By Kirk Cheyfitz and Liz Manne — A new story, by itself, can’t close the gap between the party’s promises and America’s reality. The day after the Capitol riot, with the American experiment seeming close to its expiration date, Congress certified Joe Biden’s 7-million-vote victory and the Democratic Party immediately began worrying. Distressed by losses in the House (13 seats), slimmer-than-anticipated gains in the Senate (4 seats) and modest-but-depressing increases in Republican control…

A guide to research-driven storytelling for progressive change — Here’s a distressing fact: Audience research methods used for progressive causes and candidates are lagging behind corporate America’s advanced marketing research practices. It’s distressing (to me, at least) because it indicates progressives aren’t pursuing every fair advantage we can get. …

The failure of progressives to tell the story of the world we want is largely to blame for the dismal state of the world we’ve got. And we’re running out of time to fix it. This sorry tale begins on an up-note with Gouverneur Morris, a sadly obscure founder of…

Stories are powerful, but only if you tell the right ones. Here’s how. “Storytelling,” once again, is the most popular buzz word in progressive politics and social-justice campaigning. It’s official: the right stories will win. …

The Internet’s addictive gift to the audience is total control. Empowered to see only what they choose, more and more people are choosing not to see ads. — “Ad blocking is not something we control; it’s something the consumer controls.” Mike Donahue, ad agency veteran and former executive vice president of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, is talking to a roomful of leading marketers at the Wharton School of Business.

Journalism has always assumed that what a president says is news. That outdated attitude is not helping journalists handle misleading labels, presidential lies or other intentional acts of harmful fiction. — The New York Times and others are now rightly focusing on the ways the Trump era is straining the conventions of journalism as well as politics. But the news business’s focus is far too narrow.

We’re told the country is completely divided, but we’re actually united by the belief that the U.S. economy is a rigged game. — Shortly before midnight on Election Day, as “President Trump” was becoming inescapable, a Reuters/Ipsos poll reported 75% of those who had voted earlier that day agreed, “America needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful.” The second question in that same exit poll found…

Trump’s not Hitler, but an obscure story about a teenaged Jewish assassin shows how the Holocaust began and how Trump and too many of the rest of us think like Hitler. — ORANIENBURG, GERMANY — On a bright, cool afternoon earlier this summer, in this quiet village at the end of a suburban train line outside Berlin, the sun flatly illuminated the walled triangle that encloses what remains of Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Hundreds of millions of people have rejected advertising’s threats, pleas and arguments. So have the German courts. The digital ad biz needs to change its tune, its strategy and its leadership. Another collective shudder rattled down the spine of the beleaguered ad business recently when a new study found “at least 419 million people are blocking ads on smartphones.” That’s a 90-percent jump in the past year, according to the May report from PageFair.