Nicholas Kristof makes an amazing offer to his readers: ‘Remix me’:
Stories can be told in countless ways and understood in countless forms. Here’s an invitation to try your hand at a little interactive journalism.
Here’s a link to a collection of columns, videos, and photographs from my recent trip to Chad to covering the spread of the genocide in Darfur. Take a look at the material and, if you’re interested, I’d like to see how you would’ve told the story. Use some of the quotes, the stories, the facts and weave together your own column, essay, article — or some other kind of quilt. I can imagine someone writing a poem, a song, a map, video or audio slide show. Don’t let convention get in the way of your storytelling. And don’t feel as if it needs to be long; hey, a haiku is sometimes more effective than an epic.
I’m eager to see how you’d approach things – what you’d do differently. I hope you do better – these stories are too important to be told only once.
The only drawback is that it’s behind the TimesSelect pay wall. My CUNY colleague Sandeep Junnarkar had the great idea to turn our students onto this but they can’t get behind the wall. For this project and this subject, I suggest taking down the wall. It’s a good cause.
Apart from that, this is an important moment, for here is a journalist recognizing that his reporting will get seen by more people from more perspectives by allowing it to be remixed, by putting itself into the conversation.
