With nearly 40,000 runners and more than 2 million spectators surrounding him, Grant Burningham cut out of the pack, ducked under a police barricade and pulled out his cell phone.
The runner was eight miles into the New York City Marathon, and he desperately needed to make a call. The crowd was not cooperating. New Yorkers don’t like quitters.
“There are two guys dressed up as the Blues Brothers, there’s another guy dressed up as a superhero,” Burningham, 26, said into the phone. “I’m holding up OK so far; my only big complaint is that I’ve got 18 miles to go.”
Burningham, a Web producer for The New York Times, wasn’t quitting; he was reporting.
As if running the 26-mile race was not enough of a challenge, the producer agreed to cover it for the newspaper. From Staten Island to Manhattan, he would deliver one-minute-long dispatches by telephone. He would also take pictures with the camera in his cell phone.
The plan was for Burningham to call at the start, at the 8.5-mile marker, again at 17.5 miles and once more at mile 21, a threshold seasoned marathoners call “the wall.” In the end, there would be five reports. The last one, though, would only come if he finished.
Don’t worry, he did.
Credit for the idea goes to Web newsroom editor Jill Agostino. She shopped it around to two other Times staffers who planned to run the race. But ultimately, it landed on Burningham’s desk.
It was three years since Burningham last ran a marathon. He said he was in better shape then. And New York is considered to be one of the toughest marathons in the country.
The pressure of knowing that his voice would go from his cell phone to the Web site in minutes — the piece was produced as it was reported — only made things harder.
“I was really worried I was just going to fall on my face,” Burningham said. “I mean, there was the pressure of getting to the next checkpoint. And then as I was running I was making a mental checklist of things I could talk about … And then, when I’d stop, all of a sudden I’d have to articulate them.”
Burningham’s observations evolved as he ran, shifting from the external — illustrations of the motley horde of runners at the starting line — to the internal — descriptions of pain.
And that’s what makes this piece so great. It immerses the listener in the experience of the race. Burningham’s vivid first-hand observations take on a striking degree of authenticity when delivered between labored breaths.
Best of all, this is an approach that you can use at your own news organization.
“It was a surprisingly low-tech operation,” Burningham said. “I just had a cell phone with me.”
Think of the town you cover. Where could you send a reporter armed with a cell phone? Tell us here.
