In Iowa: Building empathy

I cried at a concert for the first time last week.

The sun was slipping behind the downtown Des Moines skyline as Brandi Carlile rocked the outdoor Simon Estes amphitheater on the banks of the Des Moines River. It was a great show, one I'd been anticipating all summer. Then she brought British singer-songwriter Greg Holden onstage to perform a duet of his song, 'Boys in the Street.”

It tells the story of a father's judgment and condemnation when he learned his son had been 'kissing boys in the street.” His father's recriminations hammer throughout the song, each verse ending with the admonition to 'stop kissing boys in the street.”

The last verse, however, takes a turn - his father, dying, has a change of heart: 'When I'm gone, keep kissing boys in the street.”

As Holden crooned those lyrics, the crowd cheered, and I teared up as an audience member shouted, 'Love is love is love,” channeling an emotional Tony-award acceptance speech by 'Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, who uttered those words onstage just hours after the deadly shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando June 12.

Maybe it's cheesy to cry at a rock concert - I don't really care. Holden's story was moving, and just two weeks after Orlando, we need to let stories move us.

As journalists, our job is to go where our readers can't or don't have the time to go - to attend meetings, sift through documents, dive into the data and translate it back into layman's terms. We strive to provide you with facts, with details on the economic factors and crime rates and the votes in Congress and city hall that will impact your life.

But those numbers and votes and policies don't exist in a vacuum, and part of our job is also give you the context for them. Part of our job is to share the human stories you might not otherwise hear.

On Monday, The Gazette will run one of the final pieces in a monthlong series, 'Heroin's Hold.” If you haven't read the past few weeks of updates, I'd encourage you to look them up.

Reporters Lee Hermiston, Chelsea Keenan, Molly Duffy and Rod Boshart, along with photographer Rebecca Miller, have examined the statistics and policy angles of heroin and opioid addiction, but they've also shared the very personal stories of people struggling to overcome addictions, people struggling to be the best mothers and fathers and sons and daughters they can even as societal influences and the powerful, physical pull of their addictions work to drag them down.

Stories like these remind us the statistics and policies are personal. I hope they make us more empathetic. There is evidence they do - studies have shown people respond more strongly and with greater empathy when news stories center an individual's story.

Like the father in Holden's song, sometimes it takes knowing someone's story to change a mind, to get us to look beyond our biases and see their struggles.

As a journalist, we don't aim to tell stories with the goal of changing minds. We tell them with the goal of giving the people we interview avenues to share their experiences. What readers do with those stories is up to them, but it is our duty to share them.

Maybe we can build some empathy along the way.