{"id":497,"date":"2025-11-10T08:08:48","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T13:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/?p=497"},"modified":"2025-11-10T08:08:48","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T13:08:48","slug":"week-10-blog-do-journalists-really-make-meaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/week-10-blog-do-journalists-really-make-meaning\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 10 Blog: Do journalists really “make meaning”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What do journalists mean when we say we are \u201cmaking meaning\u201d through our work? In short-form news pieces, a journalist\u2019s job is often simply: let people know what happened. People will \u201cmake meaning\u201d of the news, or they won\u2019t. Our job is simply to provide them the information they need to do so. But we see long-form differently. We\u2019re not just telling people what happened, we\u2019re telling people a story. That story has an order, which tends to reflect the meaning that the writer has made from all of the information they have collected in their research. In the final product of a long-form piece, the reader doesn\u2019t get all the information \u2013 that would be impossible, especially if, as Chip Scanlan puts it, that journalist sets out to \u201cfind out everything they can\u201d at the beginning of their reporting. But what does it actually mean to \u201cmake meaning\u201d? Can meaning be made?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Putting together this week\u2019s reading, and last week\u2019s, I think what people mean when they say \u201cmake meaning\u201d is actually \u201cmake structure.\u201d Scanlan describes Song Yang\u2019s death as \u201cthe byproduct of a wretched, Dickensian system.\u201d Part of the structure \u2013 ergo meaning \u2013 of this piece is that Song Yang\u2019s death is not just a fluke, but part of a larger system. She is a window into a world few have seen. As Barry tells Scanlan in the annotated copy, there is no precise nut graf in the story, but its \u201creason for being\u201d (the best way I have heard a nut graf described) is delivered in his 12th graf \u201cA tenth of a mile\u2026 and few in this city will take notice.\u201d This reminded me of the \u201creason for being\u201d of Senior\u2019s assessment of why Bobby Mcilvaine\u2019s story mattered; that in the aftermath of 9\/11, we all understand the event as a whole, but our knowledge of individual stories are limited. In these cases, Barry and Senior make meaning in a very direct way: they tell us what the meaning is.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Robert Worth accomplishes something similar in \u201cAleppo After the Fall,\u201d rolling lede and nut graf into a neat narrative. In his story, we don\u2019t quite need a directly stated \u201creason for being\u201d as we might in \u201cThe Case of Jane Doe Ponytail.\u201d It is clear that this story is tied to Bashar al-Assad\u2019s fall, an obviously significant event. We get more contextual descriptions in graf 8 and 9, but never does Worth exactly state\u00a0 a reason for being.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are also subtler ways of assigning meaning through structure: symbols, motifs, and recurring metaphors as one might find in a book. Song Yang\u2019s butterflies particularly stood out to me. The image of the young girl showing iridescent pressed butterfly wings to her friends at sleepovers tied with the butterfly-adorned headband which flies off her head in her fall infuses the structure with meaning. The detail is not meaningful because it is representative of a larger system, but rather because it is unique to Song Yang \u2013 an image around which we can order her life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The last form of meaning-making that stood out to me comes not through structure but rather journalistic access. Whether it\u2019s access to a place like 40th Street or access to a place like meetings regarding Ukraine in the oval office, as we get in Isabelle Khurshudyan\u2019s piece, the settings of these pieces take on meaning because we could not get to them without the journalist\u2019s help. Ultimately, I\u2019m not sure journalists actually do <\/span>make<\/span><\/i> meaning. It\u2019s a small and probably insignificant difference, but I think they find it where it already is, structure it, and deliver it. Part of this delivery also comes through being attentive to a reader\u2019s likely frame of reference, as McPhee describes it. Attending to structure, frames of reference, and what we are giving our readers access to that they didn\u2019t already have is how we <\/span>illuminate<\/span><\/i> meaning for our readers. Knowing that we are doing so is how we <\/span>make<\/span><\/i> meaning of our work to ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What do journalists mean when we say we are \u201cmaking meaning\u201d through our work? In short-form news pieces, a journalist\u2019s job is often simply: let people know what happened. People will \u201cmake meaning\u201d of the news, or they won\u2019t. Our job is simply to provide them the information they need to do so. But we<\/p>\n

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