Another way to tell the news? Plot and experienciality in narrative journalism

Factual journalism, or what we commonly refer to as “news stories,” largely conforms by the inverted pyramid model, according to which the most important information should appear in the very first sentences of the article, in such a way as to immediately give readers the key elements to understand the news. The inverted pyramid model thus seems incompatible with the dynamics of plot—in the sense that Raphaël Baroni (2007), following Jean-Michel Adam and Françoise Revaz (1996), among others, gives to the notion of plot. The inverted pyramid model rather appears to be fundamentally guided by a configuring intent—in the sense of Paul Ricoeur’s configuration (1983). While also claiming a configuring intent, narrative journalism appears as an alternative journalistic model, revealing a completely different stance on the notion of plot. In the narrative model news stories adopt the form and writing techniques of mimetic narratives, “which intentionally aim at intriguing readers and creating an immersive experience that transports these readers in the time perspective of the events being told” (Baroni, 2016). Experts and practitioners maintain that because it adopts the form of mimetic narratives, narrative journalism can in the end offer readers a better understanding of the world they are living in (Vanoost, 2015). This paper explores the dialectic between mimetic and informative narrative in narrative journalism, as well as the particular reading experience that this dialectic creates