A review of the recent event "Journalism and Crisis" at Reid Hall by Athina Thanasi and Nikolas Aronis for iMedD, the Incubator for Media Education and Development.
“Journalism and Crisis: Stories of Resistance,” a co-production of the Columbia Global Paris Center, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, and the Live Magazine, brought to Reid Hall an English-language version of the format that in recent years has been filling theaters across Europe. The idea is simple but radical: instead of newspaper pages or phone screens, the stories are presented live, on stage, by the very people who lived or investigated them—without any recording or filming, without “rewind” or “replay.” Live Magazine defines itself as a “living newspaper”: what happens, happens once, and the only trace left behind is the memory of the stories.
In this edition, the audience heard “stories of resistance” through the voices of six journalists and creators who have experienced war and exile, navigated, through their work, the world of disinformation and the far right, or faced threats as reporters. Each story was accompanied by carefully selected visual material—photographs, archival footage, handwritten notes—and a unique piano composition, written and performed specifically for the evening by the pianist Magdalena Baczewska.
