“Narrative journalism is so powerful”: Bernt Oksnes and Ashley Broadley offer crucial writing tips in AIPS e-College
LAUSANNE, June 8, 2021 – In January 2019, when Bernt Oksnes first thought of expanding on the story of Toril Stokkebø (49), the ski coach and mother of three who died of aggressive kidney cancer two years earlier, his primary aim was “to paint a picture of her life from start to finish, and everything in between”, while also diving deeper into the cause of her death – which had already been linked to her use of fluorine waxes.
The Norwegian feature journalist in the magazine section of the national newspaper Dagbladet sent an email to Arne, Toril Stokkebø’s widower, whose reply revealed that there was so much to the story than what was contained in news reports. After having a conversation with Arne, Oksnes’ idea developed into an explosive investigative project which would go on to win the first prize for Best Colour Piece in the AIPS Sport Media Awards 2020.
During the last global session of the 2021 AIPS e-College on June 8, Oksnes delivered a fascinating lecture on the elements of good storytelling as he read excerpts from two of his impactful features; “Mom is Dying” and “The Baby in the Plastic Bag” – a 1991 news story which he transformed into a nine-chapter masterpiece between 2016 and 2017. The former has four chapters.
NARRATIVE JOURNALISM Oksnes has a knack for long form, immersive writing and quoting Jon Franklin, the first Pulitzer Prize winner for Feature Writing in 1979, he said: “Most news stories are endings without the beginnings attached.” Hence, he always tries to find a deeper context and seek answers to the hows and whys. “And that’s where narrative journalism is so powerful,” he added.
While Oksnes can spend up to a year of countless research and interviews to achieve an indepth story, there are journalists who do not have that luxury as they have to file in daily news stories.
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR Chair of the Sports Journalists’ Association of Great Britain, Ashley Broadley, was the second guest in Tuesday’s session. He is responsible for all sport editorial content at PA Media, managing a team of 66 journalists and more than 100 correspondents around the UK and Ireland. And he absolutely understands deadline pressure.
“People react differently to it and I have to keep my eye out for people struggling with pressure; wellbeing is vitally important for staff.” There is a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) that also monitors the performance of the journalists. “So, I’m constantly meeting them, seeing them, working on their strengths and weaknesses. It’s a real positive system that we’ve got in place at PA.”
ACCURACY In response to a question from AIPS mentor Riccardo Romani, Broadley agreed that there is a battle between speed and accuracy in this era of social media and “it’s challenging”, however “I’d rather be late than be first and wrong”, he said, adding that it is important to verify everything because “the repercussions of something going out wrong would be far worse than a delay of 10 minutes”, especially when it's from a wire service.
MULTISKILLED Broadley highlighted the need to be multiskilled and be able to work across different platforms - most of the PA sports journalists who are out on the field are, he claimed. “They are also encouraged to work on social media a lot and try to have a social media presence,” he added.
KNOWLEDGE Another key point Broadley made is that “having the knowledge of the sport that you are invested in is absolutely vital and it will stand you out more than anything else because you can bring so much to the table”.
PA does not have a team dedicated to stories that may require lengthy investigations, but “all reporters are encouraged to get exclusives”, Broadley said.
ARCHIVES For Oksnes, however, one of his favourite things is “to systematically try to find stories in newspaper or media archives”. He added: “There’s so many potentially gold news stories there which can be developed into long form storytelling or medium long pieces.”
STORYTELLING TIPS But one thing is to find the story and another thing is how to tell it. From his experience and that of some other award-winning writers, Oksnes shared some techniques that are vital in storytelling, while emphasising that he does not fabricate scenes to fit his plot. “The first thing I want to mention is, all good storytelling creates an expectation – expectation is not the same as the final answer. Secondly, what creates the greatest expectation and excitement are emotions and feelings – 'we do not know what we will get' is always a good tool in narrative journalism. And while working on your story, it’s important to hold back information as long as possible.
“The fourth is, focus on the order in which you serve the readers the information you have collected – sequencing. The fifth thing is to create obstacles and challenges and it’s related to the next point which is the use of cliffhangers. Details are very important. Make the details as rich as possible. And the eighth thing is, transport your audience inside the scenes.
“The ninth point is to open strongly and build it in better. But don’t only pay attention to the beginning, also focus on the end as you try to keep the reader’s attention. In real life, stories do not end dramatically often, but there are more moving towards something calmer; a greater insight and reflection.”
RESEARCH These were the tools he used for “Mom is Dying” and “The Baby in the Plastic Bag”. For both articles he spent “weeks and months trying to get anything medically authentic as possible”. Regarding “The Baby in the Plastic Bag”, he had to win the trust of doctors so that he could get access to 25-year-old hospital journals in the basement of the hospital. He also studied photographs from various archives to figure out what the bed and the walls were like and what kind of equipment the doctors used in 1991. After obtaining a ton of material, he had to organise it into a narrative that has the “right amount of flow and tension”.
IMPACT “Mom is Dying” is the main story in a series about the health risks linked to fluorine ski wax. It was the best and most read story among 20,000 articles published on Dagbladet.no in 2019 – one million people and 100,000 hours. And the articles led to a sensational decision by the International Ski Federation, which banned fluorine in all global ski competitions.
ANALYTICS AIPS mentor Martin Mazur raised a thought-provoking point about how media outlets these days tend to neglect the need to reach the soul of a story because they want to offer short articles that follow the trend and will attract so many clicks. “If we only trust Google Analytics then maybe we are making a mistake.”
NEWSPAPERS Broadley added: “It reminds me of something that we might lose if we lose newspapers. People are making an editorial choice for you when they are making a newspaper, so I read a story that I might not otherwise have come across online.” And one big question is, with the success of a content being measured by algorithms and analytics in digital media, does that automatically translate to the value of the work?
PRESENTATION With regard to how attractive his articles appear on Dagbladet’s website, Oksnes said: “We have developers and tech people who design structure development and serial strategies parallel to the journalistic work, so everything was made and programmed from scratch to fit the piece of journalism.
“The online presentation and packaging is vital but the effects of the digital multimedia details should not stand in the way of the story but rather reinforce moods, make an emotion linger, press the right buttons. The biggest lesson I have learnt is that the story itself conquers everything.”
The Norwegian feature journalist in the magazine section of the national newspaper Dagbladet sent an email to Arne, Toril Stokkebø’s widower, whose reply revealed that there was so much to the story than what was contained in news reports. After having a conversation with Arne, Oksnes’ idea developed into an explosive investigative project which would go on to win the first prize for Best Colour Piece in the AIPS Sport Media Awards 2020.
During the last global session of the 2021 AIPS e-College on June 8, Oksnes delivered a fascinating lecture on the elements of good storytelling as he read excerpts from two of his impactful features; “Mom is Dying” and “The Baby in the Plastic Bag” – a 1991 news story which he transformed into a nine-chapter masterpiece between 2016 and 2017. The former has four chapters.
NARRATIVE JOURNALISM Oksnes has a knack for long form, immersive writing and quoting Jon Franklin, the first Pulitzer Prize winner for Feature Writing in 1979, he said: “Most news stories are endings without the beginnings attached.” Hence, he always tries to find a deeper context and seek answers to the hows and whys. “And that’s where narrative journalism is so powerful,” he added.
While Oksnes can spend up to a year of countless research and interviews to achieve an indepth story, there are journalists who do not have that luxury as they have to file in daily news stories.
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR Chair of the Sports Journalists’ Association of Great Britain, Ashley Broadley, was the second guest in Tuesday’s session. He is responsible for all sport editorial content at PA Media, managing a team of 66 journalists and more than 100 correspondents around the UK and Ireland. And he absolutely understands deadline pressure.
“People react differently to it and I have to keep my eye out for people struggling with pressure; wellbeing is vitally important for staff.” There is a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) that also monitors the performance of the journalists. “So, I’m constantly meeting them, seeing them, working on their strengths and weaknesses. It’s a real positive system that we’ve got in place at PA.”
ACCURACY In response to a question from AIPS mentor Riccardo Romani, Broadley agreed that there is a battle between speed and accuracy in this era of social media and “it’s challenging”, however “I’d rather be late than be first and wrong”, he said, adding that it is important to verify everything because “the repercussions of something going out wrong would be far worse than a delay of 10 minutes”, especially when it's from a wire service.
MULTISKILLED Broadley highlighted the need to be multiskilled and be able to work across different platforms - most of the PA sports journalists who are out on the field are, he claimed. “They are also encouraged to work on social media a lot and try to have a social media presence,” he added.
KNOWLEDGE Another key point Broadley made is that “having the knowledge of the sport that you are invested in is absolutely vital and it will stand you out more than anything else because you can bring so much to the table”.
PA does not have a team dedicated to stories that may require lengthy investigations, but “all reporters are encouraged to get exclusives”, Broadley said.
ARCHIVES For Oksnes, however, one of his favourite things is “to systematically try to find stories in newspaper or media archives”. He added: “There’s so many potentially gold news stories there which can be developed into long form storytelling or medium long pieces.”
STORYTELLING TIPS But one thing is to find the story and another thing is how to tell it. From his experience and that of some other award-winning writers, Oksnes shared some techniques that are vital in storytelling, while emphasising that he does not fabricate scenes to fit his plot. “The first thing I want to mention is, all good storytelling creates an expectation – expectation is not the same as the final answer. Secondly, what creates the greatest expectation and excitement are emotions and feelings – 'we do not know what we will get' is always a good tool in narrative journalism. And while working on your story, it’s important to hold back information as long as possible.
“The fourth is, focus on the order in which you serve the readers the information you have collected – sequencing. The fifth thing is to create obstacles and challenges and it’s related to the next point which is the use of cliffhangers. Details are very important. Make the details as rich as possible. And the eighth thing is, transport your audience inside the scenes.
“The ninth point is to open strongly and build it in better. But don’t only pay attention to the beginning, also focus on the end as you try to keep the reader’s attention. In real life, stories do not end dramatically often, but there are more moving towards something calmer; a greater insight and reflection.”
RESEARCH These were the tools he used for “Mom is Dying” and “The Baby in the Plastic Bag”. For both articles he spent “weeks and months trying to get anything medically authentic as possible”. Regarding “The Baby in the Plastic Bag”, he had to win the trust of doctors so that he could get access to 25-year-old hospital journals in the basement of the hospital. He also studied photographs from various archives to figure out what the bed and the walls were like and what kind of equipment the doctors used in 1991. After obtaining a ton of material, he had to organise it into a narrative that has the “right amount of flow and tension”.
IMPACT “Mom is Dying” is the main story in a series about the health risks linked to fluorine ski wax. It was the best and most read story among 20,000 articles published on Dagbladet.no in 2019 – one million people and 100,000 hours. And the articles led to a sensational decision by the International Ski Federation, which banned fluorine in all global ski competitions.
ANALYTICS AIPS mentor Martin Mazur raised a thought-provoking point about how media outlets these days tend to neglect the need to reach the soul of a story because they want to offer short articles that follow the trend and will attract so many clicks. “If we only trust Google Analytics then maybe we are making a mistake.”
NEWSPAPERS Broadley added: “It reminds me of something that we might lose if we lose newspapers. People are making an editorial choice for you when they are making a newspaper, so I read a story that I might not otherwise have come across online.” And one big question is, with the success of a content being measured by algorithms and analytics in digital media, does that automatically translate to the value of the work?
PRESENTATION With regard to how attractive his articles appear on Dagbladet’s website, Oksnes said: “We have developers and tech people who design structure development and serial strategies parallel to the journalistic work, so everything was made and programmed from scratch to fit the piece of journalism.
“The online presentation and packaging is vital but the effects of the digital multimedia details should not stand in the way of the story but rather reinforce moods, make an emotion linger, press the right buttons. The biggest lesson I have learnt is that the story itself conquers everything.”
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