Joan Didion on Journalism and Tragedy - A Response

In this snippet by Joan Didion she seems to be commenting on the human response, or at least the writers response to tragedy. She expresses how we have a sort of internal need to know the story behind something; not even just the facts of the story, but the rest of what makes for a good story as well. In the midst of tragedy we look for the lesson that can be learned from it, the moral that can somehow be gleaned. She writes an emotional exposition as to why journalism is a needed part of humanity. Essentially, we use the art of story to cope with tragedy. Story allows us to reason our way out of dissonance and find hope in the midst of tragedy.