Michele Norris, host of NPR's All Things Considered, was named last week as the Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists.Norris was the keynote speaker at MWL's Winter Celebration in February. Both her speech to us and her reporting on the 2008 presidential race reflect a unique thoughtfulness about our current times. Norris uses that presidential election to reevaluate how people frame their experiences, and how that framing impacts both the future generations and our own memories.
"How much do we share with people to encourage them to go forward without weighing them down?" she asked in February. "How honest are we when we live history?"
Norris encouraged everyone to reflect on how much change people can have just by telling their stories. Interestingly, she drew attention to how much impact people have by purposefully keeping stories hidden.
Norris gave several examples of how stories of racial barriers that had been buried for decades have been flooding out of friends, family, and her since President Obama's election. "I think sometimes we believe that if we're honest with what we faced, people would leave."
These questions also extend to gender barriers--how are we shaping our legacy by how we frame stories of the past and present, and how much do we keep hidden? One thing can be said, though--Norris is truly shaping an important legacy through her excellence in revealing stories.
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