Explanatory journalism that puts events in context

Explanatory journalism that puts events in context

Explanatory journalism is a concept that gives general journalism a new and modern dimension by offering detailed explanations of information and stories and, most importantly, provides a context for the information, news, and stories, so that the users/audience can understand them better. Explanatory journalism is essentially structured journalism that offers a context. This is particularly true of serialized news stories.

Explanatory journalism offers answers to that journalistic questions “why” and “how”, focusing more on these questions to provide context and make sense of the other journalistic questions – “who, what, when, where.”

This concept of journalism attempts to elevate itself above “quick hit” stories and soundbites, to offer readers additional information about the story and make sure that they properly understand the developments. The content is focused not so much on what happened, but what it means. This concept is much more suitable for digital/online media, because journalists can use multimedia tools to explain the news and information much more easily, i.e. provide a better context for this story through different types of illustrations. It is easier to add news items in digital media and annotate previously published news items, so that the more recent addition provides more context and more detailed explanations of the event, analysis, or situation.

However, journalists should be aware that explanatory journalism requires more research to put an event in context, so that it can be better explained to the audience. It should be emphasized right away that journalists must never make assumptions. Instead, before publishing anything, the journalist should check the multiplicity of information s/he is working on with relevant experts in the subject area, such as vaccination, as well as fact-check and establish as many connections among the various data points as is feasible in order to set up a context. What journalists should be mindful of is whether the information they have is newsworthy.

When it comes to multiplicity of information, we really think that we are exposed to a lot of information on a daily basis. For example, there is talk of regular immunization for children, vaccination against seasonal flu, etc. Thus, the first thing a journalist should do is review or investigate which topics and issues are being talked about by people, mainly on social media, and then in everyday physical interactions as well. If the journalist finds that some issues are more topical than others, s/he should collect, process, and (most importantly) find answers for them. Secondly, based on the trending topics, a journalist may initiate a discussion about the most important issue and try to engage the public, the expert community etc, and finally try again to explain why a particular phenomenon or situation is happening.

As the need to really explain and make sense of events arose in journalism, instead of just having the media publish more than 100 news items every day and the audience getting lost in dry reporting and coming away from it with no opinion or wrong opinions, large international media have started dedicating full sections to explanatory journalism. The New York Times, for example, tries to explain this concept in a brief two-minute video.

The Pulitzer Prize for journalism for 2022 was awarded to a team of journalists for a series of articles that exemplify explanatory journalism. In 2021, the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism went to Reuters, the international news agency. Media in N. Macedonia are beginning to get interested in this concept, which is still nascent.


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