Innovation
people. During the lockdown, Pop-Up has moved to providing online-only content. Pop-Up Magazine events typically last for about
100 minutes and consist of 9-10 short stories that last around 7-10 minutes, told by writers, filmmakers, photographers, radio producers and illustrators. The stories are brought to life using photographs, films, illustrations and animations and are accompanied by a live soundtrack composed and performed onstage by an orchestra. Most of the other live journalism events around the world
were inspired by Pop-Up Magazine, according to Jaakko Lyytinen, a feature writer at Finland’s largest national newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, who also produces the paper’s own live journalism show The Black Box. Lyytinen is a journalist fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, where he is investigating the rise of live journalism. He thinks there are several reasons behind the growing popularity of these events. “We spend so much time with various digital devices that there is an urgent need to go out, meet people and attend live events like music gigs, the theatre and so on,” he says. “I think there is a strong appeal to that. The other thing is
this new means [of reporting] is gaining popularity because it is using the most appealing way of telling stories, which is face-to-face – a campfire-type thing. There is more trustworthiness when stories are delivered on stage and there is a lot more impact and power in live storytelling than in reading or even podcasts.” He adds that, crucially, what these events are also doing is helping to rebuild the general public’s faith in the media. “We are carrying out a survey on live journalism at the moment and we’ve already seen that people feel this is building a new kind of trust and reducing distance between the audience and journalists,” says Lyytinen. “We as journalists have not been very good at speaking
about how we do these things and why they matter. We have relied on people to read our stories and news and to trust us, but there is a lot of mistrust towards the media at the moment because of fake news, and there is populist aggression towards the media as well. Live journalism is a new means of rebuilding that trust and therefore it has a strong appeal.” It’s too early to say with any degree of accuracy what the general public’s appetite for live events will be in a post- pandemic world but, given how easily many organisations have been able to switch physical gatherings to the virtual world, it looks like live journalism events could be here to stay.
Good stories in 3D
THE LIVE MAGAZINE journalism show, which has taken place in six countries and 17 cities across Europe, was also inspired by Pop-Up Magazine, says Florence Martin-Kessler, its founder chief executive.
Exclusive promises
THE BLACK BOX live journalism event is organised by Finland’s largest national newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat. According to Jaakko
Lyytinen, a feature writer who works as a producer on the event, the idea came about around five years ago after a member of staff who was on a scholarship in California attended a Pop-Up Magazine show in LA. She was inspired by what
she saw and suggested the newspaper produce its own version. The first event took
place in February 2016 and rapidly found a large audience. Today, the paper puts on two shows a year on the
main stage of the national theatre in Finland and has played to an audience of around 25,000 people. Each show typically consists of eight ‘performers’ from the paper talking for around 15 minutes on a host of subjects. “We tend to go for fresh
stories,” says Lyytinen. “Our
promise to the audience is you will see and hear something that’s not been published before.” Stories are enriched by
visuals and sound effects, and the performers are given coaching in public speaking by a vocal coach. Lyytinen says curation of
the event’s content is considered in the same way an editor would approach editorial decisions for the paper’s print edition. “Our show always has a
political story, an international story, there is always something about culture and there’s always a human interest story. “So it’s a bit like a
newspaper where you come across different sections that you might skip across if you were reading – but you cannot skip them if you’re in a theatre.”
Open up
TORTOISE MEDIA hosts regular Thinkins – described as ‘open-source editorial conferences’ by partner Tessa Murray. An ‘open newsroom
committed to slower, wiser news’ co-founded by former head of BBC News James Harding, Tortoise Media gained nearly 20,000 members within six months of its launch last year. It hosts regular live
ThinkIns for members and non-members and, during
the pandemic, has been hosting digital ThinkIns. “We’re gathering input
from a wider group of people that will then feed into our journalism at some point later down the line,” says Murray. She cites the recent
example of a story Tortoise ran about sexual assaults on a university campus. A ThinkIn attendee spoke about her own experience the previous summer and
the Tortoise editorial team followed it up. “What we’re really trying
to do is narrow the gap between people whose voices aren’t being heard or represented in news and people who have too much of a concentration of the share of voice,” says Murray. “It’s bringing together a
variety of views in a room to help inform our position and also our editorial output.”
She met Pop-Up Magazine
co-founder Douglas McGray when she was a journalism fellow at Harvard. She says the events, which
play to packed audiences, are all about “good stories that are well researched and well told”. Live Magazine tries to make
stories as ‘3D’ as possible. “We spend a lot of time on stories
to try and make them the best they can be,” says Martin- Kessler. “We augment them with audio and visuals or we find some other idea to make them shine on stage.” In the past, Live Magazine
has even used dancers to enrich stories. The events normally see 10-12 people speak for 6-10
minutes on a variety of subjects. The Live Magazine team usually commission people to perform stories, but are also receptive to ideas suggested to them. Martin-Kessler says
performers are paid anything between €200 and €2,000 “depending on the show and the work needed”.
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