Veteran editor Suki Dardarian has been involved in digital journalism endeavors for years. Currently, she is the senior managing editor and vice president of the Star Tribune. Dardarian will be the keynote speaker at our NSPA summer workshop, Storytelling: The Complete Package.
We spoke with Dardarian about the changing media landscape, multimedia projects and how young journalists can be successful.
SD: I came here from the Seattle Times, where I had been for around 15 years. I had been at the Times in a number of roles, starting as a senior editor overseeing the news operation. I expanded to take on features, sports, investigation, design — and then eventually digital. I shifted over and took mostly responsibility for digital and design, and really focused on not just the creation of the content, but the curation of the content and the storytelling.
And we forged a lot of new ground. We created a project around ocean acidification that got an online journalism award for explanatory journalism with integration — a really highly integrated multimedia project. I was looking for new challenges, and a spot opened up here at the Star Tribune and I went for it. One of the first things I did when I got in the door was begin working on another immersive storytelling project around the decline of the bees, which won that same award the following year from the journalism association.
SD: Oh, I love it. It’s a beautiful part of the country. I hadn’t spent much time in the Midwest, and I do have some roots here, so it’s nice to be able to come back and see where my forebearers lived. But it’s beautiful part of the world, and we’ve been really enjoying it.
And on top of that, I think the Star Tribune is just an amazing place to be right now. In an industry that’s really challenged, it’s thriving and innovating, and it’s a really exciting place to be. I hear a lot of consternation about what’s going on in the industry, and it’s all true. But we’re exhilarated by the challenges, and we’re in a position where we can really challenge ourselves and try to do the best we can do on multiple platforms — and carve out a bright future for the place and for this community.
SD: Well, it’s interesting because that project on the bees was a first here, in terms of the scope and volume and breadth and ambition. And I would say since then, we’ve done probably another half dozen to a dozen projects of varying sizes — some just as large — and it gets easier each time. Our designers have created templates that we use. We have begun to build out a process for what has to happen.
Part of it’s through learning. We’re realizing, “Oh, we have spent 450 years following a workflow for print.” So having to reinvent that for different projects — or for all of our storytelling — is one of the huge challenges facing newsrooms today. It’s not insurmountable, but you really have to rethink the order in which you do things, and more than ever it really forces more discipline on the process of storytelling, and particularly on the notion of being hyperfocused on what it is you’re trying to do.
If you meander into an idea and the idea or the story doesn’t have a strong focus or verb, you get halfway through it and different people are on unclear about what the mission is. And by that time, you’ve shot video and designed pages and built templates; you have interactives and data going on.
I think one of the things I’ve learned much more through this process is the need to be incredibly clear and focused form the beginning. You need a plan, and you need a strategy, and you need a mission. What is this story that we want to tell? Everybody needs to feel it and understand it. That collaboration and coordination is more important than ever.
SD: I think we’ve developed more confidence in our ability to tell stories. I think as the digital platform first surfaced, I think it was destabilizing for some storytellers: “Oh, it’s changing expectations, it’s changing who we are, it’s changing what we do.”
And I think as we all get more experience with new platforms and tools, we realize that the core of storytelling is still the same, it’s just, the tools are changing. So our sense of story, our sense of ethics, our sense of value remain fairly constant, but you simply have to apply them to a different medium.
I guess I would say that some values have evolved. For example, transparency is much more important now — and not that we didn’t want to be authentic 20 years ago, but I think authenticity is much more a key element of the process of storytelling. I think because we’re doing more of it, from social media to print to the web, I think people are communicating more and they’re making decisions faster, in many cases. So I think it has challenged us to be on our toes around the disciplines that are important to us and our organizations.
SD: I think you could argue both sides of that. As I was discussing with values, I think all the core values should still be intact, but there are some that I think have become even more important because of the nature of the platform, and I think that ethics and decision-making have never been more important. If you’re choosing to publish something on the fly, you know, you could make mistakes if you don’t have the culture and the sense of embracing what’s right for the community and what’s right for the story — are you ready to publish that?
So I think ethics, values and, as I said before, transparency and authenticity are incredibly important. Journalism was more about telling people what they needed to know — what we thought they needed to know. While that’s still an element of it, it’s also listening to people and trying to understand them and understand what they need, and asking them questions and having them respond. It should be more of a community conversation. And some people will say it always should have been a community conversation, but I think it’s critical now that that’s inherent in part of our effort, that it’s woven into everything we do.
SD: I think all journalists need to keep learning. I’ve been in the business for decades and I’m still learning. I sat in a meeting yesterday, and a number of people were teaching each other Snapchat, and you know, they may not use it, but you need to understand it. I think you have to be in a constant state of learning, and that needs to be active, not passive. The fact is all these amazing tools are being developed that can help us tell stories. Some of them might be kind of shiny and cool in the beginning and then you realize they really don’t deliver on their promises, but you begin to develop a sense for what works for you or what works for the story.
I think the worst thing you can do is learn all these tools and throw them at a story, and again, why are you doing that? What is the story about, and how can those tools serve the story and serve the community, serve the audience?
SD: I think making sure they are learning, making sure that they are paying attention to what’s going on — reading, experiencing other storytelling, seeing what’s going on in the industry.
Looking in the art world, you know, looking on the edges of the internet. Just being open to new ways of doing things. Learning from the potential missteps of others, because when there’s this much change going on, obviously there’s going to be moves that folks make that don’t work.
SD: I think being a journalist is understanding the values, the tools, the trade, the practice, the craft. But it also requires more of you, in terms of being a human. And I think (it’s important to) get a broad sense of the world, whether it’s learning about art or music or history or science or the economy, learning about the world.
I mean, journalists are curious, and if you’re curious only about journalism, that’s limiting. And I think, really, when I look at the best journalist I’ve worked for and with and above, they have passionate interests in areas beyond this craft. They have interests in science or art or technology, and I think those things are what also keep you growing and learning.
I also think the notion of being a collaborator in this industry is super important. It’s always been, but it’s even more important now, as we discussed earlier, because there are so many layers to what we do, and because we’re trying to do a lot in many ways with limited resources. Collaboration, cooperation, getting your part of the work done, I think is so critical to the individual’s success, but also to the success of the storytelling and the success of the institution.
SD: I’m always excited for this event because it is so heartening for me to see so many really smart people — smart high school-aged people — having passion for journalism. And that says to me that this discipline has a bright future.
When I talk to high school students now, they have so much more going on than I did. And that’s the other thing that’s really impressive, that folks coming into this business just keep getting better and better. It’s pretty cool.
If you’d like to hear more of Dardarian’s thoughts on multimedia — and apply those storytelling skills with hands-on reporting — it isn’t too late to sign up for the NSPA summer workshop, Storytelling: The Complete Package.
This interview has been edited and condensed.