Voicemails, disposable cameras and diary entries: One expert's storytelling experiments
Voicemails, disposable cameras and diary entries: One expert's storytelling experiments
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Masuma Ahuja, formerly of CNN and The Washington Post, shares her adventures in digital and analog storytelling with me.
Hey yโall! Anita here. As the winter term at most postsecondary schools draws to a close, Iโve been reflecting on my last few classes at Ryerson University, Centennial College and the City University of New York. Iโm always looking at how I can refine not only course content, but also my approach to teaching, especially in virtual environments ๐ฉ๐ปโ๐ซ
One of my Ryerson students said our second-to-last innovation class was her favourite out of all the classes she took across her courses this semester, and I donโt blame her! The energy was electric because of the rockstar guest speakers I invited to talk about journalism innovation.
They shared cutting-edge approaches to news-gathering and news presentation, as well as strategies to get buy-in for these approaches from newsroom colleagues โ a skill thatโs becoming more important for journalists to learn since this period of disruption requires change agents to drive and help others navigate much-needed industry transformation.
In the next few editions of The Other Wave, Iโll be summarizing key takeaways from each guest speaker (because there are simply too many gems to cover in just one newsletter), starting this week with Masuma Ahuja.
Masuma is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist based in London. She was previously a producer at CNN where she led digital/editorial strategy on emerging social platforms and messaging apps; before that, she was national digital editor at The Washington Post. I had the great fortune of meeting Masuma after a mutual connection thought weโd get along and introduced us in the earliest days of COVID-19. I was immediately taken with Masumaโs clear understanding of and vision for the future of journalism, which is why I asked her to speak about her experiments in analog and digital storytelling.
โI had all this time to play and think of new ways to tell stories because I was really bored of us taking the newspaper or the television and trying to put it online....I never wanted to consume any news that was presented to me in that manner.โ
Masuma said this in reference to her time at CNN and WaPo, though itโs an insight that will likely resonate with many young journalists working in traditional newsrooms.
During her presentation, Masuma highlighted three innovative projects she spearheaded:
โLove Story: Voicemails about love and life across the world,โ CNN, 2016
On the news-gathering process: For this EPPY-winning project, Masuma posted flyers around New York City and other parts of the U.S., asking people to leave voicemails about their love stories. She ultimately received thousands of voicemails, which were then edited and uploaded to a CNN Love Story Twitter account, aired on TV and featured across CNNโs website and social platforms. To start, Masuma printed out the flyers (which had no CNN branding), and after getting consent, put them up in laundromats and pizzerias. She also set up a Google Voice account to receive the voicemails. If contributors wanted more info about how their voicemails would be used, they could either call the number on the flyer or visit the project website.ย
On overcoming skeptics: โThere was this big CNN-wide meeting and I present [Love Story], and Iโm followed by the person whoโs running Syria coverage. And the question I kept getting asked was, โWe are a serious news organization. What is the point of this? Love stories are lovely, but we donโt do love stories. Thatโs not our bread and butter.โ The point was this can translate into telling stories in different ways.โ And according to Masuma, thatโs precisely what happened. After former U.S. president Donald Trump enacted a travel ban in the first week of his presidency, CNN asked people from around the world to leave voicemails describing the impact of the ban, prompting many to describe how it stranded loved ones in parts of the Middle East who wanted to fly home to America but couldnโt.ย ย
On getting buy-in: โI'm a big believer of โyou ask for forgiveness, not permission,โ which I know isn't always possible, but you don't start out by saying, โHey, I have this weird idea. Can I do this thing?โ You're like, โHey, I'm going to spend $5 and do this on the side. Is it cool? It's not going to get us into trouble; I talked to legal already.โ And your boss is going to be like, โWhatever. It's your time. You want to stay at work late and do this weird thing? Go do the weird thing as long as you've made sure we're not going to get in trouble.โ So you start doing the weird thing, right? And then you have something to show. And once you have something to show, you have a story that can move someone, or that can be a proof of concept of โThis is how this works, and this is why this is important or powerful or meaningful, or fill in the blank of this is why we need this to exist.โ It is much easier to get buy-in.โ
โA portrait of motherhood around the world,โ CNN, 2017
On the news-gathering process: CNN gave Masuma a budget of $100 to experiment with storytelling formats, and told her to create a fun and interesting project using the limited funds. So, she contacted CNN producers around the world, sent them each a disposable camera and asked them to find mothers whoโd be willing to take photos of their respective lives, families and support systems. Ultimately, 20 disposable cameras were given to moms in places such as Iraq, Nigeria, Russia, Kenya, Japan, Hong Kong, Brazil and the West Bank.ย
On the appeal of this format: โThereโs something about disposable cameras. When you look at a roll of film, it just makes you nostalgic. It might just be that I was a โ90s kid and I grew up with disposable cameras, but thereโs something about the graininess of it โ the fact that people couldnโt go back and change the photos they took โ that just made it really beautiful. And it was a nice way to get a look at what life looks like for people, and life that is a little bit less curated, a little bit less filtered, and from people who we might not otherwise necessarily feature in our feeds or follow.โ
On not falling prey to generic trends: โEverything starts to look the same after a while, right? You can tell whose stuff looks like what, you can tell what design templates are making the rounds that month or that year, and everyone starts to create things that look similar. I was really interested in how to get out of that, and break free of that and also see what peopleโs lives look like who maybe werenโt on Instagram and didnโt have smartphones.โ
โGirlhood around the world: A series about the lives of teenage girls,โ The Lily (A Washington Post publication), 2018
On the news-gathering process: For this 10-part series that created a portrait of girlhood around the world, Masuma asked teen girls from 10 different countries to send her their diary entries and photos of their daily lives. She gave them broad instructions on what they could write about, but also encouraged them to ditch her instructions and do whatever they wanted to do. Masuma published the girlsโ stories in a pop-up newsletter and across The Lilyโs social and digital platforms, including Instagram and Apple News.ย
On the importance of stories that highlight nuance: After leaving CNN but before arriving at The Post, Masuma reported on womenโs and girlsโ lives abroad as a freelancer. That experience made her realize that coverage of this topic was quite binary and reductive: โI realized very quickly that the stories we tell about what it is to be a girl or a woman in the world fall into very clear bucketsโฆ.We want stories of sexualization, victimization or exceptional girls like the Gretas and Malalas of the world fighting back. [But] those were not the conversations I was having with girls in different places. That was not what they were telling me about. We generally talked about their crushes on other people, the people that they were dating, what they were worried about in school, conversations they were having with their parents. And I wanted to capture that.โย
On empowering people to tell their own stories: โI was just interested in: What does daily life look like for girls? And if we had to look at what it is to be a girl of the world, as told by girls, what would that look like? So I asked the girls to share diary entries and photos, and it was really wonderful and beautiful, and was a different way of doing journalism than just me going and asking the same boring questions, and asking about issues as opposed to livesโฆ.Itโs wonderful that she gets to tell that story the way she wants to, so it isnโt just like us swooping in and being like, โLook at these girls in Mongolia and how theyโre living.โโ
Shout-outs
This week, I want to give a belated thanks to author and producer Lana Pesch, journalist and podcaster Amy Chyan, and designer and futurist Maggie Greyson, for their kind words about The Other Wave:
In my community
RISE, the inaugural joint conference hosted by Canadian Journalists of Colour and the Canadian Association of Black Journalists, kicks off in less than two weeks! Register now for RISE, which takes place from April 30 to May 1, and join hundreds of other Canadian journalists who want to reimagine an equitable future for our industry. Iโm incredibly proud of the work I did to help make this a reality, including successfully fundraising for the conference, along with my sponsorship co-lead and CABJ executive director Nadia Stewart.
If you know a teen girl, tell her to check out Girl Talkโs LeadHERship Defined Virtual Summit. Featuring programming that inspires girls from ages 13 to 18 to be confident leaders, the summit will run from April 20 to 22. Iโll be speaking at a session titled "Her success is not your failureโ on April 22.
Substack Local is a new initiative that helps independent writers build local news publications based on a subscription model. Substack, an online platform that supports subscription newsletters โ including this one โ will select up to 30 local writers to participate in the program. Deadline to apply is April 29.
Browse through the โSee it. Be it. Database.โ a Women's Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub resource that I helped develop last year. It features over 1,000 profiles of successful women entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds, sectors, experiences and regions across Canada.
Cool stuff I like
Is Joseph R. Biden the new Franklin D. Roosevelt? Anand Giridharadas, publisher of one of my favourite newsletters The.Ink, wrote a compelling reported analysis for The Atlantic that looked at why progressives miscalculated what a Biden presidency would look like.ย
Sound of Metal is a cinematic experience like no other. Starring Riz Ahmed as Ruben, a heavy-metal drummer who suddenly goes deaf, the Oscar-nominated film takes audiences on an aural journey that gives us a sense of what itโd be like to lose our hearing. Equal parts devastating and thought-provoking, I highly recommend watching it before the Academy Awards on April 25.ย
Because it literally took me a couple of days to recover emotionally from Sound of Metal, I also recommend watching Bad Trip โ starring my new fave duo Eric Andre and Tiffany Haddish โ immediately afterwards. One part scripted buddy comedy and one part hidden-camera prank show, the movie left me in stitches.
Over the Easter weekend, my fiancรฉ Lucan and I found one manโs lost phone on the street. In return, he sent us a lovely card that reinforced our faith in humanity. Enjoy.
Last thought
How innovation and collaboration work, at least according my brain (turn music on) ๐ต
How you can support The Other Wave
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