquarters. That means everybody had to stay off site. And since oneof my former students, Lacie, lives in the Springs and offered to put me up, Istayed with her. She was awesome, serving as cook, chauffeur, confidante, tourguide, and party planner. My flight was delayed three hours on the arrival Wednesday night, which meant I missed the dinner portion of the program, so she took me to La'au's Taco Shop. Ever had a taco with mango in it? Yum. 

Fortunately I caught most of the presentation that night from Dr. Scott Todd (PhD in immunology). The senior ministry advisor in the president’soffice at Compassion International oversees their global advocacyefforts. He is the author of Fast Living: How the Church Will End ExtremePoverty and Poverty, a book provided to all in attendance. Dr. Todd is alsochairman for North America’s largest network of Christian relief anddevelopment organizations and an architect of an action-based alliance of poverty-fighting organizations that have partnered to end extremepoverty. He builta strong case that ending extremepoverty is both possible and probable in our lifetime (e.g., Malaria kills a million kids every year, but 22 countries recently cut their rates in half).

Allday Thursday I caught every moment of content I could get from AlThompkins, the Poynter Institute's senior faculty member forbroadcasting and online. (Poynter trains journalists of every kind to doexcellent journalism.)  

In 10 Laws of Interactive Storytelling Ilearned about enhancing articles with multimedia. Mr. Thompkins showed numerous sample projects ranging from simple to stunning to illustrate howjournalists around the world have made online stories “pop.”

In the old days, journalists spokeand people listened. We were the experts and the story ended when we sent outour article. We gathered a lot and published a little. Today publication begins with the story, and after it releases, we receive commentsand have discussions that expand the ideas and our thinking about them. And we have a way to use all the great stuff we couldn’t shoehorn into thepiece—extra quotes, photos, video, sound bites. 

One characteristic of a good journalist is the ability to report and listen to ideas that arecontrary to our own well-being. I believe that's why journalists tendto be more “liberal.” They actually haveto sit and listen to both sides instead of tuning out anyone with whom theydisagree. And listening has a way of making us see stories from the other's perspective.

Inthe past those of us with web sites measured our “success” in terms of pageviews. And then we measured popularity in terms of unique page views. Today wemeasure by “time spent on site,” or “page stickiness.” But that doesn’t meanwe’re stingy with the links to other sites. If we’re willing to link to othergreat stuff, people will be more loyal to us as the sources of goodcontent. 

Thursday's training included instruction on how to write headlines for the web, whichdiffer from how we write headlines for print. With the web the focus is accurate“key words” so that search engines can find content and direct traffic to it.In print it’s all about cleverness. 

In One Story Seven Ways I learned how touse a vast toolbox to expand my audience and keep people engaged. Experts predictthat by 2015, half of all internet use will be via mobile device, not laptops or desktops. And mobile TV is coming (where we can watch live, not archived, shows on our smartphones or iPads), so we need to continuedeveloping our video media skills.

Tobuild stories, we have seven tools at our disposal: text, data mapping, interactivemedia, video, audio, user contributions, document clouds, and photo galleries.In the past we had one: written text.  

In Get Your Geek On, I learned allsorts of tools for connecting with my peers, gathering stories, andfinding stuff online I never knew existed, like how to check out non-profit organizations' use of donations (guidestar.org). And I learned how to find the top-trending topics: Google Trends. (On Saturday the topstories were all about baseball, except for “Mother’sDay,” which was number ten. Today the top search was for "flesh-eating bacteria." Ew.)

Also, Icreated a Wordle of my blog (wordle.net):

Thegoal is not to dazzle with more technology. It’s to plan for projects that havea lasting legacy and use all the means at our disposal to provide our unique angle on events. Rather than advertising events ("three people committed suicide"), we must emphasize what about theevents makes them meaningful ("what happens to people who commit suicide?"). If I’m doing a project on global poverty, forexample, I can plug into existing projects such as “Live Below the Line” anduse it to complement my own treatment of the topic, rather than inventing the wheel.

Thursday’slunch speaker was Jim Daly, presidentof Focus on the Family. Now to be honest, in the past decade I have increasingly felt that Focus on theFamily has engaged the culture in a way I consider abrasive. Phrases such as“culture wars” have suggested “someone has to die.” And I had plenty of company in this assessment. But Daly pleasantlysurprised many of us by laying out the new vision at Focus.

On the day after Obama announcedhis stand on gay marriage, Daly said that the most important thing we cancommunicate in response to the president’s statement is the love of Christ. Hesaid we’ve made homosexuality a “super sin,” and we need to deal with ourPharisaical attitude. In past decades, Daly said,evangelicals have tended to focus only on orthodoxy. The new evangelical wantsto wed orthodoxy with orthopraxy. And when we do so, our actions bringcredibility to our message—that is, people “glorify [our] Father who is inheaven when they see [our] good works.” Daly said it’s tough to have aconversation when we communicate, “You are evil!” But when we ask, “Can wetalk?” we get a much different response. What has changed at Focus, he said, isnot their stand on issues, but their tone. I saw this clearly on Friday when I attended this panel: 


Culture Wars Revisited: AStrategic Assessment from Ground Zero

In1992, Colorado voters passed an amendment to the state constitution limitinggay rights that evangelicals promoted, but that the US Supreme Court later overturned. A six-person panel gathered at EPA to discuss the amendment and itsramifications. The panelists included Focus’s public policy person; the former head of theNational Assn. of Evangelicals (NAE); the publisher of the Colorado Springs Independent (an alternative weekly paper); aconservative editorial cartoonist; a lesbian Unitarian Universalist pastor; and the chaplain at Colorado College who advocates for gays. This diverse group assessed gains andlosses from the amendment’s battle and its long-term impact on the Springsand ministries based there. 

I had never seen anything quite likeit. These people knew each other, had been doing lunch together, vehementlydisagreed, and spoke cordially. In short, they had civil discourse—the waythings ought to be. They spoke of how we have many issues on which we should be agreeing (e.g., human trafficking). They suggested that we have dialogue dinners where we listen and converse. They agreed that especially in an election year we must choose words carefully and make our commentary about issues, not vitriol directed at individuals. 

One big takeaway: Both sides have hate-talkers, and we need topolice our own. If Christians will condemn publicly those who picket funerals of gay fallen soldiers, for example, people will see that one small group does notspeak for all of us. And when someone uses hate talk about Christians, the gay community needs to dothe same.

I came away with many great ideas for how to better do my job. I also enjoyed time with friends, including Cari—with whom I went to Israel on a press junket. She recently moved to Colorado.  

Thursday night Lacie had a bunch of cadets over. They built abonfire in her backyard, which overlooks Pike’s Peak. It snowed Monday, so the mountain had a fresh dusting. I got my "beauty fix." Ah-h-h. What a joy to talk about stuff that matters and have fun. The "kids" even coerced me into playing “Bloody Red Baron” on the ukulele. Must have beenthe elevation and oxygen deprivation…. 

I left early to attend DTS graduation. My friend Felicity picked me up, and I met my family at her house for dessert. After a wonderful Saturday at graduation, I was glad for the non-cooking Mother's Day that followed.