Do we still need storytellers?

For its 30th anniversary, CBS Sunday Morning invited its original media critic, Jeff Greenfield, to speak about how convergence has affected the media.  He began his segment by noting that he'd been invited back at the 25th anniversary to reflect on how the media landscape had changed since he began, and remarked that in the past five years (from the 25th to 30th anniversaries, or from 2004 - 2009)  "can't even be captured by the word change."

It is, Greenfield said, "as if the most fundamental laws of the media universe have been utterly overthrown."  He discussed the changes in media, which are almost difficult to remember. We once had different forms for different types of media (print, TV, radio, recorded music, movies, etc.).  We as consumers took this media how and when it was delivered to us.  In just a few short years we have the ability to consume only the media we want, no matter the format in which it was originally published, on a computer or smartphone.  We can share it instantly using email, text, YouTube, or Facebook.  (The clip, recorded in 2009, also listed the then-ubiquitous, now severely uncool Myspace.)

Despite the changes, Greenfield states that some things should remain, that media users should still have, "a love for storytelling, a love of clear, vivid language, and a respect for history." 

This thought struck me at first as somewhat quaint: 

Storytelling, in a Twitter world?  (140 characters or less!) 

Clear, vivid language in a society where text-speak is slowly encroaching into our everyday lexicon?  ("OMG, my BFF's LBD is totes adorbs!!!!") 

A respect for history, when traditional age college students don't remember a world without the Internet?  (Just Google it!)

However, as I think more about this, I agree.  We can capture the headlines and the updates, but does news become reality to us without the storytelling, without the vivid language and a context in history?  I think we're programmed to need these things in order to internalize news and information.

Ten years ago, cell phones were in their infancy, texting was just beginning, and while the Internet was a fairly rapid-fire source of news, we still tuned into the TV stations and watched.  Watched, in horror and disbelief, as the two towers of the World Trade Center fell.  We bought newspapers and magazines and read the articles and accompanying photographs as we tried to understand, tried to wrap our heads around the enormity of the destruction and what it meant for the country and the world. 

As we mark the ten year anniversary of the terrorist attacks our reactions have faded.  The facts of that day are something that everyone knows and can recite with some form of detachment.  But as the retrospectives come on, we hear survivors and loved ones of those who didn't survive tell their stories.  We see photos and read firsthand accounts of what the scenes were like, how people were and still are physically and emotionally scarred from that day.  We're reminded of how the politics of the world changed; of the fear, fury and demand for justice that drove a war.  We're drawn in, moved in a visceral way, reminded that this day was part of our own personal history. 


I imagine many of our grandparents would feel the same way viewing this.  Although Cronkite's words were straight reporting, his emotion was rare and unmistakable:

 


Our parents, (and some of us nontraditional students), will never forget the day President Reagan delivered this eloquently simple speech about seven astronauts who "slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God."

I believe something in our psyches needs this storytelling, this language, and this connection to our past to make these things real and not just another sensation.  The words of our storytellers bring a humanity to events that are nearly unfathomable, prompting us to shock, grief and healing.