Attendance dipped to slightly over 500 compared to more than 900 in past years. Some had just lost jobs. A few others wondered how long they’d have a desk to come back to. But speakers at last weekend’s Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism preached adaptation, not hand wringing. They said well-honed storytelling skills enhance print and online reporting and improve newspapers’ woeful bottom lines.
“Find your own audiences with different platforms,” advised Bob Giles, curator of Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, as he opened the March 20-22 Boston sessions.
We live in scary times, acknowledged the first speaker, Pulitzer Prize-winning Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz. But, she said, “being scared is sometimes a good thing. We’ll land, we’re just not sure where yet. It’s scary but exciting because we don’t know what’s ahead. … The last thing we want to do is congeal, and be done growing and changing.”
Schultz said narrative is journalism’s future because it gives “the back story, behind the scene. … People will always want and need to know that they’re not alone in their suffering and hope.”
Maria Carrillo, managing editor of The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, and Sydney Trent, deputy editor of The Washington Post Magazine, also defended narrative’s value in financially challenged newsrooms.
Carrillo criticized some papers’ emphasis on what she termed “bread and butter” reporting at the expense of narrative and enterprise pieces. “We’re part of the problem. We’re telling stories the same old way,” she said. While people can get the basic “who, what and where” information from the Internet, “the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ are getting left behind — and that’s what narrative is.” She noted that the Virginian-Pilot has made money from reprints of historical narratives.
She said each story should dictate its own form, and that podcasting, slide shows and videos can illustrate the details writers try to replicate with words.
Carrillo stressed that narrative doesn’t have to be long, citing her paper’s colorful 514-word account last month of delivering two long-lost wallets to their owners.
Trent called vivid narratives some of the Virginian-Pilot‘s best-read and most e-mailed stories. The head of a Post committee seeking ways to increase female readership, she said women strongly respond to “humanized” stories that explain the ” ‘how’ of things.”
New technology, properly thought out, can “wonderfully complement” a story, she said/ Her example was “The Truth About Forgiveness,” a March 22 Post Magazine cover story enlivened by a five-minute video of a face-to-face conflict resolution.
Less Is More
Trent said editors should “set the bar high for the stories and subjects we choose. Flowery, unnecessarily anecdotal leads aren’t good narrative.”
Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times Cairo bureau chief, made similar less-is-more points. “One problem with narrative that bores the hell out of me is (a writer) thinking that collecting it all is the story,” said the Pulitzer feature writing finalist. “The whole essence of narrative is stripping down to character, rhythm, place and thought. We don’t need to know if someone is wearing argyle socks.”
He used first-person, which he generally avoids, in a recent story about a $100 bill stained with an Iraqi photographer’s blood. He made the crumpled note, which he’s carried throughout the Middle East, the central character in a thousand-word tale about loss, conflict and moving on.
Re-defining Yourself
Print reporters can re-define themselves as multimedia journalists by “working smarter, not that much harder,” said Mara Schiavocampo, the digital correspondent for “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.” On a print interview, take a video camera along. Do a two-paragraph blog of details that got cut from your print story.
Marci Alboher, who writes, blogs for The New York Times and appears on television and radio focusing on career and workplace trends, said many young journalists blog as a marketing tool; they’re eager to file non-paid “guest posts” to get exposure. Noting widespread concern with blogs’ lack of editing, she runs hers by colleagues before posting.
Sewell Chan, bureau chief of The New York Times‘s local news blog “City Room,” said he came to blogging reluctantly, dismissing its “snarky, narcissistic, trivial” aspects. So he said the “City Room” blog is edited but nevertheless more personal than its print counterpart, sometimes using the first person and combining breaking news, quirky features, and New York area stories not significant enough for the paper.
Tips on Craft
As in past years, conference speakers gave myriad tips on craft.
Multimedia producer Richard Koci Hernandez tries to breaks down barriers between himself and wary subjects by leaving his “intimidating” gear behind, sitting down and making “a soft start” to build rapport.
Hernandez, an Emmy Award winner who produces news sites for the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, may later in an interview “throw screwballs.” These are off-the-wall questions like “what’s your favorite car?” that can take a conversation into unexpected territory.
From Liberia to Lebanon, New Yorker writer Jon Lee Anderson has plumbed unexpected territory, chatting with despots and murderers with this mantra: “Go the distance.” When you feel you’ve done enough reporting, “report some more.”
After interviewing more than 50 people for his Che Guevara biography, he decided to spend a few more hours with a retired general whose associates turned out to have killed Che. The man ended up telling Anderson where the revolutionary leader was buried – a New York Times front-page scoop.
“Take the time to get behind the official myth,” advised Anderson. He does this by trying to “be in the situation as long as possible” and to learn everything he can beforehand.
It took him two weeks of “harangues” from Augusto Pinochet’s henchmen before he finally got to meet the Chilean dictator. By then, he’d learned of Pinochet’s fascination with Roman Caesars and Napoleon. A relaxed chat about that produced what Anderson called a “musical moment [of revelation], one unguarded glimpse. One new door opened. You need more reporting, but that’s broken the back” of the job.
‘Almost Everybody Lies’
Louise Kiernan, a Chicago Tribune senior editor, reminded listeners that “Interviewing is just part of the process.
“Almost everybody lies to you about something,” said the Pulitzer Prize winner. “All reporting should be investigative reporting. Check out what people tell you.”
For her four-part “Beekeepers” series on a felon rehabilitation program, she pulled subjects’ court records and talked with their mothers and girlfriends. She found that one man hadn’t disclosed a sexual assault conviction and that another hadn’t mentioned his daughter.
When writing her widely syndicated series, a finalist for an American Society of Newspaper Editors feature writing award last year, Kiernan paid meticulous attention to tone. It was “the quietest story I ever wrote,” she said. Using present tense “felt too loud.”
“The Beekeepers” closes with ambiguity. Kiernan believes in letting a story unfold, and not imposing a pat ending. “Avoid the simple hero-villain story. We have to embrace a sense of complexity — that’s what the truth is.”
Scheherezade Faramarzi, an Associated Press reporter who has covered conflict throughout the world for three decades, also tries to skirt simplified story lines.
Her problem: “How to present the story to editors who’ve seen it through a (simplified) cable news frame and just want to match that reporting. … We have to frame stories to fit the American mindset -– black or white — and that dehumanizes Middle Eastern people.”
Sandy Tolan, an author and National Public Radio producer and reporter who teaches journalism at the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California, agreed.
Tolan, who has reported from more than 35 countries, attributes this “dehumanization” to deadline news cycle demands and to the notion that the Mid-East is in endless conflict, and that every event is just part of the same old story.
“How to get to the heart of the story and to human meaning” is his challenge. “We need to try to figure out a way to bring remote stories home to answer editors’ query: ‘Why should I care?’ “
Victor Merina, who shared in a Los Angeles Times‘ Pulitzer Prize for spot news coverage, sometimes finds the heart of a subject by “look(ing) for the story you didn’t intend to write.”
For Reznet, a Web site focusing on Native American issues, he’d intended to highlight tribal leaders’ participation in Barack Obama’s inauguration. Once there, however, he found the real drama in their visit to injured soldiers at Walter Reed.
Merina, a senior fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism, told reporters, “Know when to pick up your notebook, and when to put it away and just listen.” He did that as veterans discussed their war wounds.
You should also “recognize that special moment and stay” and move in close, he continued — as he did when a spiritual leader gave a badly wounded soldier his coveted inauguration badge.
As the Nieman conference started, the National Pest Management Association lunched in a nearby function room. As it ended two days later, a United Church of Christ convention moved in. Perhaps that was a symbol of hope.
