An unusual storytelling on a very serious matter

I must say, I am usually not into crime stories. Still, as a newcomer here in the city, I found it rather informative and insightful to know that there was some surge in criminal activity in precise parts of the Brum urban area. And that it has to do a lot to street gangs. The reported acts of crime sure are quite disturbing too — if we were to use an euphemism.

The Birmingham Mail published a fairly convincing piece on this matter. It is reported that three gangs are behind most of the recent crime surge in the south of the city.

While one may appreciate the piece for its valuable information about which places to avoid if you don’t aspire to become a crime reporter, its narrative structure is rather unusual — if another euphemism is permitted. The story loses rhythm to jump on a new one and gets halted by a purely factual type of content.

We are also chronologically carried back-and-forth a few times, going to one issue to another. Even though doing so is not unusual and can even be part of a great inverted pyramid structure, the absence of subheadings and narrative or logical transitions makes it hard sometimes in this case.

The main picture in just a few words

The very beginning is interesting and contains most of what we must know, if we had to forget everything else. We are offered the full context: there has been (what) a rise in horrible crimes from (when) January to present day in southern areas like (where) Kings Norton, Longbridge, Bartley Bridge and Northfield. The reason (why) behind it is a turf war between (who) three named gangs.

Put differently, we have a clear setting (more violence-prone areas of the southern part of the city) which results from a movement (ongoing and escalating turf war) prompted by three gangs (characters) and tackled with difficulty by the police force (another character).

An odd-shaped Martini Glass

We then read a lot more about other characters, such as the very people who happen to live there. But before that, and probably too soon in the story, we are told about the storytellers themselves (other characters), the media organisation, who insists a lot about its non-resolved issues in getting the needed information and data from the local police authority.

The article then insists it has partly resolved the issue by conducting in-depth interviews with members of the south Brum community itself.

The story then returns back to the point of the story, repeats a few key points and eventually go into more precise examples of committed crimes in a more narrative and chronological way.

But the rhythm which has just started is halted by the sudden appearance of a chronological bullet list briefly relating other similar crimes. We then return to a more usual type of journalistic storytelling about crimes in a precise neighborhood.

Some movement follows and broadens the context. The newspaper explain to the audience that it first revealed the emergence of the three groups last May, after which the community members stepped in to comment and talk about the work of the police. And (again), we read about other incidents that occurred a while ago. Promptly right after, with only the announcing of a picture, we learn about a person who got arrested for similar offenses that are not related to the ones that have just been discussed only a few paragraphs ago.

And then, finally, we go back to the issue regarding the access to information from the police about this surge in violence. Moreover, the police is given a lengthy direct quote as for why it decided to not share its data with the media organisation.

A bit hard to follow, isn’t it?

The content saves the day

Even though the story has proven itself to be a little unusual in its form, virtually nothing in the content of the article is irrelevant, if we can forgive the occasional repetition. The story is very informative if one wants some more details about the gangs’ recent criminal activity and the unrecommended areas.

But for others, the shortform of the publication’s own story probably is enough.

Here, the paper made good use of its cover page. While the tweet itself is a mere reformulation of the main finding of the story (a turf war is behind the recent violence), the attached picture offers much more practical information around it. We are also told there are precise places that should be avoided, and that no other that the local MP agrees to say that the situation is getting out of control. We feel much more invited to know more: which areas to avoid, whether the MP has any other comment or suggestion. This is all still a very traditional way of teasing the audience. As many organisations and people are getting very creative with only 140 characters, the Mail here remains conservative as the tweet and the cover page tries to summarize all the story instead of offering more entertaining options like bits of information, a beginning and an end, a engagement-generating question or an intro and a twist. It simply is a classic, but complete, top-down promotion of a story.

The story was tweeted again only minutes later, with little more to add. Engagement was also much lower.

And here, the organisation made a similarly limited editorial shortform decision on its Facebook page:

While the story is a full account of the recent rise in criminal activity by street gangs, this Facebook publication of it is rather limited. Again, instead of playing with all the options of shortform storytelling possible, the page decided to suggest that this article is simply a list of violent crimes that are attributed to gangs.

Even more surprising, the media took the time to create a short video that sums up parts of what can be read in the article but did not publish it on Facebook nor Twitter. Video is a convenient type of content for consuming and sharing on social media. It did not (re)publish the story later neither. It could have done so by experimenting different types of shortform publications along with using the other pictures that can be found in the story.

We are often told to think about the proper organisation of the communication and promotion of a story. Yet the content must be good, too. In this case here, it is good, but some publishing creativity was lacking. Perhaps the story could have been shared a lot more with other shortform types of storytelling.