Good storytellers are a special breed

"Daddy, tell me a story." It was a bedtime ritual at my home years ago. Sometimes, it was the same childhood tale, spun a different way. On other nights, it was a new yarn altogether.

There was the one about a young Andy volunteering to retrieve a red-meat, Rush Springs watemelon out of my grandparents' car only to splatter it on the front porch.

Or another about cutting the freshman pledges' hair at the fraternity house. (My family included some barbers so I figured I could give it a try.)

A repeating theme, usually pulled out on long car rides, was the caped, crimson avenger and his assault on the world's wicked.

My life has been blessed for having known a handful of good local storytellers. James McCall, a longtime Norman businessman, would visit my office, throw out a topic, then proceed to weave a tale of Norman's past. John Womack could talk for hours about the county's history. We once drove east on Highway 9, me dodging a herd of deer at 55 miles per hour with Johnny never missing a word of his story.

n n n

In Noble, Walter Rath delivered stories that made me feel like I was with him from day one. He once talked about landing a mammoth catfish, with both of them dead tired on the pond's bank from the struggle. By the end of the tale, I was worn out, too. Sadly, all three of those men are gone.

Storytelling has become a lost art, falling victim to shorter attention spans, twitters and texters. NBC correspondent Bob Dotson, in Norman for a journalism workshop this past week, remains one of our nation's best.

He cut his reporter teeth at Oklahoma City's NBC affiliate. His personal archives from 40 years of sharing America's story to televison audiences are headed to OU's Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

"It will be be a treasure trove for future generations of students," said OU journalism dean Joe Foote. As a KTOK radio reporter intern in 1969, Foote watched Dotson's early days in Oklahoma City. Dotson, Foote said, is one of the greatest storytellers alive.

n n n

"You don't tell a story to anyone unless you want to move them," Dotson told a couple dozen journalism students Thursday afternoon. His "Today's American Story" features spare viewers canned sound-bites and officialspeak, a staple of television journalism.

Journalists, he said, have lost sight of the fact that deep down we are all just storytellers yearning for an audience. Bob Barry Sr., his onetime colleague in Oklahoma City, once told him to set himself apart from others by being "one of a kind."

Instead of worrying about being first with a story, Dotson told journalism's next generation to develop their own compelling style that makes readers and viewers seek you out.

The delivery platforms will change but the mechanics of storytelling remain the same as when town criers shouted the news. Get their attention. Set the scenes. Find the conflict. Show what's invisible. Develop characters. Give them a surprise and then find a resolution.

"Stories are like onions. There are many layers... What matters most is how you tell a story, whether it's on a laser beam or on the back of a milk carton," Dotson said.

Andy Rieger 366-3543 editor@normantranscript.com