Power of Narrative 2025

Readers are drawn to human stories. Line Vaaben, "existential editor" at the Danish newspaper Politiken, generates ideas, supervises, and writes stories about what it means to be human. In this session, she shares the newspaper's success with this focus, along with tips and tricks on how to find and craft journalistic stories that generate longer reading times, increase subscriptions, and capture attention.

Trump has promised to go after critical journalists and media organizations in his second term. The lesson from around the world is that his surest path to success is driving a wedge between the media and the public. In this session, Joel Simon, founding director of the Journalism Protection Institute at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism,  will show how journalists can fight back by deepening the connection to their audience and coming together to build strong defenses.

The best journalism today lives on websites and in print outlets – and increasingly, users may not see it there. The 2024 election was the first in which more Americans got their news from social media than websites, print or any other source. As that gap continues to grow and trust in news institutions erodes, there’s a real opportunity to more effectively reach people, but it requires a bit of translation — creative rethinking of how to bring people news in a format they’ll engage with, without sacrificing journalistic standards.
With 5 years experience leading editorial at Snapchat (and a decade in journalism prior), Ben Reininga will lead a discussion on reaching users where they are. This will include ways to consider social media storytelling in how we assign and craft stories, how to handle shorter attention spans while maintaining rigor and quality, and navigating a landscape of multiple platforms and formats in a world of limited resources. 

Mass shootings, particularly those that become cultural touchstones in the U.S., leave indelible marks on both the communities in which they occur and on the journalists tasked with covering them. This panel brings together journalists who have reported on mass shootings within their own communities for local media outlets: The Orlando Sentinel, WSHU Public Radio, and The Uvalde Leader- News. Naseem Miller, Craig LeMoult, Meghann Garcia, and Pete Luna will explore the unique challenges of telling deeply local stories and the often-overlooked demands of local journalism in the aftermath of trauma, as well as how these tragedies have altered the trajectory of these journalists' careers and lives Moderator: Jessica DuLong