Conversations / Live Q&A

Welcome everyone to our online chat about today's story on Shana Greatman Swers, a 35-year-old Gaithersburg woman who narrated her pregnancy and post-pregnancy complications on Facebook. I'll start off the discussion with this very nice comment from a reader who praised the writing. A huge credit must be given of course to Shana -- it was her story, and we conceived of the structure.

This is one of the challenges my editor Marc Fisher and I discussed before doing the story. And we felt that, ultimately, for the experimentation to be as true and organic as possible, we wanted to not intrude too much. We purposely avoided interfering too much. Yes, the reader needed some guidance, so we provided that with several annotations. And I do think those annotations, and our editing, transform what was once her Facebook page to an actual story. We  made decisions on what to cut, what to preserve, and what to annotate.  Perhaps we could have added more annotations, but then again, I wanted to show readers how Shana herself communicated her own story. If I helped the reader out too much I feared that it would take away from the experience and perspectives of her friends who had been following her ordeal in real time. It's a good debate and maybe it would have more powerful if we had gone more heavy with annotations. But, based on what readers are writing me, I feel very satisfied.

Dear Conflicted,

I agree with you that this model, if used over and over again, could start to feel gimmicky. But the truth is I couldn't find anything that had been done like this before, at least not by the Washington Post or our competitors. I did find a great video on Gizmodo about the imagined narrative of one man's life, but that was different than what we did with this project. I understand that you may think it's less of a story because there were less of my words, but then again, this is an experiment. We were trying something new. Would we have written a straight-up profile of Shana and her medical ordeal for the Post? I don't know. What elevated her predicament was the way she and her friends talked so openly about such an inherently private matter -- and not only that, they were talking in real time, as she was in the hospital, or heading back to the ER, or already in the ER, and posting from her iPhone. So, the story had to be told from that angle because it embodies something much broader about how we are all communicating these days. The story was about Shana, yes, but in a way, the story was about something much more universal. 

My wife Caroline Turner Shapira works at the Corporate Executive Board, and was colleagues with Shana. After Caroline showed me Shana's Facebook page, I was immediately blown away by the way Shana narrated everything and the way people commented back. I ended up emailing Jeff Swers, Shana's husband, shortly after the funeral. I was a little nervous, thinking it might be too soon for him to talk about a story in the Post. But, Jeff was into the idea from the start and wanted the public to know the kind of support network that helped keep them afloat during this crisis. I should also say that Shana's colleagues at the Corporate Executive Board have been especially supportive to him and the whole family.

Dear Vaughn,

Thanks for writing and sending the link to your own Facebook story about a similar subject. I think we struggled mainly with what to keep in, what to leave out. Do we delve deeply into her medical complications and the experience at the hospitals and dealing with doctors? My editor Marc Fisher had no concerns at all -- in fact, he and several editors in the Post newsroom all were advocating for this story from the start. I wanted to write a standard story along with publishing an edited, annotated Facebook page, but Marc persuaded me that we should let the Facebook page stand on its own, and speak largely for itself. I am glad we went that route because it makes the experimentation stand out even more.

One other thing: Grace Koerber, who just started at the Post as an online graphics designer and Greg Manifold, a senior news designer,slaved away on design and executed it. They deserve a huge amount of credit for this project.

Jeff is understandably heartbroken. But, as he told me the other day, he is pushing onward to live his life because that's what Shana would want him to do. He is busy raising their son Isaac, and has resumed his job at a local biotetch company.

It was hard writing the story in the sense that there was so much material to include. How do you know what to leave in and what to leave out? Also, I only wanted to annotate the comments of friends who I could reach on the phone to make sure they were okay with their Facebook comments being re-published in the Washington Post. And once I got their permission, I interviewed them about how they knew Shana and what they were thinking and feeling at the time of their Facebook comments on Shana's Facebook page.

I thought I'd publish this comment just to air the other side of this whole debate. This criticism has been a mainstay of those who look down on Facebook and see it as the unfortunate substitute of human-to-human contact. But let me say this: In a previous era when people didn't have smart phones and Facebook applications, maybe Shana would have suffered this ordeal more alone. She would have never have seen or heard from friends, even those just beyond her inner circle, while she was going through this crisis. Facebook enabled her to connect, even in the most troubling of moments and I imagine that sustained her immensely. Also, Jeff's comments on her page after she had passed away might be morbid to you, but you have to remember that that, for him, her page is a real, live, breathing thing. It was a way for him to talk with her.

Always good to hear from a friend of Shana's. In the online version we included a hyperlink to a government web site explaining her condition and we do say that she was suffering from heart failure -- that her heart was not pumping enough blood.

I feel like this comment reflects the bulk of email I've been getting.

I think what this means for journalism is that we can tell stories in all kinds of ways -- and that narratives do not always have to have the same structures. I think we should be careful about using this model over and over again. Maybe this story doesn't tell the whole story --- but what story really ever does?

One day when Isaac is older, I wonder if Facebook will be around or how it will change, or how it will become even more woven into our lives. One of the great things about Facebook now is that we all are telling stories in bits and pieces when we frequently post status updates. It just so happens Shana was telling the story of her greatest moment and her most harrowing moments all in one compact span of time, and all via the vehicle that so many of us are using these days.

Well, that's it everyone. Thanks for talking with me today about this story. If you have any feedback or other story ideas on related topics, definitely shoot me a message here at the Post, shapirai@washpost.com. Or, go on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ianshapira