Complicating the Narratives
Journalists are using conflict mediation techniques to surface deeper truths about the communities they cover.
The Complicating the Narratives (CTN) framework helps journalists use conflict mediation techniques to surface deeper truths about the communities they cover, and provide greater understanding about issues those communities face. An essay by journalist Amanda Ripley inspires this work.
Complicating The Narratives Fellows
As the United States grapples with worsening polarization and seemingly intractable conflict, Complicating the Narratives (CTN) Fellows — U.S. journalists, representing a wide variety of geographies and communities — are using CTN techniques to report on solutions to some of the nation’s most divisive issues, with communities historically misrepresented by media and misunderstood by audiences.
Learn about the 2023 and 2022 fellows, and read the solutions journalism stories their projects have catalyzed in this collection.
Learn How to Complicate the Narratives
Looking to teach your newsroom the tenets of Complicating the Narratives? Tell us about your training needs, and we’ll connect you with one of our network’s CTN trainers. (Or check out the self-paced Complicating the Narratives Toolkit.)
Stories that Complicate the Narrative
Inspired by Amanda Ripley’s landmark essay of the same name, the solutions stories in this collection "complicate the narrative" through listening, trust-building and working across divides to uncover more authentic solutions to these divisive problems.
The following stories from CTN fellows stand as stellar examples of what happens when journalists use looping, deep listening and other conflict mediation techniques to surface deeper truths and provide greater understanding about some of the nation’s most contentious issues:
- HEALTHCARE: A physician and a reverend disagree on abortion — but not in the way you might think, by Alexis Allison
- IMMIGRATION: 'We've done it before': Becoming one, out of many, by Chris Green
- ADDICTION: Not yet free from heroin’s grip, an ‘honest, funny man’ finds his way off the streets, by Rachel Wisniewski
