Rage, Charlie Kirk, and the power of magazine-style narrative empathy in a social media age
May 14 @ 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM America/New York
The shooting of Charlie Kirk stunned people across the United States and the world. Rage, in many ways, was what killed Charlie Kirk. And it was rage that perhaps could have been thwarted. Social media was a driver of the rage that surrounded this leader. Fictions, created by those who opposed him (and those who supported him) created a world of unreality that left the facts of human experience aside.
God calls us, as journalists, to be truth-tellers, but he also calls us to be disciple-makers. How do we do that? Parker Palmer would say it’s by knowing our audience as we are known. The power of empathy in magazine style narrative has a way of bringing people face to face with those around them. In-depth interviews, background context, extensive research into who people have been, and who they are—this is what helps us see, hear, feel the world around us.Â
Magazine writers, if they’re patient, can be part of what’s known as the Slow Journalism Movement. Like the Slow Food Movement, it’s a discipline of attention to the details that others neglect. Let others be first. What’s better is to bring the truth of who people are in a journalistic approach that shows the colors, textures, aromas of life that make us human. And in that approach, very often, we see the fingerprints of God in the lives we explore.
In this free online workshop, Dr. Michael Longinow, a journalism professor at Biola University, will discuss how to see better than you have, hear better than in the past, and write with a depth you’ve perhaps never known. And it can make your journalism an antidote to the rage that social media stirs all around us every day.
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