Hello and a warm welcome to all nineteen of the wonderful early-adopters reading this first newsletter from good story. I’m really touched that you chose to be here. Take a seat; make yourself comfortable.
Today, I’m bringing you the origin story of good story. It describes a somewhat mundane – and I expect quite common – experience, but it’s also one that feels very vulnerable to put out there. I’m not used to writing publicly about myself. But it's also one that I suspect has far-reaching political implications.
I hope it resonates with you. If it does: let me know! Tell a friend! I read all the emails sent by my many, many subscribers.
I’ve been a journalist for ten years. So why can’t I read the news anymore?
I decided to start this newsletter because I was ashamed. I’ve been a journalist for ten years, many of these as a foreign correspondent. I’ve worked with some of the most prestigious news outlets in the world. I still do. But for the most part, I don’t read the news. I don’t listen to the news. And I don’t watch the news. Or, maybe more accurately, I can’t do it. On most days, I couldn’t tell you the precise details of what is going on in the world.
I have an idea about the broad strokes; I do live in this world, I’m a curious person and research is a big part of my job. But these days, I couldn’t tell you exactly which leader was elected in what country; I couldn’t tell you which war has started and which has ended; I couldn’t tell you which crimes were committed or tried; I couldn’t tell you who’s making money and off what; I couldn’t tell you who’s protesting and what they’re fighting for.
I can’t remember the exact day that I stopped reading the news. It feels like it was a gradual process. I started becoming aware of my body and my emotions each time I did; and as you can probably imagine, it wasn’t great.
I remember this one time a few months ago: I was scrolling on Instagram and a lot of people were posting about Palestine. I know there’s a genocide happening in Palestine, because I still do live in this world. This particular instance of violence had seemed to get the attention of my social media feeds, so, in a panic, I typed “Gaza” in Google News and desperately read every article I could find from any reliable news source.
A few hours later, when I emerged from my frantic rabbit hole, I had learned the particular number of humans who had been killed this time and the particular way these humans had been killed. I already knew who had killed them. I was feeling tense, desperate, powerless. Here’s what I hadn’t learned: what I could do about it.
What was the point of me learning about this particular day’s horrors? Did it make me feel better about myself, knowing that I had felt pain, grief, outrage on behalf of these humans? Did it make me feel like I was helping Palestinians by bearing witness to their suffering? Was I helping them? How would they ever know that I, on this particular day, had read about them and felt pain with them? And if they did, what could they do with that knowledge? Did it make me feel like I was performing my duties of staying informed as a citizen? Or was I just doing it because I had been told it was what I was supposed to do? Or was I performing what I thought a good person should do and not look away?
I’ve also been a community organiser for some years. And this made me notice another thing: the more I learned about the world in this way, the less capacity I had to act on it. The hours spent staring in despair at my phone were hours I wasn’t spending building communities, movements and projects with people. Because I felt powerless, paralysed by the unending parade of the day’s violence.
This made me think: is this how reading the news should make you feel? Powerless? Less equipped to act on the world than before you showed up?
There are easy answers to this. I could have chosen to stop consuming news entirely, and slowly retreated from the world to “protect my peace.” I could have stopped being a journalist. I could have guilt-tripped myself into consuming more news in order to be a good citizen. Instead, I kept thinking: what if we, as journalists, could do better than this?
Maybe it wasn’t I, as a consumer of news, who needed to change.
Maybe it was the news that needed to change.
I kept thinking, how do we, as journalists, adapt our methods and practices to meet the needs of this political moment? How do we shift our thinking, our training, and our output, so that we tell the stories that are needed of us to imagine better futures?
When I say journalists, I mean anyone who is in the business of telling true stories about the world. That means journalists, but also documentary filmmakers, podcasters, non-fiction authors and all other producers of non-fiction stories.
I share this thing I’m ashamed of because I suspect I’m not the only one. Because it seems as though we’ve perhaps never needed journalism more than we do right now. The world is changing; so should our practices. I can’t be the only one who’s watched newspapers folding or being bought by people way too invested in the status quo. Who’s watched as people -- people like me -- turned away from the news. Who’s watched as people stopped believing in, stopped trusting journalists.
This is what I want to explore in this newsletter. Who do we need to become, as journalists, as storytellers, in order to meet the moment we’re in?
I’d like to invite you along as I embark on the journey of trying to find out. If you or someone you know is grappling with these same questions, share this newsletter with them or hit reply to this email and let’s chat.
One good story: each month, I’ll bring you one – yes, just one! – carefully selected story recommendation. Something that challenged me, stayed with me, or reminded me why storytelling matters.
This month, I got really excited listening to the Tested podcast, by the CBC and NPR’s Embedded. It’s a six-episode series about the history of sex testing in women’s sports. The narrative is thrilling, I learned a ton of things, and it's reported by the wonderful queer documentarian Reo Eveleth. It also somehow manages to beautifully hold your hand through the complexities of the scientific – and societal – processes it describes. Bonus points for hiring an intersex consultant to make sure everything was portrayed in a fair and sensitive way (this almost never happens!)
One question for you: Next time you read or watch or listen to the news, try noticing how it feels in your body. Are you tense? Hopeful? Grieving? Tingling?
good story grows like it’s 2007 – through word-of-mouth, not algorithms.
If this resonated, forward it to a friend, talk about it with your networks online or off, or share the sign-up link 🌀
Every time someone shares this, Elon Musk loses $1. Probably.
Who am I?
I’m Anna Pujol-Mazzini – after ten years as an international correspondent, I moved back to Paris to dedicate my time to investigative journalism, narrative podcasts and storytelling for change.
If you’d like to work with me, here are my current offerings:
- I produce narrative and investigative podcasts.
- I fact-check complex, sensitive non-fiction stories and offer 1:1 support for storytellers who want their work to be airtight
- I work with international reporting teams as a field producer, tape syncer and fixer for podcasts and documentaries in France.
- I facilitate panels and live interviews with sharp, thoughtful questions that bring out the best in speakers.
- I offer 1-1 consultations on trauma-informed reporting for nonfiction storytellers.
If you're working on something and want to collaborate – reply to this email and say hi! I'd love to hear what you're building.
