The Oral History Review

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uohr20

Journalism, COVID-19, and the Opportunity of Oral

History

Evan Faulkenbury

To cite this article: Evan Faulkenbury (2020) Journalism, COVID-19, and the Opportunity of Oral
History, The Oral History Review, 47:2, 253-259, DOI: 10.1080/00940798.2020.1791723

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00940798.2020.1791723

Published online: 02 Sep 2020.

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THE ORAL HISTORY REVIEW
2020, VOL. 47, NO. 2, 253–259
https://doi.org/10.1080/00940798.2020.1791723

Journalism, COVID-19, and the Opportunity of Oral History

Evan Faulkenbury

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
As COVID-19 wreaked havoc across the globe during the spring of Covid-19; coronavirus; oral
2020, journalists increasingly turned to oral history to document and history; journalism; ethics;
share stories of people coping with tragedy. Journalism and oral methods; relevancy
history share many commonalities, but as the COVID-19 pandemic
demonstrates, oral historians often lag behind journalists in making
stories relevant and immediate to the wider public. Journalists, like­
wise, typically lack oral historians’ careful attention and archival
methods. Set against the backdrop of COVID-19, this article explores
recent developments between oral history and journalism, suggest­
ing how oral historians can evolve to make oral history more acces­
sible, beneficial, and immediate to wider audiences.

Henry Chu will never forget how COVID-19 forced his family apart. In March 2020, the
month when the novel coronavirus COVID-19 went full-scale pandemic, the Chu family
had been preparing for the birth of its third child in New York City’s Mount Sinai
Hospital. The induced birth had been scheduled for March 24, but as hospitals began
filling, medical gear began disappearing, and people began dying, it became clear to the
Chu family that this would be no normal experience. Mount Sinai had initiated a new
policy mandating only one visitor be allowed into the delivery room, a rule that already
promised to divide Henry Chu and his wife from their two daughters. And then the rules
kept changing, just as the virus kept spreading. As Chu recalled, “we got a note on
Tuesday from our doctor saying they were going to start enforcing the no-partners policy.
Then we started freaking out. The day of our delivery it went into effect.” The family
scrambled to prepare, and on the morning of March 24, Henry Chu’s daughters waved
goodbye to their mother as she entered Mount Sinai alone. Nurses allowed the family to
watch through FaceTime. “The angle wasn’t great,” Chu said. “I didn’t even realize when
the baby came out. I could see my wife, but not the baby.” The birth was a success. Even
though the Chu family had grown at a time when so many other families had lost loved
ones to COVID-19, for Henry Chu, the memory would hurt. “All I know is I will never be
able to say that I was there holding my wife’s hand the day [our daughter] was born.”1
Henry Chu’s first-hand perspective appears to be the product of a skillfully led, long-
form interview by an oral historian, but it is not. Chu wrote his own story, and it is
available for the public’s benefit through the efforts of journalist Garrett Graff. Author of
The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 (Simon and Schuster, 2019), Graff
launched COVID Spring in March 2020 through Wired Magazine, as a space for anyone to
write and send their own stories for a collective oral history project. Graff explained his
desire to begin capturing the history of COVID-19 in the moment as it happens, soliciting
written stories from anyone who wants to share. An editor’s note accompanies Chu’s
story, along with seven others that appeared on March 27, 2020: “This oral history project
© 2020 The Oral History Association
254 FAULKENBURY

has been compiled from original interviews, social media posts, reader submissions, and
online essays. Quotes have been lightly edited, copy-edited, and condensed for clarity.”2
For seasoned oral historians, this might not look like oral history. But just as COVID-19
has altered our world, journalism’s penchant for rapid-response stories has multiplied the
opportunities for oral history to record, preserve, and share history―not years down the
line but right now.
Oral historians and journalists have been discussing our related fields for decades.
Memorably, Mark Feldstein labeled journalism and oral history “kissing cousins” and suggested
more commonalities than differences between the two.3 But the divide has yet to be bridged.
Oral historians―myself included―have yet to follow Feldstein’s advice to diversify the types of
oral history interviews, to do more of them at shorter lengths, and to make them more easily and
immediately available for the public. Journalists have also failed to follow Feldstein’s recom­
mendations that they be more thorough with oral history interviews, transcribe them, and make
them fully available to the public. Furthermore, with the rise of click-bait, the catchiness of oral
history has morphed into a hook for journalists to lure in readers for online articles featuring
mostly copied-and-pasted words from sources, block quote upon block quote, with minimal
analysis. But the divide is not insurmountable. As both journalists and oral historians struggle to
understand, document, and share the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic, we should take this
opportunity to reevaluate oral history’s priorities.
Oral historians risk losing control of defining and modeling the practice of oral history
to the broader public. Over the last several years, journalists have turned “oral history”
into a buzzword for online content with raw, firsthand stories of participants―usually
heavily edited and written (no audio or video). I do not intend to disrespect this journal­
istic form, as many esteemed media outlets have published important pieces in this vein.4
At the same time, magazines, newspapers, and online platforms have published more
light-hearted historical accounts under the “Oral History of XYZ” banner.5 There is
nothing inherently wrong with this form, and in fact, as a big fan of The Office (US),
I enjoyed a piece from Vulture about a particularly zany episode.6 My main concern,
though, is the public’s idea of “oral history” evolving into just some kind of glorified
printed excerpt of an interview, with none of the features that, to quote Alessandro
Portelli, “makes oral history different.”7 Perhaps McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, the
humor publication, has come closest to illustrating the problem. In an article entitled
“An Oral History of Oral Histories,” a fictional conversation between historian Richard
Hofstadter and GQ editor-in-chief Jim Nelson satirizes the journalistic appropriation of
oral history. Nelson proclaims, “At GQ we love oral histories. We’ve done them on Cheers,
Michael Bay, and Tim Tebow.” A frustrated Hofstadter asks, “Why are you even calling
them histories? They’re more like interviews about people and things.” Nelson describes
how someone could spend years doing archival research to write a full historical account,
“OR – you could just talk with the people . . . assume they have no ulterior motives, and
call it history! You tell me which is faster, easier, and more readable.”8
The truth is, satire notwithstanding, journalists have gotten better at oral history, while
oral historians have not gotten better at journalism. Through the efforts of Garrett Graff
and other journalists, a rich archive of voices is beginning to emerge that tell the early
story of COVID-19. And we’re able to read these stories right now, in the midst of the
pandemic, not years down the line. Their methods are not traditional oral history, but
journalists are practicing the highest virtue of the oral historian: listening. They are
 JOURNALISM, COVID-19, AND THE OPPORTUNITY OF ORAL HISTORY 255

listening, empathizing, and making a good-faith effort to document the history of

COVID-19 through firsthand accounts of the human experience.
In Canby, Oregon, Tyler Francke, working on the Canby Now Podcast, asked a short
question on Facebook: “How are you holding up?” Responses poured in. One person
wrote, “My mom got laid off because she works at a restaurant. Pretty afraid we might lose
our house.” Another wrote, “Kids are bored. My business is dead. And I think I have now
seen everything on Netflix.” Some responses were light-hearted, and others were full of
dread. They shared their feelings in the moment. They did not know what would happen
tomorrow, next month, or next year. COVID-19 offered no timetable for a return to
normalcy. “It just all feels so surreal,” another Canby resident posted on Facebook. “Can
someone pinch me to wake me up?” Francke discovered that what he calls oral history –
even if recorded through Facebook posts rather than through oral sources – offers a way to
describe the indescribable. It also saves something for an unknown future. “Who knows?,”
Francke concluded, “Maybe 50, 75 or even 100 years from now, some plucky young
podcasters will be telling historical stories about what we’re experiencing right now. . . .
This is an oral history of Canby in the midst of the covid crisis.”9
A group of journalists with Atlanta Magazine began compiling and sharing stories
online about their city. One featured Devon Clinkscales, a senior at Booker T. Washington
High School, whose life had been upended by COVID-19. “On March 2,” Clinkscales
recalled, “we were evicted from our apartment, but they didn’t change the locks. If they’d
changed the locks, we’d have nowhere to go. Our stuff would be out on the street.” He
went on to describe how he chose to stay with his father in that apartment, even after
eviction. “He [Clinkscales’ father] didn’t finish high school. He needs someone. He doesn’t
understand how things work. I love my dad, and I have to be with him.” This emotional
story begins to paint a picture of the human cost of COVID-19. The journalists with
Atlanta Magazine wrote, “This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was guaranteed to
happen. But to us? Now? We spoke with our neighbors about the world we’ve left behind,
and the one that awaits. Interviews edited for length and clarity.”10
Article after article has appeared online presenting oral histories of the COVID-19
crisis, and as the public remains quarantined and practices physical distancing, these
stories promise to continue. They connect us with other people, and they remind readers
that even through self-isolation, we are not alone. There have been oral histories of what
people experienced on cruise ships as COVID-19 ripped through the cabins. The
Washington Post started a series called “Voices from the Pandemic” that has chronicled
tragic stories of loss. Writers have used oral history to understand socially-distanced
birthday parties, weddings, and bar mitzvahs. StoryCorps and This American Life have
focused on living through the pandemic.11 And even on Twitter, one of the most
ephemeral of mediums we have, oral history has grown. Justin Hendrix created the
hashtag #ViralVoiceMail for people to leave anonymous voicemails on his cell phone,
and he converted many of them to mini-oral histories for anyone to stream. “This may go
nowhere,” Hendrix tweeted on March 17, “but I figured it was worth a go to give folks an
outlet, and potentially to see what patterns there are in people’s experiences. And I reckon
there are some good stories out there about folks helping one another, or contending with
struggles together.”12
The major shortcoming of these journalistic oral histories is the lack of archiving. They
exist entirely on servers belonging to private organizations and corporations. While some
256 FAULKENBURY

webpages might be saved through efforts by the Internet Archive, most have no apparent
long-range plan. When historians of the distant (and not-too-distant) future begin to write
the history of COVID-19, many of these oral histories we find so easily accessible right
now will no longer exist. Servers crash, web addresses change, and Google’s algorithms
bury important information for lack of proper metadata. While journalists have sharpened
their oral history skills in the present moment by broadening ways to collect firsthand
accounts, they have not crafted a way forward for these stories to endure.
Oral historians, meanwhile, have started to construct archives that will house histories
of COVID-19. These efforts are more slow-going than journalists taking to digital media
and Twitter to share oral history, but these repositories will hopefully stand the test of
time. The Chicago History Museum has created a crowd-sourced archive for various
documents, including oral histories, photographs, and journal entries that will “provide
depth and context for what an event or era was like for the real people experiencing it.
Gathering this kind of information about the COVID-19 pandemic in the Chicago area
will be important for people to understand and learn about this period of our history.”13
Other institutions are focusing on local COVID-19 history as well; Columbia University
has launched an initiative to track COVID-19’s history in New York City through oral
history. The University of Arkansas University Libraries has started to preserve stories of
students, faculty, and staff. The Indiana Historical Society has also initiated a state-wide
oral history project. While these projects are all in their infancy, and more are started
every week, archivists, librarians, and oral historians will ensure the longevity of these
voices.14
These early efforts by journalists and oral historians offer the briefest of snapshots to
understand early attempts to document and share stories of COVID-19. As we struggle to
make sense of our new reality, oral historians must view the shifted landscape as an
opportunity to refresh our thinking about the usefulness, accessibility, and future of oral
history.
First, oral historians could reimagine what our field might look like if we follow
Feldstein’s advice to shorten oral history. Why should we cede authority for brief and
targeted interviews to reporters, podcasters, and StoryCorps? Oral historians usually think
long-term and long, but maybe interviews with protracted durations should not necessa­
rily be our main instinct. Life stories as oral history can last hours – and, of course, we
should continue to create these. But we might also consider adding short, pin-pointed oral
histories to our repertoire. For example, PixStori, a mobile and cloud-based app created by
historian Michael Frisch and entrepreneur Michael Haller, allows users to create and share
short-form oral stories accompanied by images, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison
recently launched a short-form oral history project about student protests against the
Vietnam War.15 Following similar models could cut down the time to transcribe, preserve,
and archive. They could also disseminate oral histories to the public more quickly through
digital print, social media, radio, podcasts, and YouTube. Librarians could more easily add
them to library guides, directing students and researchers to these voices. Oral historians
could also work with local newspapers and reporters, working hand-in-hand to bring
these stories to larger audiences.
In a related sense, oral historians could also practice what journalists already know to
be an effective time-saver – cut down on prep time for interviews. Oral historians often
spend many hours researching, profiling, and preparing questions for narrators, only to
 JOURNALISM, COVID-19, AND THE OPPORTUNITY OF ORAL HISTORY 257

find the interview goes off-road almost from the start. Without a doubt, preparation
makes for better interviews, but often, less is more. What could be just as effective would
be to conduct oral histories without much prep, instead relying on our skills for listening,
empathizing, asking broad questions, and loosening our grips on the steering wheel. Not
only would this approach save time and allow for oral historians to conduct interviews
quicker, but it would also relieve us of the burden of knowing all we can before the
recorded conversation. This approach should not cut corners or serve as an excuse for
laziness but would redirect our energies into more beneficial outcomes – the creation and
dissemination of oral history.
Third, oral historians might rethink the practice of sending narrators full transcripts to
edit and approve before archiving and making them publicly available. Oral historians
could borrow a page from journalism’s playbook. Reporters operate fast and on strict
deadlines. They do not have time to type everything word-for-word and check with the
interviewee for approval, thus opening the door for the narrator to revise or retract certain
parts of the story. This approach simply would not work for journalists, so why do so
many oral historians operate this way? After oral historians make every effort to explain
the purpose and future of the interviews to the narrators, and after all questions are
answered, narrators sign consent forms. Their signatures indicate good-faith trust in oral
historians to secure the oral histories for posterity properly and honestly. Oral historians
could make the practice of indexing interviews more common, which involves short, typed
summaries of sections of the interview rather than word-for-word transcription. These
could also prove easier to share with narrators – not for their approval but simply out of
consideration and as a thank-you. And as an archival record, indexes require researchers
to listen to the spoken word, thus picking up more nuance, rather than transcription data-
mining, which more easily leads to mischaracterization. Rethinking the necessity of exact
transcription could make oral history – by oral historians – more relevant to the public as
we speed up the practice of getting our interviews out into the world at a quicker pace.
And lastly, oral historians should continue to model best practices for preserving,
transcribing, and archiving oral history. Journalists are quick, but they are not often
careful to manage lasting sources for posterity. These COVID-19 stories they are creating
and uploading in the moment are important, but they are transitory. They will not last.
Oral historians should not have to pick up journalism’s slack, but we should continue to
showcase how and why long-term preservation matters. At the same time, oral historians
should not sacrifice quality for speed. We cannot rush out oral history simply to meet
some perceived demand or to beat journalists to the punch. Our standards for oral history
set us apart, and our best practices ensure that what we do is ethical, fact-based, and
durable. Journalists often operate on the need to earn clicks and attract website traffic, but
oral historians take a longer view. Oral historians can demonstrate the necessity of full
transcripts or indexes, archival standards, and the importance of making materials acces­
sible and easily available online. We should also continue to work hand-in-hand with
librarians and archivists, professionals who share an interest in making these sources
relevant and publicly available in less time. Once again, these steps will be more easily
managed if oral historians conduct compressed interviews.
COVID-19 has changed our world. Things likely will not to return to “normal” after
the pandemic ends; so why should oral history? Journalism has shown us through the
volume and popularity of these recent stories that the public craves firsthand, personal
258 FAULKENBURY

voices of lived experiences – what journalists and podcasters have dubbed “oral history” –
to make sense of the unimaginable. Oral historians will never be able to match journal­
ism’s speed and audience, but if we reevaluate our opportunity to be relevant during and
after a global tragedy, we might rediscover why oral history matters so much.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes
1. Henry Chu, compiled in Garrett Graff, “Birth, Death, Weddings: An Oral History of COVID-
19 Disruptions,” Wired, March 27, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/birth-death-weddings-
an-oral-history-of-covid-19-disruptions/.
2. Ibid.
3. Mark Feldstein, “Kissing Cousins: Journalism and Oral History,” Oral History Review 31, no.
1 (Winter – Spring, 2004): 1–22.
4. For example, see Rich McHugh, “An Oral History of a Predator,” Vanity Fair, March, 2020,
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2020/3/an-oral-history-of-a-predator, in which thirty
women recounted how Harvey Weinstein sexually abused them.
5. For example, see David Fleming, “Long Live the Butt Fumble,” ESPN The Magazine,
December 4, 2017, http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/21401659/butt-fumble-oral-
history-new-york-jets-nfl-king-bloopers-five-year-anniversary; Andy Greene, “Radiohead’s
‘OK Computer’: An Oral History,” Rolling Stone, June 16, 2017, https://www.rollingstone.
com/music/music-features/radioheads-ok-computer-an-oral-history-196156/; and Alan
Siegel, “Green Screen: The Oral History of ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,’” The Ringer,
March 31, 2020, https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/3/31/21196871/teenage-mutant-
ninja-turtles-1990-movie-oral-history.
6. Andy Greene, “An Oral History of The Office’s Insane Fire Drill Episode,” Vulture, March 24,
2020, https://www.vulture.com/2020/03/the-office-fire-drill-episode.html.
7. Alessandro Portelli, “What Makes Oral History Different,” in The Death of Luigi Trastulli and
Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (Albany: State University Press of
New York, 1991), 45–58.
8. John Frank Weaver, “An Oral History of Oral Histories,” McSweeney’s Internet Tendency,
September 25, 2014, https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-oral-history-of-oral-histories.
9. All quotes from Tyler Francke, “‘I’m Scared, To Be Honest’: An Oral History of Canby in the
Midst of the COVID Crisis,” Canby Now Podcast, March 18, 2020, https://canbynowpod.
com/history/im-scared-to-be-honest-an-oral-history-of-canby-in-the-midst-of-the-covid-
crisis/.
10. All quotes from Steve Fennessy et al, “21st Century Plague: 17 Georgians on What
Coronavirus Has Done – And What It Can Still Do,” Atlanta Magazine, March 29, 2020,
https://www.atlantamagazine.com/great-reads/21st-century-plague/.
11. For examples see StoryCorps, “Stories,” https://storycorps.org/stories/?taxonomy=editorial&
term=duty-connection-covid (accessed May 29, 2020); and “The Test,” This American Life,
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/698/the-test (accessed May 29, 2020).
12. Justin Hendrix, Twitter Post, March 17, 2020, https://twitter.com/justinhendrix; Allison P. Davis,
“An Oral History of a Social-Distancing Birthday Party,” The Cut, March 15, 2020, https://www.
thecut.com/2020/03/oral-history-social-distancing-birthday-party.html; Joshua David Stein, “An
Oral History of a Zoom Bar Mitzvah,” Grub Street, March 18, 2020, https://www.grubstreet.com/
2020/03/an-oral-history-of-a-zoom-bar-mitzvah.html; Madison Malone Kircher, “An Oral
History of a Socially Distanced Wedding,” The Cut, March 23, 2020, https://www.thecut.com/
2020/03/brides-throw-social-distanced-wedding-on-new-york-street.html; Tony Sizemore, on
 JOURNALISM, COVID-19, AND THE OPPORTUNITY OF ORAL HISTORY 259

the death of Birdie Shelton, as told to Eli Saslow, “Voices from the Pandemic,” The Washington
Post, March 28, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/voices-of-the-
pandemic/; and Monica Hesse and Dan Zak, “‘The Holiday of a Lifetime’: An Oral History of
the infected, rejected Zaandam Cruise Ship,” The Washington Post, April 2, 2020, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-holiday-of-a-lifetime-an-oral-history-of-the-infected-
rejected-zaandam-cruise-ship/2020/04/02/958c2288-7491-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html.
13. Documenting COVID-19, Chicago History Museum, https://www.chicagohistory.org/covid19
history/.
14. See the crowdsourced document collecting a list of current projects documenting COVID-19.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v5tso8spFq6SpW53h2OJULcdRoPEbyI6xpah31kW-
H0/edit.
15. See https://www.pixstori.com/and “Dow 50 Story Gathering Project: From Demonstration to
Commemoration,” University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, https://www.library.wisc.edu/
archives/archives/oral-history-program/uwohp-and-outreach/dow-50-story-gathering-project
-powered-by-ohms/.

Evan Faulkenbury is an assistant professor of history at SUNY Cortland. His courses focus on
United States history, public history, and oral history. He is the author of Poll Power: The Voter
Education Project and the Movement for the Ballot in the American South (UNC Press, 2019).