SiteThe Future of Nonfiction Writers
I’m sure a lot of you have seen or heard about a new trend in magazines, asking readers, i.e. nonprofessional writers, to provide all the stories in an issue.
I think we’d better get used to this, since my prediction is this isn’t just going to be a one-off experiment. People are really becoming comfortable with telling their own stories, and they’re doing a good job of it. Of course, we all think about blogs as being the prototype –which of course is what we’re all doing here right now! But blogs are actually only a contributing factor to the change that is coming, or the bare beginnings of what we will see in the way information is distributed in the future. The new paradigm, I think, will be computer games, which are more and more popular among young people both here and abroad.
For instance, last year, there was a highly popular game called World Without Oil, which asked players to imagine what their lives would be like during a genuine oil crisis. I heard its creator speak about it yesterday at a conference, and blogged about this and what it could mean for writers on my site.
In that post, I said this:
The value a nonfiction writer brought to the world used to be easy to describe. We go forth in the world, and find out what people think, and know, and tell everyone else these stories. But I think that way may be finished, or, to be more accurate –it’s finishing….In these new forms of media, people are telling their own stories, without mediation.
The difference between a game and a magazine, or a blog and a newspaper, is the interactivity. People aren’t readers, they’re participants, they have a goal, they have something at stake. They don’t need us writers to tell them what to think, to interpret, to mediate –what they want is something to react to, something to absorb, and moreover, they want to tell us (by which I mean the entire world) what they know.
Obnoxiously quoting myself further:
The new value of a nonfiction writer I think will be to tell our own stories, the stories only we can tell, based on some unusual experience or expertise. And, the knowledge and the application of actual narrative craft. [Which, I'll add here, most "real people" don't know very well and do not need to know very well.]
What do you think? Am I nuts? Have I had a swig of new media spiked Kool Aid? If not, where does all of this leave us writers? [alisonsteinwellner]
5 Responses to “The Future of Nonfiction Writers”
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Kristen Kirk
Said this on June 4th, 2008 at 5:08pm:I hope we’ll always have more than just a few people in this world who want non-fiction writers and/or reporters to check on the stories others are telling and add depth: For example, a writer/reporter can check if a CEO who tells his story of running an environmentally friendly company is or is not telling the truth. You can then make an educated decision about buying his products. A writer/reporter can give you a detailed description of a city for a travel piece but also add relevant history that reveals how the city got to be how it is today. Knowing that makes you appreciate the city so much more. A reporter can tell you a story of why a sweet elderly lady came out of the hospital sicker than she went in AND how this is a growing trend and why professionals believe it’s happening and how you can possibly protect your family from harm. Please, please, please tell me there are still lots of folks who want the WHY and HOW behind stories and don’t just want to be fed the WHAT — or think the WHAT is only important if it’s their WHAT. If you are one of those people who needs it all, please, of course, embrace the new media world, it’s fun!, but don’t turn your back on the old one.
Alison Stein Wellner
Said this on June 4th, 2008 at 8:02pm:Oh I’m SO with you in hoping that people will want to know the why and the how…and actually I don’t think that’s not going away, I am really not forecasting a steady swim towards the shallow end of the intellectual pool!
What I do think is that readers are increasingly going to want to know the why and the how in different ways, perhaps in sorting through the issue themselves. Like, instead of hearing only about how a CEO makes a decision to run a green company, they’ll want to see the available options the CEO faced, make up their own minds about how they think the gal or guy should proceed –and then learn how the CEO decided, and what that might mean for their purchasing decision. (I saw a new game yesterday called Play The News, in which people predict what will happen in world events, and then also say what they think SHOULD happen. They get points on their correct predictions.) I think that readers are also going to be increasingly dissatisfied with only seeing the portions of an interview that we writers chose to include.
I do think we’ll always have a role in telling stories, telling true stories, and in marshaling information and arranging it, curating it, if you will. But I think that the era of the imperial third person journalist could be coming to a close.
I could be wrong of course, lol…these are just my first thoughts.
Wendy
Said this on June 4th, 2008 at 11:46pm:We have already seen this with CNN when they started the iReport which allows anyone to report news. Is this taking jobs away from reporters? No. I don’t think so. I think it allows the news station to expand their coverage area. Instead of a news station being restricted to a certain area/ community based on what their parent company wants them to cover, allowing non-reporters to send in information or photos of breaking news allows the ctation to cover more areas and topics which they wouldn’t have time or access to.
I think a magazine or any periodical doing the same is really trying to see what people really want to read and hear about. But these non-journalism writers or citizen writers won’t have the same privileges that press have. Having a title as a reporter or journalist, I think, is what gives one the edge in getting to see a CEO or higher level person.
I don’t think non-fiction writers are on the way out. It’s good there are more people wanting to write because generally people who write also read. We have to accept the fact that no country, state, or city is isolated anymore. Technology and information is so vast it’s difficult to keep out, unless you live in area ruled by a ruthless dictator - Kim Jong Il comes to mind.
piper
Said this on June 5th, 2008 at 9:19am:Off the cuff response (on the way out the door): I think “non-fiction writing” is bigger than “people telling their own stories,” however well.
draabe
Said this on June 18th, 2008 at 10:46pm:I think the nonfiction industry is morphing into a combination of “our own stories” and more professional work. We haven’t yet begun to see all the problems that could stem from iReporting with regard to intellectual property, libel and, of course, the unforeseeable.
Remember, when vcr’s first came out, many people said the movie theaters would die.