Storytelling

I've been listening to stories of the Chinese earthquake on NPR for the last several days. I'm amazed at how the reporters over there, on radio, can paint word pictures that evoke more emotion than the the actual video footage on T.V. (not that it's been covered much on cable news, anyway, they're too obsessed with every nuance of the Presidential race). One story was of a young woman who dropped her 2 year old son off at his grandparent's before she headed to work. He begged her, as children will do, to take him with her to work. When she got to her work at a department store, the earthquake struck and she rushed back but the apartment building had collapsed. She and her husband kept saying to the reporters that they hadn't given up hope. They had to find rescuers themselves and dragged them back with their machines to dig through the rubble. After 2 days, their bodies were found, the grandmother right next to the baby, as if she'd been holding him when the quake struck.
Well, I started crying, right there at work, while I was listening to this. The thing is, I wouldn't have cried if I'd been watching it on T.V.
There is something about hearing a story that is intimate and has a kind of emotion that seeing it on T.V. doesn't have. It makes me think of the old storytellers around a fire or in a banquet hall. Of course those storytellers had their bodies and their hands to tell the story as well. But they had no pictures, no film. The skill level for this is so much higher, it seems to me.
I've noticed it on audio books, which I also listen to at work. I remember I was riveted by an audiobook on the Great Fire of London of 1666. I don't think it would have had the same impact on me if I'd read the book or even seen a special on it on the History Channel.
I know I'd like to get in touch with that storytelling style that is so compelling. And when I publish, I want an audio book as well (not with my voice, I'd want a professional for that.)