Complicating the Narratives

What if journalists covered controversial issues differently — based on how humans actually behave when they are polarized and suspicious? In partnership with the Solutions Journalism Network, journalist Amanda Ripley spent months following people who understand conflict intimately and have developed creative ways of navigating it. This essay chronicles six specific strategies that journalists and other communicators could use to make conflict more interesting and more useful. It inspired the Complicating the Narratives curriculum, created for the Solutions Journalism Network by Hélène Biandudi Hofer. All of which eventually led to the founding of Good Conflict.

This essay was original published in The Whole Story in January 2019. You can find the print and audio version here.