Lindsay Patterson

SXSW and Storytelling

This is cross-posted from my blog at Reflect & Record.

I’m sorry if you haven’t heard from me during the past nine days. I fell into an alternate world that descends onto Austin, Texas, every March. It’s called South By Southwest.

This year, I had a badge and was excited to go to the Interactive Festival. There were several panels on digital storytelling, and their presence in the schedule of the hottest tech conference in the country means that digital storytelling is a hot topic, with widespread interest.

On Monday, I sat down to a talk in the Austin Convention Center called “Cinematic Storytelling.” It featured Michael Senzon of CNN Digital; Olivia Ma of Youtube News; Blake Whitman of Vimeo; and Katy Newton, who is a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, and a former documentary filmmaker and video producer at the LA Times.

My background is in journalism, and I’ve seen the shift from formulaic TV news reporting to what’s being called “cinematic storytelling,” first-hand. The bottom line is that people are not just getting their news from traditional outlets like TV, newspaper, and radio.

Big players like YouTube (see Olivia Ma) have stepped in, and now anyone with a cellphone camera can create news. And people are turning to Vimeo (see Blake Whitman) for the most creative video and multimedia that’s being produced around the world. These forces are re-defining what audiences want to see and come to expect from the media they consume, and traditional outlets are trying to keep up.

I can certainly understand that. My first experiences with creating videos were for a media company born as a traditional news outlet, and there’s no manual for understanding how to adapt to a rapidly changing media landscape. Katy Newton (I believe it was her) mentioned that some newspapers initially thought, “Hey, we’ll have our reporters shoot videos and it will be great!” only to realize that it’s an entirely different format from print, and not every video is worthy of being on the LA Times website.

I had hoped for a discussion of what the term “cinematic storytelling” really means and how it’s being done now, because presumably the idea of telling a journalistic story like a movie isn’t a new idea. It’s called a documentary. But like most journalism-focused panels I attended at SXSW, it ultimately came down to a discussion of “old” media’s business model.

Are people with cellphone cameras and Instagram undermining the work of documentary photographers? Is a citizen journalist as valuable as a trained journalist? Do people prefer watching cat videos over the six o’clock news, and if so, will Boxing Kitteh and his ilk bring down the New York Times and CNN?

My feeling is that this conversation will be moot in few years, when we can all agree that these things (including cat videos) have different values in our culture, and the high-quality stuff is worth paying for. The important thing is figuring out a way to pay for it.  

Am I an entrepreneurial journalist?

Have you heard of entrepreneurial journalism?

I hadn’t, until last week, when I stumbled on this blog.

Adam Westbrook calls himself an entrepreneurial journalist. He makes online videos, and he makes them in order to make money. He freelances, which means he’s basically running his own business. In his spare time, he dishes out excellent advice about how to treat journalism like a business.

This new term - and the ideological shift that goes with it - struck me as brilliant. The traditional way of thinking about newspapers, magazines, and public radio is as institutions. The New York Times, our local papers, and our other preferred media with long histories have always been there for us, and they should continue to exist by some unalienable right. But they’re businesses. And they’re struggling with the economy, and the fact that people are now getting what they used to pay for for free. Traditional media outlets can’t pay people what they deserve, and they can’t hire as many people as they need.

For the past decade, or at least since I entered journalism, there’s been a struggle to redefine the business model. Whether it’s the paywall for the Times or talking about funding for NPR, it’s clearly a time of transition for everyone. There was this recognition: The way things worked for centuries isn’t working anymore. We need a new business model. And as newspapers and radio programs struggle, they pass the pain on to freelancers.

When I left my job to work on my own, I thought of myself as a freelancer. But really, as soon as I left, I should have thought of myself as an entrepreneur. That would have been a healthier attitude. I had assumed I would go at it on my own for a few months, and then start looking for a new job. But as it happened, I fell into being an entrepreneur, and I managed to combine my interests and skills from journalism into a business.

So I was an entrepreneur and a freelancer. But now I discover that all the jobs I’ve created for myself are actually a symptom of being a entrepreneurial journalist. When I’m working for Reflect & Record, I still feel like a journalist. I’m asking questions, I’m presenting stories. It’s just that I have to think about marketing, and selling, and taxes, and all of that business stuff. That’s what I should have been doing when I started freelancing.

I have two businesses. I have two sets of business cards - so how did I not realize this before? The good thing is that they’re both growing. And now I can think of my working self as one whole: an entrepreneurial journalist.

Humans are incapable of consuming less, so let’s consume better

That was the thesis of Matthew Nordan’s talk at SXSW Eco. Nordan is a venture capitalist who titled his Wednesday talk, “Consuming Better: What Neuroscience Says About a Sustainable Future.” Going into the talk, I was curious to see how neuroscience and sustainability tied together with venture capitalism. Turns out I wasn’t alone. The room was packed, and by the time Nordan started speaking, it was standing room only.

He started by talking about our resource issues - essentially, the core of sustainability. Our energy and water supply is dwindling, and solutions that involve other limited resources, say, lithium batteries, create what Nordan called “playing wackamole” with our resources. The easiest answer is that we should consume fewer resources - but real-world experience shows that’s totally unrealistic. Nordan posed the question, “Are we fundamentally incapable of consuming less?”

He quickly answered: Yes. Here’s where neuroscience ties in. He cited a study close to my heart, a study I often mention when the conversation turns to wine. Antonio Rangel at Cal Tech, who I interviewed back in 2008 for EarthSky, found that people enjoy wine more when they think it costs more. (Here’s the backstory.) The point being, we like things that are “more” rather than “less”. That’s what our brains are showing. “There are many studies like this,” Nordan said, and then moved on.

With the fact that we can’t consume less established, Nordan said that the best thing to do is to get people to feel like they’re experiencing something that’s better than what they had before, but has less impact. For example, a better performing car that’s also electric, or something similar. He described several business strategies that could be considered sustainable. The ideal situation is to “deliver truly better consumption.” That is, products and technologies that have no drawback compared to what we’re using now, and also have less impact. That’s where venture capitalism comes in: How do you find and invest in these game-changing technologies?

I really enjoyed Nordan’s talk. He was talking about the same old problems in a new and interesting way, and thanks to a Power Point where he debated himself on video, it was also entertaining. 

My one qualm was the use of “neuroscience” in his title. I think his thesis is interesting and provoking on its own, but the scientific evidence didn’t stand up to truly support it. I love that study, but it’s not really neuroscience. Rangel is an economist who uses an MRI. When I asked Nordan for more evidence after the talk, he mentioned Dan Ariely at MIT - a well-known behavioral economist. It didn’t take away from my enjoyment of Nordan’s talk, but it did leave me wanting more. What does neuroscience say about a sustainable future? It might be mum on the question.

Can design be worldchanging?

This week I’m attending SXSW Eco, the brand new conference that addresses sustainability in the public, private, and academic worlds. I just got married over the weekend (!) so I had to rush back from a post-wedding retreat to catch Alex Steffen’s keynote speech.

I was a long-time follower of Steffen’s Worldchanging.com, an online magazine that focused on what it called a “bright-green future” and folded a few months ago. It was relentlessly optimistic about the future, and emphasized how urban design could change the world. Steffen seemed to be the obvious driver for the website, and he penned long essays about his vision. Admittedly, I was a bit of a skeptic about our bright-green future. There’s great design ideas out there in concept, but how many can make a difference? I was interested to see if Steffen could make me a bright-green believer.

Steffen started by establishing that goals for emissions reductions are either overly ambitious or not clearly defined, and even the way we measure our emissions (“footprint” in sustainability parlance) is not a solid accounting tool for reductions. As a planet, we’re barely moving in the direction of carbon neutrality. Meanwhile, the world is becoming more urbanized everyday. People are moving to the cities, and our emissions are determined by the “systems” or infrastructure we live in. Therefore, Steffen says, it makes sense to make cities more efficient. “The number one way to tackle climate change is to build more compact cities,” he said.

From there, he outlined a few ways in which design can reduce emissions. Creating denser cities, increasing walkability, and better public transportation are all obvious targets to reduce urban emissions. He also mentioned a number of interesting new apps that can help people understand their footprints, in order to make their lifestyles more sustainable.

At the end of his talk, I emerged bright-green neutral. Hearing Steffen speak was better than reading one of his essays. He was logical and realistic. The most intriguing idea was that technology is enabling people to see their own consumption - and does that mean that data may change their behavior? But I’m unfortunately cynical about “worldchanging” sustainability. The people who are interested in sustainable design and checking out the size of their footprint is one small segment of the population. I think talk about how design can change the world must be rooted in a policy discussion involving energy efficiency. Because at the end of the day, sustainable design is only one type of design. And “business as usual” design - and emissions - are far easier to do.

A (non-native) tree grows (best) in Brooklyn

I tend to think that a native tree is a better tree. It evolved with the local climate, it’s attractive to other native species, and most importantly, it’s meant to be part of the local ecosystem. Exotic trees, imported from other ecosystems, can bring problems: pests, disease, water requirements, the potential to become invasive. But I recently ran into a study (an ESA poster, really) that revised the way I think about native and exotic trees - and how much we’ve changed the environment we plant them in.

The study was done by a class of undergrads at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, under the guidance of entomologist Steven Frank. They were doing a student survey of trees on campus, and they came across a mix of native and exotic trees. Taking a close look into the branches, they saw that the native trees were covered in scale - a common but dangerous pest that can disguise itself as knobby bumps or cottony tufts on plants. The exotic trees weren’t completely scale free, but the native trees had 90 percent more scale.

The class’ theory to explain this phenomenon was based on something called the “enemy release hypothesis.” The idea is that exotic trees would naturally host fewer insect communities, because they’ve escaped the species that lived on them in their native range. The sinister sounding enemy release theory, then, predicts that the students would find more scale on native trees than exotic trees.

The one complicating factor is that when they compared two native oak trees, they found different types of scale on them. They were both hosting native North American scale, but the students also found an exotic scale species from Japan on one of the trees. The native trees were somewhat prepared to deal with a native pest, but the Japanese scale posed another problem. Free from its native habitat, it could potentially spread amongst the trees, unsuppressed.

As a result, the native trees on campus looked sick. Their canopies were thinning out, and many of their branches were dead. Meanwhile, the exotics were looking pretty healthy. Is this a world turned upside down?

Well, yes. A college campus is an environment that has been meticulously created, controlled, and managed by humans. The trees that were surveyed were not a part of a complete ecosystem, they were planted for landscaping. The students came to this conclusion:

“Maintaining urban trees to provide human sources of temperature moderation, air filtration, and beauty may not be compatible with conservation objectives to maintain native plant and animal diversity.”

In other words, the reason you would plant a tree on a college campus is not really the same reason that you would advocate for planting a native tree. On a college campus, trees are planted for human enjoyment. Native trees evolved in ecosystems where they played roles beyond giving shade, filtering our air, and providing a nice place for students to stroll between classes. So maybe, it’s okay not to plant a native tree. Maybe in some cases, an exotic tree is a better tree.

How the ESA missed the boat on media coverage

If you’ve been following along on the blog, you know that last week I went to the Ecological Society of America meeting in downtown Austin. It was a successful science meeting: People came, talks were given, sciencey socializing was done. But it’s a slightly different story from a press perspective, when you consider that meetings are also a time to get the word out about the science. I think my experience at the ESA demonstrates what’s wrong with the way that science organizations approach press coverage.

I had gotten an email about the meeting while I was on vacation, and then mostly forgot about it until I got back home from Seattle. It was a blog post that stirred me to get up from my chair and cover it. An ecologist attending the meeting asked, A few thousand ecologists meet in the city to discuss Earth stewardship…. but does anybody know or care?  The post bemoaned the lack of coverage of the largest gathering of ecologists in North America. Indeed, when I searched Google, only 2 ESA-related press releases came up. I felt guilty. I knew! I cared! I could go out and cover this and right the wrong that journalism has done to the sciences!

I pitched KUT and quickly got an assignment. Then I turned to contacting the ESA for press credentials. The website’s press page gave the contact information for the press person who would be attending the conference. But when I emailed, I quickly received an out-of-office auto reply:

Thank you for your email. As of August 5, I am longer with the Ecological Society of America. For media inquiries, please contact Nadine Lymn, Director of Public Affairs, at nadine@esa.org.

Cheers,

Katie

Very curious (and frustrating)! The meeting started on August 7 - two days after Katie’s last day. And yet, the information on the website hadn’t been corrected. I later found out (via Hayley at biocreativity) that the press officer had taken a new job three weeks before that wouldn’t allow her to attend the conference. So really, the organization had three weeks to change the press contact. And they didn’t.

I emailed the woman I was referred to, also to receive an out-of-office auto reply (she was attending the conference I was trying to go to). I eventually got a working phone number for the press room via the blog post and Twitter. Once I got in touch, everyone was very nice and helpful, and reporting the story from there was not a problem.

But what I saw bothered me. When I arrived at the press room, the spread of food normally dug into by coffee-starved reporters was seemingly untouched. Only 12 members of the press had registered at the conference, I was told (although more were covering it remotely). And when I returned after getting some audio, two self-described “media-minded” ecologists in the room treated me like a rare bird. There weren’t too many of my kind fluttering around the convention center. I also learned (again, via Hayley) that a few local science promoters had offered to help with outreach, but were essentially put off by the ESA. During the conference, I only saw two stories published about the meeting - my story, and a blog post on the nytimes.com. Of course, part of the reason for reporters to go to conferences is to get ideas for future stories. But two pieces of media is still very low, when you consider that every local media outlet could have done a story about it.

Scientists want to have their work known by the public, as evidenced by the post that compelled me to cover the meeting. But it doesn’t seem like the ESA recognized or supported that. The event is difficult to cover. There’s no short symposia (most run for hours and are often behind schedule), and it’s not open to the public. There’s little for local media outlets to be interested in. Yes, ecology is cool. But much of the public doesn’t really understand what ecology is.

I feel like there’s an expectation among science organizations that media should cover science because it’s obviously important. And it is! But unfortunately, it’s not as obvious as you would think. It takes a lot of work to get the word out, to load the bait that tells a non-science journalist, “This is interesting! Your readers would want to know about it!” And the ESA just doesn’t get that.

Many scientists and science organizations have come a long way on outreach, discovering through many, many mistakes (i.e. the nation’s perception of climate science) that they have to advocate for the legitimacy of their science. It’s a sad state of affairs compared to the pedestal science used to be on in this country, but it’s the way it is. So my message is, just try to make it easy for scientists who want to get the word out, and for the press they need to hear them.