The Dialogue Project
The Dialogue Project was a bold initiative of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business to encourage businesses to help reduce polarization in our society and improve civil discourse.
At the Page Society Conference, Duke staged a crisis simulation that challenged a team of senior-level corporate leaders, reporters, and government officials with a hypothetical global pandemic and the inevitable politicization of those proposed solutions.
We were tasked with creating a three-part series of mock news packages to introduce each phase of the unfolding “pandemic”.
Drawing from decades of work in broadcast news and video production, the team produced this series of mock news reports that both maintained the integrity of the hypothetical crisis and conveyed the urgency and gravity that a news event of this magnitude would warrant. Using an assortment of stock videos, still images, and music, the three packages were written and edited to the typical standards and protocols of present-day broadcast news production.
The purpose of this exercise was for the executives to respond in their assigned roles to the developing crisis so we could all learn and prepare—but more importantly, to help give us a framework so that businesses can lead the way and help us all to be stronger together in the face of whatever comes next.
The session was one of the most highly attended of the conference, and the event format is being presented to networks as a possible recurring series.
