A glass jar of many stories
Nearly 10 years ago, I was interviewing a Canadian farmer who told me about the competition for pizza-sauce contracts in Nigeria’s biggest cities — and how his business was in demand an ocean away. I was shocked. At the time, Nigeria produced about four or five times more tomatoes than Canada. How could this make any sense?
It is in this image of a little jar (or can) of tomato sauce that I always remember how one story can be so many more: stories of conflict and insecurity making it tough to open factories, stories of supply chains and cold chains and weak infrastructure leaving product spoiled before getting to market, stories of governance issues, of receiverships, of health and safety protections, of false advertising, of struggling agricultural sectors pushing for exports, of colonial history and inequality, and stories of how these imbalances in business or marketing continue, pushing global connections of training and trade links.
Tomato sauce became my symbol of a story system. Rather than focusing tightly in, the goal instead is to show more angles; zooming out so that we can really understand the dynamics at play.
In the years since, working as a full-time freelance journalist, I felt so many times that the story I told was limited. It showed only one small piece.
I wanted to launch a project merging my love of in-depth data journalism research with the rich and intimate storytelling of audio and visuals. But I needed to transition my thinking from freelancer to founder.
That’s why I knew I needed to join the City University of New York’s Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program (EJCP), run through the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.
From freelancer to founder
The EJCP was a 100-day crash-course in media sustainability and business acumen.
I’ve often thought freelance journalism is a lot like the classic video game Tetris. Much of freelancing is responsive — trying to grab whatever opportunity or piece you have in front of you and put it in the right spot, keeping an eye ahead for the next one coming, and hoping you’ll be lucky to get enough to complete a row.
The EJCP helped me understand ways to switch from that responsive mindset to a strategic one, designing my own opportunities. We learned tools to do this, things like how to conduct audience research, form our value proposition, and consider varied revenue possibilities.
Through my audience research, I found that many people were as interested as I am in long-form, in-depth news coverage that covers a wider view. I gathered research that confirmed highly focused news stories can sometimes lead to more divisiveness or misunderstandings about the complexity in the world. And about 85% of my survey respondents agreed: “The world is divided.”
With all that research and my idea more clearly defined, I decided it was time to follow the best advice from my EJCP mentor, colleagues and instructors:
“Ideas are easy. Execution is hard.”
“Perfect is the enemy of good.”
“Ruthless prioritization.”
“Just get started.”
I decided to focus on a few key stories and building a network of collaborators and co-publishers to move me closer to launch.
Small steps forward
Giving shape to my dream project wasn't easy. But with the support of my mentor, colleagues and instructors, I took the first small steps forward.
I decided to apply my tomato sauce concept to a news outlet that looks at narrow stories through a wider lens, with data journalism and visual essays on the website, and a podcast series, breaking down each topic into short episodes delving into different parts of the system.
I’ve started to form my team, with collaborators across four continents, and we have brought on our first publishing partner. We plan to launch our first story this year. We’ll cover a variety of topics; things like human rights, corruption, technology, and climate change. But we’ll do that by digging into the data and patterns, and breaking each down to emphasize the nuance. We’re not interested in the simple — we want to see further.
Our project has a website but the name is still being decided. Whatever it becomes, you’ll find it here. We’re not going to be comprehensive — we can’t cover everything there is to know. But the goal is to zoom out and study the surprises in the systems so that our audience comes away a bit more curious, or a bit more informed.
After an inspiring 100 days of learning with the EJCP, it also felt important to keep the momentum going. So in the spring, I’ll be taking part in another entrepreneurship program. This time it will be broader than journalism, an incubator to learn how to apply other industries’ knowledge to my project.
We hope our news product will serve a growing community of people craving stories that move away from divisiveness and act as a reminder that every little glass jar of tomato sauce is really telling us so much more.
If you want to support us, you can reach out through the website or find me here, on Twitter, or LinkedIn.
