Traverse City Record-Eagle

Jodee Taylor

Related Photos

  • Jodee Taylor

    Jodee Taylor
April 26, 2010

Jodee Taylor: Two sides to every story

By JODEE TAYLOR Record-Eagle

I used an example when I was talking to middle-school students one day that made the proverbial light bulb go off over their heads.

I tried it out on a few other people after that and they liked it, too. It's a helpful — and reassuring — way to look at things for anyone who's been the subject of a news story.

Sometimes, especially if it's a "bad news" story, it's not fun to get your name in the paper.

And when you do, you might not recognize what happened. That's because when it happened to you, it was like viewing it through a telescope. When the reporter writes the story, the view is 360 degrees.

For instance, if you're in a car accident, all you know is that you were stopped at a red light and someone smashed into your car. What you might not know is that the other driver swerved to avoid a child darting out into the road, then hit an icy patch and went out of control, resulting in a collision with your car.

If you were in your hospital bed after the accident, still reliving the surprise moment when the other car smashed into you, and you read a story that started out, "Joe Blow did his best to avoid a small child, but ended up taking out a Toyota ..." you might think, "Huh? He put ME in the hospital! He came out of nowhere, totaled my car, and now I have medical bills, and I have to get a new car, and what the heck is this reporter thinking?"

But it's still truthful. It just might not be the truth you witnessed.

Same with sports. If you're playing your heart out in a basketball game, concentrating on your own plays and working with your own teammates, you might not recognize the story in the next day's paper that starts out "(The other team) set a record for most wins in a season while (the top player) scored in the double-digits."

You might think the point of the story should be that your team's defense held that star player to only 12 points (or whatever) and you had no idea the other team was even in reach of a record, but that's the story that gets written.

I most recently used this example with a friend who wondered why so many people in town bash the Record-Eagle.

"They say the paper got the story wrong," she said. "They said that wasn't what happened at all."

She didn't have specific examples and I probably wasn't a witness to whatever event was reported, but when I used the telescope/360-degrees illustration on her, she could see how point of view and perspective come into play.

It works in everyday life, too. When your kid comes home from school, telling of a major injustice the teacher dumped on him, it helps to take a step back and think about the 360-degree view, or at least the other side of the story. Ditto a lover's quarrel, a neighborhood spat or anything where more than one person is involved.

Each person involved brings a different perspective and there are always two sides to every story.

Jodee Taylor can be reached at jtaylor@record-eagle.com.

Text Only