A State of Empathy
By Martha Mintz, ACN President
Exceptional journalism isn’t just the result of the hard skills drilled into us in college lecture halls. Some of the best stories are the result of soft skills, skills developed through experience. My favorite stories are those teased out by highly empathic journalists. They find the human element of a story and lean into it—even when the story is about the importance of breeding for maternal traits in your Angus herd.
In between doctor’s visits, adapting the house for specialized equipment, and long stints where the family was split between the ranch and hospital stays, the older children grew into being good hands around the ranch.
“Disposition through the years was very, very important because our hired men for a long time were 8 and 9, and then 10 and 11, and that became something we had not tolerance for—poor disposition,” Aaron says. – “The Cows That Bought The Ranch” Miranda Reiman—Angus Media
In the most recent Ag Communicators Network webinar, Miranda shared how what was supposed to be a simple production story morphed quickly as she delved into the why behind the Strommen family’s all-in take on maternal traits. I assume she found a thread and kept pulling even when the questions maybe got a little hard, a little personal. The strong sense of the empathy she felt and expressed probably kept the family answering those difficult questions confident that she would handle their story with care.
According to the article The Science of Empathy by Dr. Helen Riess, empathy enables people to perceive the emotions of others and resonate with them without making those emotions their own. It’s a sharing of experiences between individuals that creates an emotional bridge.
Empathy is not sympathy. Dr. Bréne Brown, a University of Houston professor who studies courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy, says empathy drives connection while sympathy drives disconnection. Empathy is feeling with people, she says. It’s looking at what another person is thinking or experiencing and then connecting that with something in yourself that knows that feeling.
(Check out her more thorough explanation in this short clip)
Creating even the most rudimentary of emotional bridges helps put a source at ease, allowing them to share comfortably. Much more sturdy bridges must be formed to dig into topics like Jennifer Shike did when she interviewed Maddison Caldwell for the article “By Her Own Hand: A Farm Girl’s Miraculous Journey from Death to Hope.”
“Depression set in for the first time in her life. Suicide crossed her mind, but she didn’t tell anyone. She just put a smile on her face and went on about life. But inside, the questions got bigger, and the hurt took up more space in her heart.
By Dec. 18, her meds weren’t enough. Her feelings were all-consuming.”
The trust that must be in place to share such emotion and such a personal story must be incredibly strong. It’s a lot of pressure on the journalist, too, to treat that story with the utmost respect. Those with empathy—those that tackle these sorts of stories—tell them well, and uphold the trust their sources gave them.
Lauren Kessle, who has been described as an immersion journalist had this to say in a personal essay on empathy in journalism:
“To write honestly and meaningfully, with context and sensitivity, we must write from a place of understanding. And that understanding comes from the people themselves, those with the lived experience we are trying to capture. How do we do that? I think the key is empathy.” – Mintz is a freelance writer with Corral Creek Communications.