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Communications in Slow-Moving Crises

Moderator: Thomas Levenson
Rosalind Williams HM Abrahm Lustgarten Andrea Pitzer: November 18, 2010; Running Time: 1:57:05

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

What’s a journalist to do when a major story must be coaxed reluctantly into public view, or emerges on what seems like a geological time scale? These panelists discuss how to approach slowly evolving but urgent stories at a time when news coverage has shifted inexorably from print and its variable deadlines to the constant, repetitive churn of cable news and instant internet information. In setting up the discussion, moderator Thomas Levenson discusses the concept of “slow-moving crises” and changes in the practice of journalism.

Rosalind Williams situates the challenge facing journalism within the context of much greater historical change. She first finds a telling contradiction in the phrase “slow-moving crisis,” since the concept of crisis involves a “decisive stage…where change for better or worse happens.” For Williams, the lack of adequate terminology suggests that “something is happening in the world that hasn’t happened before...”

Classical historians regarded history as taking place “on a very stable stage of the world.” In the 19th century, that world began to speed up, and historians began to grapple with human actions and deeds that accelerated change in the world from centuries to decades. Yet, says Williams, “history appears to be slowing down, getting like molasses,” as events erupt, apparently conclude, then continue indefinitely. She cites the oil spill and the financial crisis as example of such “aftermaths.”

Paradoxically, “things are happening much faster and much slower,” she continues, because the “density of human presence on the planet speeds up environmental change and slows down political change,” creating a “viscosity” that makes history “work differently.” Journalists must take account of this transformation, and remember that “what is making things different is human dominance as never before.”

At the investigative journalism website ProPublica, Abrahm Lustgarten and his colleagues enjoy the unusual luxury of creative, long-term reporting projects. Their freedom to spend literally years working a topic can lead to identifying a crisis before anyone else -- such as the dangers of drilling for natural gas -- and often involves looking behind the headlines of a major story to uncover all-important context.

Lustgarten describes ProPublica’s take on the Gulf oil spill, which “worked around the perimeter of what was happening,” focusing on BP’s drilling record, and inadequate government regulation. Since their story “was somewhat less sexy,” they offered “narrative focus and depth to engage readers.” ProPublica made its story urgent through a “drumbeat of communication…a steady stream of provocative and revealing stories,” and a longer-form investigative piece. Lustgarten sees the story now “probably at its most critical stage, months after the spill,” with mainstream “coverage at a virtual standstill.”

Andrea Pitzer believes in the power of narrative to help people understand public crises and public policy issues, but worries that “using storytelling in long-term crisis coverage” carries some risks. Journalists who target “established authorities” with stories may be viewed as “trying to sell something.” She advocates “tilting more heavily toward stories with teeth for an audience that already understands the basic problem.”

Pitzer embraces diverse media approaches to boost “game-changing narratives.” Visuals such as the photos from Abu Ghraib can have an instant impact on public opinion. She describes innovative websites such as TBD, which uses the Storify social media tool to aggregate perspectives on an event, “creating a moment by moment breakdown.” Statistics come alive and marry to stories with new forms of data visualization. Pitzer encourages reaching out to ordinary people and giving them a stake in their own narratives, demonstrating “where they fit into the larger arc.” Says Pitzer, “If we’re better at storytelling and giving them hooks … we’ll be presenting information so people really understand their choices.”

Lecture Details

Location: 4-231

“'Crisis' combined with 'slow-moving' is an oxymoron, a contradiction. That is interesting. It says something is happening in the world that hasn’t happened before and our language hasn’t caught up with events.”

Rosalind Williams

About the Speakers

Moderator: Thomas Levenson

Professor, Program Head and Director of the Graduate Program, Writing and Humanistic Studies Documentary producer

Thomas Levenson recently published Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist. He is also author of Einstein in Berlin; Measure for Measure: A Musical History of Science; and Ice Time: Climate, Science, and Life on Earth.

His television documentaries include Origins: Back to the Beginning (NOVA); Building Big: Domes (PBS); and Einstein Revealed (NOVA). He has earned the Peabody Award (shared), New York Chapter Emmy, and the AAAS/Westinghouse award. His articles and reviews have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, and Discover, among others.

Rosalind Williams HM

Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, MIT

Rosalind Williams has published several books, including Notes on the Underground: An Essay on Technology, Society, and the Imagination (MIT Press, 1990); and most recently Retooling: A Historican Confronts Technological Change (MIT Press, 2002). At MIT, she has served as Associate Chair of the MIT Faculty and as Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education. She previously served as the director of the Program in Science, Technology and Society.

Williams earned a B.A. from Harvard University, and M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and her Ph.D. in history from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Abrahm Lustgarten

Reporter, ProPublica

Abrahm Lustgarten has focused on oil and gas industry practices at the ProPublica investigative website. He is author of China’s Great Train: Beijing’s Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet. Lustgarten is a former staff writer and contributor for Fortune, and has written for Salon, Esquire, the Washington Post, and the New York Times since receiving his master's in journalism from Columbia University in 2003.

Andrea Pitzer

Editor, Nieman Storyboard, Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University

b>Andrea Pitzer founded Nieman Storyboard, a project that explores storytelling in different media. She has been an editor with the Nieman Foundation’s narrative program since 2007. Pitzer has presented on the future of storytelling journalism and literary narratives at conferences in the U.S. and abroad, and also writes occasional freelance features, most often for USA Today. Her prior lives include work as a poet, a painter, a music critic and an editor of a violence research bulletin.