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Nick Kristof on Story Telling and Development
April 12, 2010
How can people who care about international development interest the public? Last month, CGD hosted award-winning New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, one of the world’s most powerful voices on issues ranging from women’s rights to global health to genocide. In this special edition of the Global Prosperity Wonkcast, I’ve put together excerpts of Nick’s remarks and the question and answer session that followed. For those of us who were in the room, it was a valuable glimpse into how Nick thinks about his work and his audience.
In his opening remarks, he spoke about how people initially understand arguments—emotionally, not rationally—and explained that he therefore tries to tell stories that make his audience connect with individual people. “We evolved to have a certain amount of compassion and empathy,” Nick said. “That empathy works when it’s directed at one individual.” Empathy falls off quickly when the number rises—even to two people, he said.
When trying to engage an audience in complex development issues, Nick emphasized the need to present problems as fundamentally tractable. If he could write Half the Sky (his most recent book, authored with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn) over again he said, “I think we would have had a cover that looked happier, we would have had a first chapter that was a real triumphant one. I think there is a real problem of the development community turning off people because it seems to be a fundamentally sad story.”
During the Q&A, some audience members (economists!) asked whether Nick’s approach excludes important systemic development interventions, like infrastructure or economic policy. Kristof allowed that he’s unlikely to ever write a column about hydroelectric dams or exchange rates. However, he argued, getting people interested in the personal stories of poverty builds a constituency for improved rich-world policies.
Near the end of the session, Nick challenged development practitioners and researchers to do a better job of selling development issues—just as for profit companies sell their products. With traditional media outlets losing influence, he said, it is up to other organizations, including think tanks like CGD, to pick up the slack.
“Increasingly think tanks are doing what journalism used to. And, think tanks have been very good at producing solid reports and research. They haven’t been very good at real outreach to go beyond the choir,” Nick said.
Listen to the podcast to hear our condensed version of the event. You’ll find Kristof’s own blog here (and he’s also quite active on Twitter and Facebook). Have something to add to our discussion? Ideas for future interviews? Post a comment below. If you use iTunes, you can subscribe to get new episodes delivered straight to your computer every week.
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3 Responses to “Nick Kristof on Story Telling and Development”
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April 13th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Nick Kristof is spot on on need for interleaving story telling and development and we’re doing that ( and much more ) with Citizen Dan
Information can range from standard structured data to local narratives, including from minutes and reports, contributed stories, blogs or news outlets.
Text and narratives and the concepts and entities they describe are integrally linked into the system via information extraction and tagging.
More here http://www.citizen-dan.org/details.html
April 20th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
I generally think Nick is correct–more storytelling is needed but lets make sure the story is more interesting and informative if we can include the wider context. It is in this regard I find troubling Nick’s answer in the Q&A when someone asked “whether Nick’s approach excludes important systemic development interventions, like infrastructure or economic policy. Kristof allowed that he’s unlikely to ever write a column about hydroelectric dams or exchange rates.”
But he needs to be able to understand how these kind of macro issues shape the stories he is telling and why they are important to understand if we are going to solve some of the tragic stories that he so often tells.
May 6th, 2010 at 3:22 am
Nick’s interview highlighted two issues that are absolutely crucial to the success of those in the development sector. First, the media industry was built on storytelling, not analysis. If you can’t tell a story in a way that makes it clear to busy people not involved in development work that the fate of another human being is at the heart of your story, why should they invest their time. So it’s up to development organizations to consciously decide whose attention they want. Many, looking at costs and the thin line of staff hours available, cut to the chase and focus on policymakers’ hearts and minds rather than the public’s. This is a rational but shortsighted approach to bringing about development.
A second point that Nick touched on was the hope that think tanks and advocacy groups might be able to fill the gap by engaging those citizens whose interest has been piqued on development issues. There may be right ways and wrong ways to be a successful development advocate, but most definitely there has to be SOME way to do it. Advocacy and communications are fundamental and legitimate ways to make a difference in this world. I wish more donors would wake up to that fact and be more generous in supporting those activities. Maybe then organizations could actually build the broader policy communities necessary to bring about lasting improvements for individuals, communities, countries and the world.