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Dear Storyboard community,
This week’s Nieman Storyboard podcast is all about language, and taking inventory of the words we use in journalism.
Storyboard contributor Christina M. Tapper spoke to Akiba Solomon, senior editor at The Marshall Project, which focuses on covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Solomon created The Language Project, a guide aimed at re-assessing the words and phrases journalists use to describe incarceration.
The Marshall Project’s readers and contributors include people who are incarcerated, and their own surveys revealed that certain words were getting in the way of connecting with that audience. For example, terms like “inmate,” “convict,” or “felon” were viewed as pejorative. Solomon’s Language Project advocates instead for people-first language (a full list is here), and the Associated Press Stylebook has since followed suit with similar recommendations.
At the heart of it, Solomon told Tapper her work is about seeking clarity and humanity in our reporting, and encouraging newsrooms to think about these questions. “Clarity is really important in storytelling because it also conveys fairness,” she said. “I think that that’s the easiest way to instill confidence in readers and viewers who feel skeptical about what you’re bringing to the table.”
Ironically, this conversation comes at a moment when technology like generative AI seems to be leading to carelessness with the words we use — witness the “Summer Reading List” that was published in newspapers around the country before anyone discovered it was filled with nonexistent book titles generated by AI.
Solomon told Tapper that questions about language were debated internally, with even some incarcerated readers and contributors wondering whether there weren’t bigger issues that they should be discussing around the U.S. criminal justice system.
But as Solomon argued, “What we work on are words. This is what we produce … it’s our responsibility to use certain words in the interest of clear and fair reporting.”
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Links of note
- Bookmark this one: Roxane Gay has published an annotated syllabus from her workshop on “The Art of the Essay,” spanning classics from every genre and era (including John McPhee, Saeed Jones, Ariel Levy, Alexander Chee, Samantha Irby… the list goes on). It also includes pieces from the Nieman Foundation’s own “Telling True Stories.”
- “Molly Jong-Fast Reflects on Her Mother’s Dementia and the Fleeting Nature of Fame.” I appreciated the honesty and empathy in this excerpt from Jong-Fast’s new memoir, “How to Lose Your Mother,” as she grappled with having a mother (Erica Jong, author of “Fear of Flying”) who put deeply personal stories on the page and yet seemed distant as a parent. "In her view, she did spend time with me — in her head, in her writing, in the world she inhabited. I was there. I may have felt that she was slightly allergic to me, but to her, she was spending time with the most important version of me."
- “The Story Hook.” A must-read for writers thinking about story pitches. Erika Hayasaki builds on something we discussed during our podcast conversation, which is how to create or find a hook for your story idea. In Hayasaki’s case, it was using the box-office hit “Sinners” as a news peg for her reporting about the history of Chinese immigrant and Black communities in the South, and the complex relationship between those communities. She turned it into a feature story for Smithsonian magazine.
- The great thing about digital stories — like podcasts — is that they can be anything you want them to be. Which is also why it’s so hard to come up with a budget. This guide to “Podcast Math” is a great resource to help you think about all the variables and how much it might cost to produce a series.
Keep sharing your stories,
Mark Armstrong
Editor
Nieman Storyboard
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