Telling True Stories: Adventures in Multimedia Nonfiction Narrative
Abstract: The Digital Storymakers, a multimedia narrative nonfiction contest from 2013, is recast in the post-truth era that challenges those of us teaching media literacy. In December of 2012, the media welcomed what was immediately described at the time as “the future of online journalism,” with the publication of The New York Times’ multimedia piece, “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek,” which ultimately won both the Pulitzer and a Peabody (Cardon, 2012). This transformed not just journalism, but how English teachers could conceptualize multimedia research in the classroom. For a high school English teacher, this contest made visible some of the most difficult aspects of narrative nonfiction, namely, students had to reinterpret facts to form a cohesive and somewhat literary whole using the best media for the job. These conversations – about media literacy, about knowledge making, about narrative nonfiction – are as relevant now as they were in 2013 and, we contend, they will be as students continue to learn how to create substantive texts where they, themselves, are not only working to decipher credible sources of information but to become knowledge makers as well. As English educators, we have become increasingly aware about how we must work with students, in the process of multimodal composing, to make sure that we value “persistence, adaptability, and flexibility and recognize that ambiguity can benefit the research process” (ACRL, 2015).