25 Years Since Columbine.
What I learned about storytelling from my first story on television as a reporter.
_____
I was quietly working away at my co-working space yesterday.
On the neighboring big screen TV flashed a large news headline
“25 Years Since Columbine.”
Gosh, it had already been two decades.
It was April 1999 and I had just moved from New York City (Population 9 million) to Casper, Wyoming (Population 50,000.)
When the clarion call came from a former classmate, looking for a general assignment reporter to join him at a CBS station in Casper, the answer was ‘yes.’
Cub reporters, early in their careers in 1999, went to small markets with fewer eyeballs to make their mistakes.
Tomorrow I would be starting at KGWC-TV. I picked at the corner of my lone mustard-colored living room chair, where the fabric had peeled off, and wondered if it was even worth the Israeli’s hauling it cross country.
Day 1.
Hour 1.
A school shooting had happened in the neighboring state.
The parents in the immediate community were visibly shaken up. This incident, 300 miles away, hit too close to home.
I was tasked with finding parents and students who would speak to camera. What were they worried about? How would they keep their kids safe? How would children keep their peers safe? What conversations weren’t being had? What conversations needed to be had?
Storytelling around topics like this —-is hard.
Today, I find that my clients’ ability to do storytelling for business is hard.
In service of this, I lean on my days of journalism to share different frameworks with my clients to help.
In this link I share a framework →https://lnkd.in/eHiAZevV
I shared it with my Mastermind as they ready to tell stories about seminal moments in their lives —-and tie it back to business.
I use my own example from the story above to help fill in example answers.
