I haven’t seen many journalists talking about “The Story.” Usually a movie or show with journalists at the center gets everyone talking, but not this one. Of course the topic of fabrications in journalism is not one that people want to dwell on (Shattered Glass aside), but I feel like that’s one of the least interesting parts of this play.
The reviews I read mentioned an “ambiguous” ending, and I thought that was about the core topic of the play: a reporter’s story about a crime, and whether it was made up. But I think that topic is actually a bit of a red herring. The storyline I found much more interesting is about journalism itself and how it affects the communities it is meant to serve. How the people within journalism, especially if you’re a Black woman, have multiple layers to consider in who they are responsible to and how. So much gratitude to Lorraine Toussaint for powerfully bringing these tensions to life.*
I love how I still don’t really know what to make of the ending. And, in looking up the playwright, Tracey Scott Wilson, finding out she also wrote for The Americans is no surprise at all. Complexity, multiple perspectives that are sympathetic, unsympathetic, both, and neither—both works explore this well. Of course there are potential gripes: why do some tropes always have to be present? Why does a US-set play have a UK phone ringing sound?** But to me all of that is less important than the clarity with which the play indicts journalism.
Not for lying or for fabrications, but, I think a read of the ending can be: for not taking its role in shaping what happens in society seriously enough. For not understanding that as much as journalists report on the news, they also create the conditions they are reporting on. From climate change to immigration to Gaza, we can see how a topic is reported is inextricably woven with what happens, how neigbors and politicians alike react. It’s not explicitly explored in this staging, but there is a background engagement with the role US TV news plays in this regards in the “if it bleeds, it leads,” kind of way. But I appreciate that “The Story” kept its attention on print reporters. TV news reporters are not the only ones making decisions about what audiences see and how people understand the world.
These are timeless concerns that don’t go away with the fragmentation of the media ecosystem. What have AI models been trained on, but the entire existing media ecosystem, with all its biases and stereotypic stories? (Love, LOVE the additionally implicit indictment of journalism via the story this play was loosely inspired by. Which stories do Pulitzer and other award committees valorize? I wonder.)
If increasingly what people engage with is just what is the statistically likely next word, it may even increase the power of the choice of those words, the choice of which stories get told and re-told and accepted as fact. Is every report about “small boats,” and not about what people are willing to risk their lives to flee (and the role the countries they are seeking to move to contributed to what they are fleeing)? Or, to go back a point the play makes about euphemisms like “urban,” do we speak around racism and injustice or describe it explicitly?
It’s no great insight to state that we create our world as we experience it. But, for very many racist and discriminatory and frustratingly obstinante reasons, this is a point mainstream journalism in the US remains disinterested in exploring. I appreciate every time an artist, or other journalist, holds up a mirror to that current reality. It remains incumbent on us as journalists to reflect on our roles, and act.
* I’m especially glad to be able to see her live on stage after so appreciating her work on Any Day Now, a TV show from right about the timeframe of this play that also engaged with issues around race, gender, and class.
** I really enjoyed watching this in the UK. Just little things like characters going to boarding school lands so differently here. I bet that most people from the US could not even tell you a single boarding school name, it’s just so far from our understanding of the world, unlike how integral they are in the UK power structure.
Last modified on October 2, 2026
