WokeOnPaperAuthentic Stories, Carefully Edited
We want the complexity of the ground, but please remove anything complicated.
Nonprofit communications often ask for authentic stories from the ground. But authenticity can become selective when political and social complexity is edited out to make a story easier to publish.
Real communities are rarely neutral spaces. People have different interests, histories, identities and relationships with institutions. Removing those tensions can make a story cleaner while making it less truthful.
Good storytelling does not need to reproduce every detail. But it should avoid turning people into simple characters in someone else's impact narrative. If a story feels too neat, it may be worth asking what was left outside the frame.
