{"id":1910,"date":"2019-11-01T01:52:01","date_gmt":"2019-11-01T01:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2019\/11\/01\/three-core-story-principles-aided-by-tea-baked-goods-and-endless-enthusiasm\/"},"modified":"2025-01-08T20:13:14","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T20:13:14","slug":"three-core-story-principles-aided-by-tea-baked-goods-and-endless-enthusiasm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2019\/11\/01\/three-core-story-principles-aided-by-tea-baked-goods-and-endless-enthusiasm\/","title":{"rendered":"Three core story principles, along with tea, baked goods and endless enthusiasm"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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You no doubt know Reuters, the global financial news giant that is now part of Thomson Reuters. But you might not know that when it launched more than a century ago, it was with the help of a flock of pigeons.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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According to Tom Standage, author of \u201cThe Victorian Internet\u201d<\/a> (a book about pioneers of the telegraph), German-born innovator Paul Julius von Reuter was employed to cull stories from European newspapers and translate them into different languages for redistribution. Along the way, he realized certain stories were more valuable than others. Furthermore, as Standage recounts, \u201cbusinessmen in particular were willing to pay for timely information.\u201d So in the 1840s, Reuter began his own news distribution company, deploying some 40 homing pigeons to expedite the delivery of proprietary information hours before it could arrive by rail. Initially Reuter\u2019s project operated between Aix la Chapelle (called Aachen in Germany) and Brussels, with correspondents posted throughout Europe. In Standage\u2019s telling: After the daily stock markets closed, Reuters representatives copied the latest bond, stock and share prices \u201conto tissue paper, and placed them in a silken bag\u201d fitted to a pigeon who flew the news to headquarters.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Kari Howard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div> \n
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It is precisely details like these \u2014 the tissue papers, the silken bags \u2014 that Kari Howard, Reuters\u2019 first Storytelling Editor<\/a>, prizes, especially when they add meaning to the stories she helps shape for the global enterprise team.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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To many Storyboard readers, Howard was known as the music-art-and-book loving editor of this site between 2016 and 2018. Others familiar with her long career at The Los Angeles Times may know she served as the assistant foreign editor there until becoming the editor of Great Reads\/Column One.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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According to journalist Patt Morrison<\/a>, who introduces \u201cHow Far Can a Piano Fly\u201d<\/a> \u2014 a collection of narratives from the column\u2019s first 30 years \u2014 <\/em>Column One was a unique enterprise among newspapers, a foray into literary journalism where \u201cthe stylishness of fiction [is] paired with the authenticity of news.\u201d Morrison explains how the column functioned as \u201ca leisurely, considered account,\u201d a respite from the \u201crat-a-tat-tat\u201d of \u201cwho-what-when-where\u201d news stories. Howard shepherded Column One for four years, during which she helped expand the portfolio of narrative journalism, including some Pulitzer Prize-winning work.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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(Although Column One was suspended in 2017, during contraction and restructuring at the Times, it was relaunched in January 2019. Read the Storyboard interview with editor Steve Padilla<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Morrison describes the best Column One stories as \u201cyarn[s] that stay\u2026 with you,\u201d created from \u201cstoryteller prose with substance at its heart.\u201d That\u2019s also a fitting description for what Howard has been nurturing since joining Reuters in early 2018.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Howard is based at Reuters\u2019 headquarters in London, but she has guided projects with datelines including Borneo, Bangladesh, and Bergen. Her team\u2019s reporting has been tackling unwieldy issues such as climate change, immigration, and Brexit. Yet the narratives always make clear how complex and, in many cases, ongoing challenges affect individual humans \u2014 people we feel we recognize and understand by the story\u2019s end. To name a few examples:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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