I’m currently reading Zora Neale Hurston’s excellent memoir Dust Tracks on a Road, and she describes going to high school at night after work:
In English, I was under Dwight O. W. Holmes. There is no more dynamic teacher anywhere under any skin. He radiates newness and nerve and says to your mind, “There is something wonderful to behold just ahead. Let’s go see what it is.” He is a pilgrim to the horizon. Anyway, that is the way he struck me. He made the way clear. Something about his face killed the drabness and discouragement in me. I felt that the thing could be done.
I think that’s what we’re trying to do at CT—kill the drabness and discouragement and make readers feel “that the thing could be done.” We don’t want our reporting to be just discouraging, but energizing. My colleague Andy Olsen talks about our reporting work as “formational information,” meaning we want to provide new information but send readers in a direction. To a hopeful horizon. In our faith, we know that’s not a wishful image but rather a reality that reporting can help reflect.
