Three years ago I welcomed a group of reporters to a Poynter seminar on Reporting on Sex, Sexuality and Pop Culture
We conceived many great story ideas that week. The latest to come to fruition is the book by Denver Post Reporter Doug Brown: Just Do It. But that’s the end of this story, not the beginning
The room was filled with mostly young, hip reporters. They were freelancers, beat reporters and feature writers. A couple worked for alternative publications. Most worked for newspapers.
It was a one-time seminar, born of the need to examine how tabloids and blogs and entertainment television were influencing more traditional forms of news. The group bonded right away, dubbing themselves the Poynstars.
We started out the week with an ice breaker. Since this was about sex, I paired all the journalists up and asked them to talk about their first time. I didn’t specify first time doing what. Folks talked about their first kiss, their first night away from home, their first crush and their first sexual failure.
Over the course of the week we learned about porn, sex research. We heard from reporters like The Washington Post‘s Laura Sessions Stepp, who first wrote about middle schoolers having oral sex way back in the 90s, as well as the phenomenon of partway gay. And we heard from New York Magazine writer David Amsden, who writes a lot about sex, too, including his recent article about married men who have sexual encounters with other men.
We examined modern realities like sex in nursing homes, sex in college and sex during a time of war. We looked at medical research and U.S. Census data.
The week ended on a Friday morning the way many reporting seminars end, with a round of personal essays. They were funny, poignant and heartbreaking. They gave us a window into the richness and diversity surrounding sex that is largely absent from journalism.
One essay was about the 100-day club, a term of solidarity among men who’ve gone that many days without having sex with their partners. Doug relayed that story to his wife Annie and she suggested doing just the opposite.
And now he’s promoting the upcoming release of his book. He’s all over the place — front page of The New York Times‘ Sunday Style section, The Today Show and The New York Daily News. It’s been optioned for a film. (I hope the Poynter seminar makes the screenplay, but I’m ready to be disappointed.) And this was all before the book was even published on June 24.
It’s great to see a journalist hit the jackpot. Even better, the book achieves what we were striving for in the seminar — an open, honest conversation about why healthy sex is so important. Doug and Annie provide a window into their very normal lives, something we often fail to do in journalism, where we focus on pathology and deviance instead of what’s normal.
Brown is the perfect guy to write this book, too. Slight framed, middle-aged and balding, he’s an everyman. From the first page, Brown sets the perfect tone, endearing and self-deprecating, reverent toward his wife, devoted to his two daughters. He’s not prurient by any means, but he’s not self-conscious.
He’s made the Poynstars proud.
