Chip on Your Shoulder

Daybook Notes 

Photo by Dennis O'Brien

The other day I stumbled upon an interview with James McBride on Powells.com, the website of one of America's great independent bookstores in Portland, Ore.
 
McBride was in Portland to promote the paperback edition of his first novel, "Miracle at St. Anna," a magical story about four black American soldiers -- Buffalo Soldiers from the famed 92nd Division -- who take refuge in a Tuscan village deep behind enemy lines in World War II.

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The interviewer, Dave Weich, always brings enormous passion and love of good writing to his conversations with authors (the site offers nearly 90 others) and his talk with McBride is typically rich. It explores the novel's subject--racism and the combat experience of African-Americans in World War II--as well as McBride's six-year effort to research and write the book, and the difference between telling stories with words and music.

I enjoyed it so much that it inspired me to dig out my daybook from a Poynter seminar five years ago when James McBride came to St. Petersburg. In November 1997, he took time away from the tour for his first book, the powerful best-selling memoir, "The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother," to teach in Poynter's first magazine writing seminar.

Nov. 17, 1997 -- Magazine Writing: News and NonFiction Narrative Seminar

James McBride made a number of important contributions to the seminar, most notably an interviewing and writing exercise that has come to be known as "Finding the Black Pearl." Before turning to books, his journalism career  spanned staff jobs at the News Journal in Wilmington Del., The Boston Globe, People and The Washington Post Style section. His magazine credits include Rolling Stone, US and Essence. A jazz saxophonist, he's written songs for Anita Baker, Grover Washington and Gary Burton.

During his session with the group at Poynter, McBride described an experience he had when he was reporting a profile of  Richard Pryor for People. Visiting the comedian at his Los Angeles home, McBride noticed that an outdoor fish pool was stocked, not with exotic imported breeds as he might have expected, but with catfish. Up until then, the interview hadn't been going well, time was running out, and McBride worried that he still hadn't discovered the essence of the man. 

On an impulse, he asked Pryor about his outdoor aquarium. Pryor told him that he'd stocked it with catfish because it reminded him of his boyhood growing up with his grandparents who ran a brothel and the special memories of times spent poling for catfish with his grandfather.

When McBride heard the story, he knew he'd discovered a detail that helped explain the essence of Pryor's identity. He said he'd found Pryor's "black stone."

"What's that?" I remember asking McBride.

"I don't know," he laughed. "I'm a jazz musician. I'm just riffin' here."

I pressed and he said, "It's the dancin' devil inside all of us. It's what makes you you."

During the seminar, we turned that idea into an exercise in reporting and writing that we called "Searching for the Black Stone."

We paired the participants off and gave each of them 20 minutes interviewing time to search for their partner's black stone. Then they had just 20 minutes to write a passage that described what they found.

Here's what Erin Hoover Barnett, a reporter for the Portland Oregonian, wrote about Andy Hall, editor of Alaska Magazine.

Andy Hall
by Erin Hoover Barnett

He heard her voice when he reached the end of the supermarket aisle, just as he picked the can of stewed tomatoes. It was Laura, a woman he'd helped when he worked in the writing lab at the college in this small Alaska town. A woman he'd counted as a friend. Someone he had actually met outside of his work as editor of the town's daily paper.

She was talking to another woman. After all, when the nearest town of any substance was 12 hours away by water, shopping at Safeway was the social event of the week. he heard Laura say, ..."sorta tells you the kind of quality we're dealing with, doesn't it?" He didn't immediately relate her remarks to him and the paper at which he was the editor, designer, sometimes photographer and columnist. Columnist, yeah. At the last minute every evening when he was already tired, he had to write this column. It was the publisher's idea. The one he'd written in today's paper was just a quick hit, highlighting a story about deer season.

He heard Laura and the women laugh. She turned the corner and saw him.

"Oh, hello DEAR," she smirked.

Then it hit him. In his column on today's front page, he had misspelled the word deer.

Andy Hall, 32, made the decision in stages to start grocery shopping after midnight. The hour just kept getting later and later, and each time, fewer and fewer people were there. It was actually quiet. He went about plucking the groceries of a single man's existence from the shelves in relative peace. No one to bother him. But as he drove home and realized it was light out -- which is what happens in Alaska deep in the night -- he realized he was isolating himself from the community he had come to cover, to record, to photograph, to bring together.

It was the beginning of a personal journey that would be completed in lightning fast time in most people's estimation. He would nurse his father through a coma. He would break up with his girlfriend. He would move to another town. He would become the editor of a magazine. He would marry the woman who sat across from him at his new job. And now they are expecting their first child.

Andy Hall is 34.

The first night of the seminar I read a passage that had been written about John McPhee, the legendary New Yorker writer.

Writing in "The Literature of Reality," Gay Talese (another legendary nonfiction writer) and Barbara Lounsbery said that McPhee's work offered "proof that the extraordinary is to be found in the most ordinary object or human enterprise, and that if writers will only look about them and trust in subjects toward which they instinctively gravitate, they will find an audience."

That was the lesson that James McBride taught us that week. It's a lesson that his books continue to teach.

Postscript:

More resources

Searching for the Black Pearl: An Interviewing, Writing, and Diversity Exercise Conditions of Difference by Kenny Irby James McBride: The Author, The Musician Buffalo Soldiers: Facts about the 92nd Infantry Division

Since that first search for the black stone, my colleagues and I have continued to use McBride's exercise in our teaching at Poynter. Kenny Irby, who leads our visual journalism group, and I paired up reporters and photojournalists. Public radio journalists used it as an interviewing exercise. Our summer fellows in reporting and writing and visual journalism search for "the dancin' devil" to learn more about the conditions of difference that separate us and bind us together. 

The exercise goes by a slightly different name than the one McBride used. Kenny rechristened it "Searching for the Black Pearl," a poetic riff that jazz musician McBride would, I feel, be pleased with.

"Searching for the Black Pearl" is a valuable exercise for anyone trying to write about another person.

In a diversity session, it can help people find the ways they are different and very much the same.

As an interviewing and writing exercise, it forces you to dig deep and not be satisfied with surface explanations.

A year after our seminar, Erin Hoover Barnett wrote an affecting narrative series that followed terminally ill patients as they grappled with provisions of Oregon's new assisted suicide law. In 1999, it was a finalist in the non-deadline category of the American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Awards competition.

Reflecting today on her search for the black stone, Barnett says:

"I didn't think there was any way that I could interview and write something meaningful in 20 minutes and I felt a wee bit intimidated because we had just listened to James McBride discuss his lyrical writing and I pictured my words coming out like clumps of cement.

"But I think the beauty of what McBride taught us was to tune into the music of what someone is saying. Join them in the journey they are unfolding for you. Zero in on the strongest image the person presents you with and then build the story around that. Relax and you'll find your muse."

Good advice.

One way to begin might be to start searching for your own black pearl. James McBride's advice stares up at me from the page of my notebook:

"It's got to come from here," he says, pointing to his gut.

COMPANION PIECE

Revision Strategies from Poynter's Persuasive Writing Seminar

RELATED RESOURCES

What do you do with all the Pots? Surgery without Pain -- A Tale of Revision The Darkest Hour

I hate to revise. 

If I were a good writer, I'd get it right the first time.

If I were really talented, my writing would emerge fully-formed; no messy chrysalis but a perfect butterfly. An engaging lead, logical transitions that lead the reader, a resonant ending. A home run on the first pitch. 

If I have to rewrite my story it means one thing: I've failed.

For a long time, that's how I felt about my writing. 

But over the years, I've had a change of heart. 

It's been a slow process, one influenced by the wisdom of good writers whose very different attitudes have taught me to see revision in a fresh light. 

Don Murray, my mentor and friend, has taught me that "revision is not punishment… writing evolves from a sequence of drafts, each one teaching the writer how to write the next one."

In "Shoptalk: Learning to Write with Writers," Murray assembles a chorus raised in support of what he calls "the pleasure of revision."

A sampling:

"I love the flowers of afterthought." --Bernard Malamud

"I've done as many as 20 or 30 drafts of a story. Never less than 10 or 12 drafts." --Raymond Carver

 "When I see a paragraph shrinking under my eyes like a strip of bacon in a skillet, I know I'm on the right track." --Peter DeVries

"The best part of all, the absolutely most delicious part, is finishing it and then doing it over ... I rewrite a lot, over and over again, so that it looks like I never did." --Toni Morrison

Admittedly, these are novelists, poets and short story writers, not reporters under the gun of deadline.

But there's another quote that may represent the most compelling argument for revision. It was a piece of advice that the editor of the Wall Street Journal gave to a new editor toiling away one night on a story.

"Remember," Barney Kilgore told Michael Gartner, "the easiest thing for the reader to do is to quit reading."

Years later, when Gartner was named editor of the Des Moines Register, he had cards printed with that sentence and gave them out to everyone in the newsroom.

Unfortunately, most newswriting is the product of a first draft culture.

Reporters spend most of their time reporting and then as the clock ticks, start banging away at the keys.

Of the time spent actually writing (as opposed to drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, pacing, hair-pulling and other writing tics) the majority is spent crafting a perfect lead, and then as the sand rapidly falls through the hourglass, the remaining minutes are a desperate rush towards a destination, usually a quote that seems to strike a concluding note.

Revision? Heck, I'm just trying to get the thing written. And if I turn it in late enough, the desk can't tamper with my copy.

Sometimes there isn't time for anything but a first draft. But just because journalism is "the first rough draft of history" that shouldn't give writers — and their editors -- an excuse to publish their first drafts every time.
 
Just because journalism is "the first rough draft of history" that shouldn't give writers — and their editors -- an excuse to publish their first drafts every time.Until writers and editors overcome our almost institutional resistance to revision, until we start seeing revision as a chance to improve rather than a sign of failure, readers will continue to find it easy to quit reading. (If you doubt it, ask yourself how many stories in your paper you read to the end.)

The biggest problem with revising is not the words, it's the attitude.

Faced with a draft, I know I often become a truculent child who stamps his foot and insists, "But this is good enough."

I don't want to do it over again, especially if I'm convinced this is the best I'm capable of. I don't want to have to check the hundreds of things that need checking from the accuracy of the piece to the grammar, spelling and that elusive quality that is a writer's style.

So I've learned to trick myself.

Just like a parent prods a stubborn toddler into eating green beans by pretending the baby's mouth is an airplane hangar, I try to devise subterfuges. These are often mechanical steps that I hope will have the effect of giving me the distance I need to see a draft with fresh eyes and make the changes needed to keep my reader reading.

Here's a list of strategies to become a better writer by becoming a reviser. It's augmented by a collection of advice offered from the editorial writers and columnists who participated in Poynter's Persuasive Writing seminar earlier this month:

 
1. Write earlier. This teaches you what you already know and what you need to know. When I begged for more time on a story it was usually because I felt I needed more time to report, to understand the subject. "I need a couple more hours/days/weeks," I'd tell my editor. When I started drafting earlier, I began to see that the hole I needed to fill was already complete, but there are other gaps I wouldn't have recognized as quickly.

Revision doesn't mean more time, but rescheduling the time you have. Let's face it. Whatever time we have for a story most of us spend the bulk of reporting. After all, we're reporters. But there are ways to build in revision earlier in the process.

2. Hit the print button as early as possible. Computers are wonderful, but they give the illusion of perfection. To revise this column, I made a printout of the first draft, approximately 1,000 words written in less than an hour over two days. I began by crossing things out, penning in questions, examining the prose (which sentences held up, which need re-tooling, etc.)

3. Put it away. John Fowles, the British novelist ("French Lieutenant’s Woman"), described drafting as much as 60,000 words and then putting them in a desk drawer for a few months. Nice work, I can hear the journalists out there muttering, if you can get it.

Few working writers, especially those under daily or even weekly deadlines, have that freedom. But any attempt to put a story out of your mind will give your unconscious mind the chance to work on it.

As a Washington correspondent, there were days when the time between assignment and deadline was less than 4 to 5 hours. Even so, I tried to leave myself 10-15 minutes before deadline to print out the story, stick the printout in my back pocket and head out of the National Press Building for a quick walk.

I did my best not to think of my story, instead focusing my attention on the weather and the parade of lobbyists and tourists. Despite the distractions, by the time I made it two blocks to the Civil War monument in front of the U.S. Treasury building fresh questions about the story in my pocket began popping up like the tulips in front of the White House.

Had I really supported my lead? Should I move that quote higher up? Would that fact buried in the middle of the story make a more resonant ending? Did I need to make a quick call to check a fact or get one more piece of persuasive evidence? What could be discarded, what needed fleshing out?

4. Break revision into manageable tasks. Sometimes the sheer enormity of revisions overwhelms me. Make separate printouts — one for names and titles, another for verb constructions, a third to trim the fat from quotes.

5. Read aloud. Listen to your story and you can hear where it flags, where a quote runs on or echoes the previous phrase (The mayor said he's dissatisfied with the council's action. "I'm just not satisfied," Mayor Naughton said).

6. Diagnose, then treat. As you read, make quick notes ("cut," "move up?" "boring?" "stronger evidence?") Then go back and make the necessary changes.

7. Test your story against your focus. If it's about a young woman's fight against cerebral palsy, why does it begin with an anecdote about her grandfather's experiences in the California gold rush?

8. Find a first reader. Editors are our first readers--and our last line of defense. Show your draft to an editor--or a colleague. Ask them to tell you what works and what needs work. Ask for a movie of their reading. Better to turn in something to an editor that we know isn't perfect with an eye to finding the promise and the pitfalls in it and the path to a clear, concise, readable story than letting the whole world see our mistakes.

9. Develop patience. When I begin to write, the ideas often flow in a flood, leaving the landscape obscured by mountains of impenetrable mass, uprooted trees, houses and everything else in its path. Instead of a tidy piece of prose, what I have is a mess that makes my spirits droop. I wanted it to be so good and instead it seems so bad that I fear I can never get it to  the point where anybody else would want to read it. I have to keep telling myself it will come if I keep at it.

There's no shortage of techniques for revision as the accompanying list of ideas offered by a group of editorial writers and columnists proves.  What I think I need most is the right attitude towards that stage of the writing. I need patience, acceptance and faith. Patience to be willing to make the effort to work on the writing, to accept the flaws in the first draft because it contains the promise of the final one. Acceptance to see that what I write is what I'm capable of writing at that moment. Faith that if I work hard enough I can make the writing better.

What's your favorite revision strategy?

Twenty years ago, I had the good fortune to be part of an effort to create a writing improvement program at my newspaper, the Providence Journal. I can still remember the eye-catching drawing of a fighter jet that hung on the newsroom's cork bulletin board. It was modified for writing -- the plane's nose was a quill -- and above it flew a banner labeled "The Write Stuff."

Home to the Journal's weekly writing contest, the bulletin board carried contest results, the winners' explanations of how they reported and wrote their stories, and a bulky envelope stuffed with the next week's entries.

"The Write Stuff" board was the most visible sign of a writing program that sought to share the lessons of good writing by focusing on excellence and the conditions that produced it.

Learning from one another was the program's guiding principle and to this day that philosophy remains the foundation of the Journal's award-winning writing culture. "The Write Stuff" bulletin board has long been replaced by an online version --"The Power of Words," that shares "weekly lessons on the craft of newspaper writing from the Journal staff."

A writing contest is one approach, but there are many other ways that a newsroom can foster a learning culture that is dedicated to excellence. Sometimes all you need is a little push.

Hoping to provide that momentum, I've devised a "Writing Improvement Quiz," which my colleague Larry Larsen, Poynter Online's multimedia editor, has made interactive. It will rate how "writing-friendly" your newsroom is and offers some concrete suggestions for improvement.

Take the test and see how you do.

So how did you fare? Don't be discouraged if your score was low. Use the opportunity to start a newsroom conversation about strategies for improvement. (Conversely, don't be too cocky if you aced it; there's lots more that can be done.)

Whether your newsroom decides to start a writing contest, add a writing bookshelf to the library or publish a collection of its best work, two ingredients will always be needed to improve the writing and editing skills of any staff:

• Editors who care about writing and writers.
• Reporters who care about writing, and who respect the crucial -- but mostly thankless -- role the editors plays in creating good writing.

[ How does your newsroom encourage good writing? ]

Good news in today's mail. Caroline Prado, one of Poynter's 2002 News Reporting and Writing Fellows, just landed her first job. "I will be a community reporter for the Star-Progress, an Orange County Register community newspaper. So tell me, what kinds of advice do you have for this beginning reporter?"

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Before I throw open the question to all of you, let me share advice from one of Caroline's predecessors in the summer fellowship program. After graduating from Poynter in 1994, Erin Caddell reported on business and politics for The Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire, was an editor at Institutional Investor in New York City and went on to pursue his master's degree in business administration at Columbia University. His nine-step plan, which appears in my book, "Reporting and Writing: Basics for the 21st Century," is full of good counsel for rookies, and includes useful refresher lessons even for those with years of meeting deadlines behind them.

Lessons to a New Reporter (From an Almost New One)
By Erin Caddell

Okay, so you've finally landed the big job. The uncomfortable interviews are over. You don't have to stare at that pile of rejection letters anymore. You're ready to start your career as a professional journalist. Now what?

That's the position I found myself in. I graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in June 1994 with a degree in English and some experience with the campus newspaper under my belt. Then I spent six weeks at Poynter in the news reporting and writing program for college graduates.

After that, I went looking for a job. Poynter helped me become a better reporter and gave me some helpful tips on getting a job. But I didn't have any other experience, so it was tough. I sent my résumé and clips to dozens of papers, hounding editors from Tennessee to Oregon. Most went nowhere. My first interview was a disaster.

But that first interview led to another and then another. West Virginia. Rhode Island. New Jersey. Wyoming. Even if the paper didn't have an opening at the time, interviewing made me feel I was getting somewhere.

After a month and a half, I was offered a reporting job at The Keene Sentinel, an afternoon daily in southwestern New Hampshire, with a circulation of about 15,000. I accepted the job and started less than two weeks after that.

In just a few months since then, I've covered the business and city hall beats. I've written dozens of stories and learned a lot about reporting, writing and life in and around Keene. And in that time I've learned several lessons that I think are particular to having a first reporting job.

1. Build sources or die. Building sources is a critical part of any reporter's job, but especially a new one. Get past the pat questions and answers to find out how long the city manager has been on the job, if he or she grew up in town or moved in from somewhere else. Talk to the city manager's secretary, find out the same information: He or she may know just as much as the boss and may be more willing to help you out when you need to track someone or something down.

Always call back. Even if it's past deadline, and the story you were working on for that day is done. Just call or stop by to thank that person for getting back to you. Ask a question that can help you with a future story.

News is about people and the relationships among them. In order to find and understand the news, you need to know the relationships. Read the histories of the town or towns you're covering. Know the biggest businesses, the most powerful families, whether the mayor is the latest in a long line of Republicans or the crusader who broke the stranglehold of the local Democratic party in the last election.

2. Take advantage of the "honeymoon period." Rather than pretending you're somebody you're not, use your ignorance to your advantage. Let everybody know that you're an outsider.

When I first started doing stories and people asked, "You haven't been here very long, have you?" I winced inside. I wanted to look and act older and ask questions that showed I knew what I was talking about. But when I tried to do that, I often found later when I sat down to write that I had no idea what I was talking about. I realized that if I admitted my ignorance to sources, more often than not they would give me the background I needed and more.

When you're starting out on a beat, you have a chance to ask the big questions: What are the biggest challenges facing the police department in the next year? How's morale among city employees? These questions won't be so easy to ask once you're writing difficult stories that may make sources upset and less reluctant to talk to you -- or ecstatic, for that matter, and willing to tell you more of what they think you want to hear.

3. Get the little things right. Did that old church burn down in 1963 or 1936? Is that woman you talked to earlier today at the town hall the bookkeeper or the administrative assistant? Is Water Street north or south of Cedar Street? When you're starting out, you won't know every last little detail of the topics you write about. But you can bet that your readers and your sources do. The little things are easy to forget, but they can take the wind out of an otherwise great story.

As a reporter, particularly in a small community, all you have is your reputation. If people know that you will get it right, they will return your calls, drop hints for other stories and won't dismiss your questions. Conversely, if you gain a reputation as someone who misspells names, messes up quotes or makes minor factual errors, you can be branded faster than you think.

One other note: If a mistake should make it into the paper, and you catch it, try to notify the person or persons affected by the error before they see it, even if you should run a correction the next day. That way they know what's coming and know that you care enough to notify them. It's easier to avoid the personal apology and hope they don't call. But then, you're just another reporter who doesn't get it right.

4. Surprise your readers, but not your editors. Everybody wants to make a good impression. But remember that the newspaper didn't start publishing the day you arrived.

At a meeting I covered during my first month, a city official briefly mentioned that an old landfill in town had become contaminated and that it would cost up to $2 million in city money to clean it up.

With visions of wasted tax dollars and cover-ups dancing in my head, I began digging, looking up public records and going to talk to the official in his office. But a couple of days later, when I mentioned it to my editor, he said, "Oh, yeah, we've been reporting on that for months. What's going on with it now?" My front-page splash became a three-inch brief on the inside -- albeit one that took hours to report.

Your editors can be a great resource to learn the paper's writing style and the way it covers stories. They also can provide context for the issues you're covering and what's already "out there."

At the same time, know when to say "no." You'll want to do all that is asked of you, particularly when you're new and trying to prove yourself. But know your limits. If you're running out of time, and you don't think you can get all your stories done in a particular week, say so. Your editors may be disappointed, but they'll understand. If they didn't believe in you, they wouldn't have hired you in the first place.

5. Use the clips, but don't be wedded to them. When I was assigned stories early on and didn't know much about them, I would look through the clip file and read them pretty thoroughly before I did my own reporting. I'd feel like I wanted to have a sense of the situation before I ventured into uncharted territory and talked to people who had never heard of me.

Everything you write about has a history. And chances are, if it's on your beat, your paper has written about it before. The reporter who wrote some of those stories, and the editors who assigned them, may even still be in your newsroom. The clips are in a room or on a computer, a short, climate-controlled walk away.

But don't make that walk a habit, and make sure you don't let the clips or other people in your newsroom provide the answers to your questions. It's not called the "morgue" for nothing. The stories there are dead. Your readers and your editors have already heard them.

You will cover a story differently from anyone who has come before. Your personality, your background and your reporting ability will see to that. The less you use the clips, the more your own style will come through.

6. Follow your instincts. Your editors may be saying one thing. The reporters from the rival paper or the local TV station covering the same story may be doing something else. But a voice in your head is telling you to do a third thing that is altogether different.

Listen to that voice.

Do what you have to do to avoid giving your editor fits, and don't try to change things overnight. But don't ignore it. Think about what isn't said at the meeting. Your predecessor may have consistently quoted three of the seven planning board members. What do those other four members have to say?

Zig while others zag.

Look for what nobody is talking about yet.

What bothers you? What don't you understand?

Following those impulses will make your stories distinctive.

7. Be a salesperson. Early on, you may get assignments from the bottom of an editor's list. But don't think that's where they have to stay. An editor likes nothing more than a brief that turns into a front-page story and will reward the reporter who makes it happen with better assignments next time around.

That doesn't happen easily. You've got to talk a good game as well as write one and explain to your editor why the story deserves more. Maybe it's a simple zoning dispute, but behind it you see a community grappling with the question of whether to bring in big business or leave the community untouched. Fight for the time to pursue that larger question. Then fight to get your story on the front page, above the fold, with the big headline and a photo. Get excited.

An added bonus: As you argue your case, you're in part starting to write the story.

8. Have fun. But sometimes, it will seem like there is no end to the stories you need to write, the appointments you need to make, the facts you need to check. That piece you were so proud of got chopped in half at the last minute. The source in the mayor's office who helped you so much when you first started out hasn't spoken to you since you wrote that story about the mayor's campaign funds. Your apartment looks in worse shape than the two-car accident you covered on Tuesday.

9. Take a step back. Go for a walk in the park you've written about but haven't seen. Clip your best stories and send them to your mom or a former teacher.

Reporting is a great business. It allows freedom to learn, explore, be creative and have an impact while getting paid. You can interview a rising political star, meet your favorite musician who happens to be in town and help a kid get a bone-marrow transplant -- all in the same week, if you're lucky.

Enjoy it.

What advice would you give a beginning reporter?

Mailbag

Chip:

I'm a reporter starting my second year at a weekly business newspaper. I recently screwed up by making an assumption on a story about pouring concrete in the winter. I found your piece an accuracy really helpful. But I am having trouble shaking off the mistake and getting back to work. I feel really badly about the mistake, which the subject said will hurt his business. Any tips for a young reporter on bouncing back from a minor set-back?

Matthew

Dear Matthew,

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I certainly sympathize with your pain.  Making a mistake in print is no fun, for the reporter or the subject. But the fact that it bothers you so much is a good sign: it means you care about getting it right.

Also, you're in good company. There isn't a journalist, dead or alive, who has never gotten something wrong in a story. My Poynter colleague Kelly McBride wrote recently about the haunting memory of an error she made.  If memory serves, Bill Blundell, an ASNE award-winning reporter for the Wall Street Journal, once said the correction that ran after his piece ran in the Journal was longer than the story. They survived and so will you.

Other than printing a correction and apologizing to the source, there's not much you can do except resolve to do better.

When I worked at the St. Petersburg Times in the mid 1980s, you had to write a memo explaining how the error made it into your story and outline the steps you planned to take to make sure it didn't happen again. A bit draconian, perhaps, but the process was useful.

In my case, I had put the words of one source into the mouth of another. I realized my mistake when I saw the story in the paper and 'fessed up (the confessional reflex of a Catholic boyhood). I figured sloppy note-taking had done me in, but writing that memo made me realize that I needed a system for distinguishing between various speakers in a setting where more than one person was talking. I decided to start using stars to separate the quotes uttered by different people.

Nixon: "I am not a crook."

****

Clinton:
"I did not have sex with that woman."

A hardly earth-shattering tactic and I should have known it far sooner than this, but it often takes a mistake for us to step back from the hectic pace of deadline newsgathering and make a different kind of correction.

Years later, I found myself covering a U.S. Supreme Court hearing. No tape recorders were allowed, and the official transcript didn't identify which justice was speaking. But by then my system was so well-established that I had no qualms pegging the quotes to the appropriate justice based on what I had in my notebook.

So my advice to you is remove the hair shirt. You've done penance enough. You screwed up, you're sorry and you're going to do your best to make sure it doesn't happen again. That's all anyone can expect. (After one correction, I decided that the slogan for my newspaper would be "Nobody's Perfect!")

To make sure of that, sit down and figure out precisely how you made the mistake and how you're going to make sure it doesn't happen again.

And remember, it could be worse. You could be a surgeon or an airline mechanic or any numbers of judges where mistakes cost lives.

Take care,
Chip

Chip:

Thanks for the long, thoughtful note.

I just finished reading Blundell's book on feature writing. It's nice to know that even he gets his foot stuck in a bucket once in a while.

I have been thinking about the root of the mistake I made. It came from two things, an assumption and an attempt to condense a dull passage. As I think about it, I remember hearing a little, almost indistinguishable voice when I wrote the passage. I should have been more careful.

In the future, I'm going to try to re-contact sources when I am writing about something technical, like the ins and outs of pouring concrete in the winter. I can paraphrase what I think I understand. They can tell me if anything is wrong.

As a writer, I feel like the thing that helped me get over that screw-up was getting into the next story.

I do worry about the damage the mistake did to my relationship with a source. But I have a feeling he will come around eventually.

Anyway, thanks for your help.

Matt

Dear Matt:

There must be something in the air. Today I got an e-mail from Karen Iwamoto, who was one of Poynter's summer reporting and writing fellows last year. Now a reporter for West Hawaii Today in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii (yeah, I know it's tough work but somebody's got to do it.)

Karen was commiserating with a friend about the sickening response a mistake in print can evoke.

She wrote: "I leave this office every day POSITIVE that I screwed SOMETHING up. All I had to read was 'nauseous' and 'misspelled' and I could already feel my heart beating faster. Anyway, I found that one way to alleviate this is to print out a copy of my story before I leave. That way, if panic hits, I can pull it out, re-read it and call the desk editor to have her fix something if the need arises."

In the interest of full disclosure, Karen gently pointed out that in my original posting I had mistakenly called her town an island. (The beauty of online is that you can correct a mistake, an option not available to those working in ink on paper.) I committed two cardinal errors: making an assumption and failing to consult a definitive reference source. I had gone online to Konaweb.com--"Serving People Who Love the Big Island Since 1995"--and assumed Kona was an insland. I should have gone to an an atlas--an encylopedia of places. (Remember what I said about, "Nobody's Perfect.")

What's your best strategy to keep from screwing something up?

The Today's Papers feature on Slate.com sums up the lead stories in the majors: New York, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times et al. But for this story, I'm more interested in the news from America's latest ground zero, the tomb of the Space Shuttle Columbia, a pock-marked stretch of land stretching at least 100 miles long and 10 miles wide through parts of Texas and Louisiana dubbed the "debris belt."

Online pointers from NewsLink.org to Texas papers and broadcast news operations and their neighbors in Louisiana make it clear that newsrooms big and small hit the ground running yesterday. They  continue to work the Shuttle disaster story hard. (FYI: Some of these links will require registration; a pain, to be sure, but worth doing if you want to stay on top of the story.)

The Search for Debris and Bodies

Latest updates on the search

Search coverage from: Tyler Morning Telegraph Dallas Morning News Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times Washington Post New York Times

Good work by Lee Hancock and Dallas Morning News team on the mammoth task of locating the debris. The Tyler Morning Telegraph's Jacque Hilburn provided a good roundup. The Times-Picayune in New Orleans tallies the sightings in Louisiana.

For many Texas papers, this global news story has become a personal one as residents witnessed the doomed flight and its horrific aftermath, and then became part of the recovery effort. Case in point: The discovery of a flight helmet on James Couch's property in Saint Augustine County chronicled by reporter Christine S. Diamond of the Lufkin Daily News.

There's a health angle to be pursued. How dangerous is Shuttle debris--and why? The Fort Worth Star Telegram reported Sunday that people near the Texas-Louisiana border--where astronaut remains and Shuttle parts have been found, sought medical attention for burns and respiratory distress.

The Relic Effect: Story Idea
The Shuttle pieces, some as "shreds no bigger than a quarter," are scattered over a debris trail that may be 500 miles long. NASA needs them to reconstruct the craft and learn what happened over the skies yesterday, but some people may be collecting them.

"Some people who found wreckage picked it up and carried it home," the Morning News story says.
"Others, like Pat Ivy, felt compelled to guard what they'd found. Mr. Ivy, who lives in Cherokee County, found a chunk of charred metal on U.S. Highway 84 between Palestine and Rusk. He moved it to the road's shoulder and waited for law officers to arrive.

"By midafternoon, dressed in overalls and work boots with a Styrofoam cooler at his side, he was still sitting in the bed of his pickup alongside the road. "I want to make sure it gets in the right hands," he said. "They've got to piece this back together, and it's gonna take all these parts."

Collecting relics is a human response to tragedy; witness the list of relics of the Lincoln assassination in April 1865.

"Objects owned by or associated with Abraham Lincoln quickly became relics, reminding Americans of Lincoln's greatness and challenging them to keep his ideals alive," a Smithsonian Institution report notes. "One of the Smithsonian Institution's most treasured icons is this top hat, worn by Lincoln to Ford's Theatre on the night of his assassination."

 It may have been a hoax but postings of Shuttle debris for sale on eBay.com led to the online auction site removing the items, theStreet.com reported. It wouldn't be the first time, according to collectspace.com, which reported the 1999 conviction of an Ohio man for trying to sell a piece of thermal tile from the Space Shuttle Challenger. on eBay. The AP has catalogued the Columbia Shuttle debris findings so far.

Given the importance of recovering every piece of the Shuttle, an interesting and important story could be told  about conflicting impulses behind the "relic effect."

Houston, We have a problem.
Eric Berger of The Houston Chronicle caught the mood in and around the locked-down Johnson Space Center.

Trail of loss
Local coverage of the Shuttle disaster demonstrates the breadth of the impact. KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City documents the loss of one scientific experiment. A UPI story assesses the scientific casualties. There may be a local angle at a university research lab in your area.

Reaction pieces
Todd Purdum of the New York Times was one of the first to capture the national mood in "Disaster Stirs Already Unsettled Feelings Across the Country," a piece posted Saturday afternoon.

Persuasion on deadline

With seventeen columnists and editiorial writers arriving today for a  "Persuasive Writing" seminar,  I was especially interested in the way the Shuttle disaster demanded commentary on deadline. By late afternoon Saturday, the Dallas Morning News had a shuttle disaster editorial prominently linked on its web. The Houston Chronicle's editorial was posted at 1:43 p.m.

Shuttle-bashing begins
Gregg Easterbrook, a longtime Shuttle critic, argues in Time that "It is time NASA and the congressional committees that supervise the agency demonstrated a tiny percentage of the bravery shown by the men and women who fly to space—by canceling the money-driven shuttle program and replacing it with something that makes sense."

The Weekly Standard prominently reposted a two-year-old anti-shuttle polemic, an essay by Charles Krauthammer, from the Jan. 31, 200 edition:  "If we are going to save resources in acknowledgment of the diminished national will to explore, we should begin by shutting the maw that is swallowing up so much of the space budget: the shuttle and the space station."
The title of the piece makes clear Krauthammer's preference for space exploration: "On to Mars."

Readers Post condolences
The Austin American-Statesman provided an online forum for readers to share their feelings.

Seen a good piece of journalism about the Shuttle disaster? Share it here.

 

 

 

In May 2001, Charles Choi, a graduate student at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, completed a master's thesis that has enormous value to the journalists now scrambling to cover the Shuttle disaster. Divided in ten chapters,

Additional Resources on Space Coverage

"Nasa Offers Access and Instant Answers" New York Times

"Reporting on Space: A Space Primer for Journalists Covering Space," provides an historical overview and information about the various sectors (civil, commercial, and military) and institutions that influence America's space program, as well as links to online resources. 

Charles Choi

Commenting today, Choi says:

"The incredible tragedy of a shuttle catastrophe leaves in its wake reporters like us striving to convey stories to audiences worldwide and locally. As could be expected, the tenor of stories is changing from mourning towards investigation and blame. Report on those struggling with the present and reminisce about the golden past, but also remember there are people still working for the space program and against it inside government and outside of it. There are a lot of stories of great humanity yet to come out of this, if journalists keep prudence, understanding and care with them.  I also would like to caution reporters that when it comes to space, it seems practically everyone has an ax to grind against someone -- reporters should keep a definite eye out for such concerns now."

Choi welcomes any professional updates or addenda to his primer, which people can e-mail him at cqchoi@nasw.org. "The hope," he says, "is to keep the primer a living document."

How can we connect with our communities at this time of national tragedy? This is a time when news organizations can — and should — do everything they can to reach out to the communities they serve.

COMPANION PIECES

Additional Resources: Coverage links & story ideas by Al Tompkins Use the web for unusual angles by Steve Outing 5 tips for connecting with your communities by Chip Scanlan Notes for TV newsrooms by Jill Geisler and Bob Steele Tell us how you're covering the story

Five suggestions:

1. Online forums for web readers to share their thoughts, questions, comments, suggestions.
2. "Walk and talk" assignments. It's time to hit the streets and get a broad sense of the impact of this story. Get reporters out to malls (the TV displays where people will be watching the news), the soccer fields where parents on the sidelines may be grappling with the conflicting desire to find out what happened and shield their children from this trauma; talk to principals and teachers about their plans for Monday morning; talk with psychologists, therapists, ministers and people in other healing professions to get their advice on ways to cope.
3. Get in close. Find a subject and stick with him or her through the day and use their lives as a prism to view this story. Perhaps it's a family whose Saturday plans have been upset or a nursing home where seniors congregate around the television, or waiting rooms (service centers at car dealerships; hairdressers). Look for opportunities to tell this extraordinary story through the lives of ordinary people.
4. Look to form as a way to frame your coverage today and in the days to come. Plan your coverage with Seattle Times editor Jacqui Banaszynski's six storytelling paths:
   
   
• Profile.
  "Who are the people behind a story? Who is the central character behind an event, issue, trend, development? A profile can reveal not just a person but a place, a building, an event."
  
  
• Explanatory Piece.
  "One of the most overlooked genres in American journalism."
  
  
• Issues and trend stories.
  "Is there a social issue or trend I can explore? What's the story writ large?"
  
  
• Investigative Piece.
  "Follow the money. Is there a system that needs to be looked at critically?"
  
  
• Narrative.
  "A story with a central character, plot, core tension."
  
  
• Descriptive/Day in the Life.
  "Sometimes a full narrative isn't possible yet. Focus on a piece of it: a ride-along, a trip to church…"
  
  
5. Deja Vu. We've been through this once before. Someone has to do the story of the last shuttle disaster. The Space Policy Project of the Federation of American Scientists has a comprehensive website devoted to the 1986 explosion that destroyed the Space Shuttle Challenger, killing its seven crew members. Tap into memories of local residents as a way to frame this story.

How are you covering the Shuttle disaster?

"For the 9-11 special section, we're going to try something different. We're talking here about a rare journalistic species. But it does exist and it's a beautiful thing."

That's how Dan Meyers, projects editor at the Denver Post, opened his pitch last July for a different kind of journalistic story form -- a reported essay -- that he wanted four reporters to tackle for a special section that would examine the events of Sept. 11, 2001 and its aftermath.

Meyers made the sale. "Four essays on a healing America" appeared in the paper's "9/11" section that appeared last Sept. 8.

Earlier this week, I shared my thoughts on the reported essay and a role model in the work of Seattle Times reporter Alex Tizon. Today's installment of this two-part column on the reported essay goes behind the Denver Post stories to learn the lessons learned from the experience. Meyers' memo and my e-mail interviews with him and three of the four reporters offer a behind-the-scenes look that may furnish a helpful road map for others.

Less ons Learned: Three Reporters and an Editor Reflect on the Reported Essay

I posed the same questions to everyone on the team:

1. What surprised you about reporting and writing (in Dan's case, editing) a reported essay?
2. What lessons did you learn from the experience?
3. What were the biggest challenges of the assignment and how did you overcome them?
4. What advice (tips, techniques, cautions, etc.) would you give to someone interested in producing a reported essay?

Nancy Lofholm on "Locked doors, open hearts."

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Nancy Lofholm, The Denver Post

1. I was suprised at the level of detailed reporting required. It took weeks of work just to get to square one on this. My topic -- the effect of 9-11 on the American family -- was very broad. I spent a lot of time just trying to pull out statistics from polls and speaking to people around the country to determine where I would take this essay. Ultimately, I ended up not using a lot of that material in the essay, but it needed to be done to validate my own assumptions about 9-11 effects.

2. I learned to overreport for this kind of piece. I went to a small town in Nebraska not sure of what I'd find and also not sure what I would focus on when it came time to write. I interviewed many people and visited dozens of homes and businesses. When I returned and sat down at the computer, I
wished I had gathered more details -- right down to the numbers and make of the locks on one family's doors to the page numbers of the civics book middle schoolers were studying when news of 9-11 hit. I thought I had gathered lots of color, but I learned no detail is too small for this type of essay.

3. Deciding what to focus on to illustrate 9-11's effect on the American family was the biggest challenge. I knew early on that I wanted to illustrate the subtle fear shift that I believed most American families had experienced. I did not want to build my piece around families that had direct losses from 9-11. I chose a small town that sits just about at the geographic center of the country, a town that is linked by name to the mideast and is two hours away from the Air Force base where resident Bush holed up on 9-11. I went in initially with the thought that I would find mothers who had waited anxiously at rural mailboxes to gather up their kids after school on 9-11, and I planned to build my lede around that. I was totally wrong -- all the mothers work in town nowadays. I had to regroup, back up and find a new focus point out of the myriad family-life tableaus I encountered. Another big challenge was putting myself into the piece. It's a hard switch after so many years of keeping myself out of stories. It took a good editor like Dan to help nudge me in that direction.

4. Gather more facts and details than you think you can possibly use. Be prepared to delve into some psychology and spend more time than normal just "thinking" your piece -- looking for the subtle connections and the meaning behind small things you observe -- in this case, things like a young boy crashing toy planes into block towers and the flash of fear in a man's eyes when he is saying he has no post-9-11 fears for his own family.

Kevin Simpson on "Attitude can't mask the pain."

Kevin Simpson, The Denver Post

1. The shocking thing was how much of the reporting never found its way into print -- at least in the literal sense. I knew upfront that much of the work would serve primarily to educate me about my particular subject (New York's "recovery"), but when it came down to the actual writing, I found it troubling to have to leave out so much interesting information, or distill poignant anecdotes and hour-long interviews into perhaps a sentence or two of more general observation. Granted, the best of the best got in, and I knew this would be the case when I started. Still...as a reporter, I'm not used to leaving this much in my notebook.

2. I think it took me one pass through the writing process to really understand what we were looking for, stylistically speaking. I didn't fully realize how much freedom this form allowed (despite past experience as a columnist) and I found myself affected by the gravitational pull of traditional reportage. My second stab, guided by Dan's observations, proved much more effective and I began to feel more comfortable with the form. I was too cautious, too traditional with the first effort, which had a sense of writing style but lacked voice. The most obvious lesson I took from this process was how to inject style with voice over a longer piece.

3. Writing was by far the biggest challenge, for the reasons mentioned above. Reporting is reporting, but the reported essay form represented an interesting stretch. Also, it became a challenge to winnow the notebooks full of information to the best, most telling tidbits and anecdotes. Any
number of people I interviewed would have made great stories all by themselves, but in the end, some barely rated a mention.

4. Trust yourself and your reporting. When you think you've got the topic down cold, make your writing reflect that. Stretch yourself, and your voice, on the first draft. You can always pull
back.

Karen Augé on "Lessons learned, and ignored."

Karen Augé, The Denver Post

1. One surprising thing was that writing it wasn't as hard as I had thought. Maybe I'm just naturally opinionated, or maybe it didn't seem hard because I didn't get it right and was too dumb to realize it, but I had expected to struggle a lot more writing it.   
 
2. I learned never to trust a man who says hate-mongers burned down his hotel. Although in my defense, everyone else, including the police and the whole town, believed him too. And the town's response -- which was genuine -- was as much a part of the story as the fire.

3. One of the biggest challenges was simply getting the time to work on it. Shortsighted editors (is that redundant? except in Dan's case of course) kept wanting daily stories, and I was an easy target because the essay wasn't due for weeks. Eventually I think Dan put his foot down. Another challenge
was to resist the temptation to interview the world. My topic seemed huge and I was darting around in all directions. That problem was solved only by the realization that I would never have time to talk to everyone I wanted. (See above). Lastly, I was challenged by the topic -- Has Sept. 11 made us
more aware of and interested in the rest of the world? That's a hard thing to quantify or prove one way or the other.
  
4. Tips:

• Keep an open mind. In an essay, you probably have, and probably should have, an hypothesis going in. But be open to changing that as your reporting dictates; fight the tendency to discard information that doesn't support your theories.
• Do oodles of reporting. Unless you're really good at faking, you can't write an authoritative essay unless you're really really confident of what you're saying.
• Have a good editor (Dan, for example) and make sure you're on the same page and working toward the same thing.

Dan Meyers on editing "four essays on a healing America."

Dan Meyers, The Denver Post

1. It's harder than you think. You think, "Aw, journalism is so limiting for a creative, poetic soul like me. If only the stolid powers-that-be would let me break away from the formula." And then you are asked to break away from tradition, and it's scary. I chose four excellent writers for this project. We spent some time upfront talking about the goals, making suggestions, discussing what a reported essay should be. Each one of them, wonderful writers though they are, initially had some difficulty working outside the usual boundaries. Then, on the second try, each one of them found a way to soar.

2. These are writing muscles that aren't used that much, so expect it to take several tries to get into
shape. One good thing we did: talked to people at Poynter and elsewhere beforehand so I could articulate to the reporters what we were trying to do. I'd written precisely one such essay in my career, as a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. I sort of knew in my bones what I wanted but that wasn't going to be very helpful guidance. By talking with Chip Scanlan and, at his suggestion, Alex Tizon of the Seattle Times, I got lots of good advice on what to do, what not to do and how to express all that to others. I ended up writing it down and handing it out (as well as talking about it) so they'd have something real to refer to.

3.  The real challenge was overcoming the perceived safety of standard journalism and taking chances in a realm that was new to us all.

4. Be really clear about what you are going after, and then be patient about how tough it is to achieve at first.



What's your take on the reported essay?

One day last July, an e-mail arrived from Dan Meyers, an editor at The Denver Post. Like journalists around the country, if not the world, he and his colleagues were trying to come up with a compellling way to write about the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001.

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</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!--"We in Denver have been talking about the need for an authoritative *something* for the 9-11 anniversary," Meyers wrote. "We're calling it a reported essay -- something that distills reporting and presents it sure-footedly. Not an opinion piece. I'm an editor hunting for ways to explain this to reporters. Can you think of some examples that might illustrate this? Any advice, ranging from 'Brilliant, thanks for pushing the envelope,' to 'Are you nuts? The inverted pyramids have stood for millenia.'''

About six months earlier, I had heard Alex Tizon,

Alex Tizon, The Seattle Times

the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the Seattle Times, use the term "reported essay" during a writing seminar at Poynter. I believe he meant it to describe long magazine-style pieces told with a strong voice that derived its authority from exhaustive reporting. I suggested to Meyers that he get in touch with Tizon and also read "Crossing America," a series of reported essays that Tizon wrote about a post 9-11 cross-country trip he took with Times photographer Alan Berner. (In 2002, the pair continued the journey with a series of "reported postcards."  I also shared with Meyers the fruits of a Google search I did on the subject, along with a few of my own reflections: 
 

More resources

The Power of Serendipity Alex Tizon's Journey

William Powers, the National Journal's media columnist, used the term to describe a piece of political journalism: "the passionate, reported essay. Often attempted, rarely pulled off, this kind of piece requires two things: 1) a deep factual grounding in the subject, and 2) a willingness by the writer to abandon the safety of 'balanced' political writing and reveal his most earnest personal beliefs, often at the risk of embarrassment."

I told Meyers that if you asked me the difference between a reported essay and a newspaper story, I'd say it lies in the quality of the reporting, the depth and value of the insight, and perhaps most of all, the power of the writer's voice, which derives from those two characteristics.

While it may not be an opinion piece, I'd expect it to reflect the writer's opinions supported by evidence that is strong and verifiable.

Whatever the structure of the piece, I'd look for it to have a strong and supported theme, a wealth of information, and a variety of documentation. Perhaps the reported essay is the record of a reporter's journey of discovery, the tale that not only lays the prize at your feet but describes the hunt. As Powers suggests, it's a risky undertaking, but one the reader will believe worth the effort

"That is wonderfully helpful," Meyers responded. "In two decades as a writer, I did precisely one reported essay, for the Inquirer, on an anniversary of man landing on the moon. So I know it when I see it. But I was struggling with the words I'll need to explain it to others."

On Sept. 8, three days before the one-year anniversary, The Denver Post published a special section, that included "Four essays on a healing America."

• "The cushion of distance," by Erin Emery
• "Locked doors, open hearts," by Nancy Lofholm
• "Lessons learned, and ignored," by Karen Augé
• "Attitude can't mask the pain," by Kevin Simpson

After I read the four stories, I e-mailed Meyers that "I found them poignant, powerful, authoritative. They take us across the country and inside people's hearts and minds, combining careful attentive reporting and graceful, incisive writing."

I also asked the Post team's help in sharing the lessons they learned from the experience.

I posed four questions:

1. What surprised you about reporting and writing (in Dan's case, editing) a reported essay?
2. What lessons did you learn from the experience?
3. What were the biggest challenges of the assignment and how did you overcome them?
4. What advice (tips, techniques, cautions, etc.) would you give to someone interested in producing a reported essay?

I'll report their answers Thursday in part two.

In most newspaper stories, and even some magazine pieces, people are little more than a name, a title, age and address. "Janice Richardson, 35, advertising account manager at Hathaway Communications" or "William Masterson, 22, of 568B Crowne Court Apartments."

It takes a little more effort to zero in on the physical attributes that distinguish one person from another, but that's one of the writer's gifts that makes storytelling such a special experience.

Madelaine Blais, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, captured the essence of this challenge in The Complete Book of Feature Writing. In her essay, "Don't forget the "Ordinary" People," she wrote,  "If novelists are faced with the artistic challenge of getting people who are not alive to seem alive, the journalist faces essentially the same problem: how do you make people who are alive in reality come alive on paper."

In her ASNE award-winning St. Petersburg Times series, "Metal to Bone", Anne Hull shows how it can be done in this brief but evocative description of a father and son:

Carl's skin was black-gold, and his eyelashes curled over his eyes, just like Eugene's. His beard needed trimming, and the T-shirt he wore was faded and too small, but there was something proud and impenetrable about him.

A person can be sketched quickly and with powerful effect with a few brushstrokes, as Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press did with his portrait of a football player and convicted rapist from Best Newspaper Writing 1996:

He is kind of thin for a football player, with a gangly walk, dark hair that falls onto his forehead, a thick neck, crooked teeth, a few pimples.

If these prizewinning examples seem beyond your reach, let me demonstrate how beginning journalists (students in Poynter summer fellowship program--can inject humanity into their stories in small ways:

WITH JUST A WORD. Rebecca Catalanello could have simply written, "Jason Myron, 8." Instead, she wrote, "Jason Myron, a freckle-faced 8-year-old," and evoked an idelible image of a child's face.

IN A SENTENCE. Rhea Borja described a female minister this way: "She's a woman with a friendly and open air, more comfortable in Birkenstocks and summer dresses than the vestments of her trade."

A Prescription for Putting People on the Page

Look for models. Writers learn from other writers. I collect examples of physical descriptions that I admire and study them for content, tone, pacing, even sentence length. I find that even copying them out (being sure to note the source) helps me see the way the writer revealed the person and how I might do it with another subject.

the obituary writer, a short and rather shy man wearing horn-rimmed glasses and smoking a pipe
from "Mr. Bad News" by Gay Talese in Fame and Obscurity.

More resources

Lillian Ross on her Rules of Reporting Gay Talese: Portrait of Nonfiction Artist by Barbara Lounsberry

Like Talese, Lillian Ross of the New Yorker is another writer who's adept at bringing her subjects to life with vividly detailed and carefully crafted descriptions. I culled the following from profiles that Ross included in her most recent collection, Reporting Back:

He wears silver framed aviator style bifocals, sports on his little finger a gold college ring with an almost dime sized ruby in the middle. (Univ of Md. Class of 40), keeps a long cigar in his mouth (“I’m a chewer, not a smoker”), dresses conservatively (navy blue blazer, matching pants, too tight shirts, bright knit ties), and tears around the metropolian area in a telephone equipped car from one to another of his three offices (Forest Hills, West 5th St., Battery Park City) and to his buildings.

A genial forty three year old six footer with a graying beard

His own face cool and dry and cheerful, under a snowy thick man of hair. His gray suit was uncreased, a yellow print Hermes  necktie neatly done under his chin.

His face was freshly sunburned, and he had on a navy blue worsted suit, a white shirt with a button down collar, and a blue and silver striped necktie held by a brass pin, in the shape of a pt boat that was inscribed “Kennedy 60.

Testino is 44, a good natured, fleshy, large faced loosely put together, six plus two inch footer who was handsomely attired in a Bergere dark green coat, a Charvet painterly green shirt open at the collar and black English broughans. He carried a couple of small contax cameras and took photographs of his own photographs and of people looking at them

Miss King is a statuesque, super confident, cheery former news anchor with a perfect face and perfect teeth, auburn hair worn straight to the collar and the immediately chummy, quick-talking eager breathy rhythms of the Rosie Barbara Katie sisterhood.

A gracious, jolly, pink-cheeked man wearing toroise-shell glasses and a tuxedo

Mr. Gould, unslept and unbarbered, was in town for a couple of days from his home in Toronto. He had on his usual baggy deark blue suit with outmoded overpadded shoulders, a raggedy brown ssweater and a worn out bluish necktie. A yellow pencil protruded eraser end up from his coat pocket. 

 At times Ross may be guilty of descriptive overkill and I'm sure some editors feel their finger itching over the delete key on some phrases. But reading Ross I begin to see how carefully she studies people and the judgments she makes about appearance and personality. (Many writers are afraid to make such judgments, fearful of seeming biased or even cruel. A suggestion: Write the description and then run it past a colleauge and your editor to get a reader's view.)

You can practice this particular craft challenge on friends and family. Describing people you know intimately will guide you to the type of details that swiftly capture a person and help readers visualize them.

That's what I did In "The Only Honest Man," an essay I published in River Teeth, a journal of creative nonfiction. My grandfather has been dead for more than 30 years but my memories of him are so strong (bolstered by consulting family photos) that it was easy to describe him:

My silver-haired and mustachioed grandfather, at 85 still the picture of a diplomat in his dark blue double-breasted suit, Fedora cocked at a jaunty angle, waving his polished hickory cane in the air, announcing to anyone in earshot, "There'll never be another Billy Scanlan.

Write a paragraph describing one of your siblings or a favorite relative.

Try it on news sources. The next time you're falling asleep during a boring meeting, assign yourself the task of writing one-line or one paragraph descriptions of every council member.


Report for story. If you're not routinely taking notes on the way people look--specific details about clothes, mannerisms, physical characteristics--you're cheating yourself of the raw material you'll need to bring someone to life when you sit down to write.

Make it a habit whenever you interview someone that you take time to get down the details that will help you bring that person alive.

Here's a list from notes I took during a recent interview:
He wears his hair like Ross Geller on Friends
He’s trim tall, dressed in all black
Boyish
Black suit
He’s in a shirt, collarless
He covers his mouth with a tent of his fingers and begins to type again
He rocks as he types when it begins going well. In deep concentration he stares at the screen, a touch typist, his mouth pursed and slightly open
His voice on the air is soothing
Hypnotic
Dark black hair
Nike swoosh sunglasses
he’s got a husky lusty chuckle
He’s young  handsome
Gleaming white teeth
Black hair glossy with gel
Black slipons and black socks
Hair parted on the left
Pale complexion
Clean shaven
His hands are epxressive
He tents them
Waves them to emphasize, invite, complete
The clean cut looks of an altar boy

Accept that you will probably take in ten times as much as you will ever use and if you're like me, accept that you'll rarely satisfied with the result. But keep at it. As Aristotle observed, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

Getting in the habit of trying to put people onto the page will put you in good company.

"I definitely am trying to teach myself. to actually describe how someone looked, of actually writing down descriptive text.  I’m trying to learn how to do that all the time and I’m not great at it.  Some people have just such an incredible talent for that and I don’t really, but I am working on it." That's Ellen Barry, whose The Lost Boys of Sudan series won last year's American Society of Newspaper Editors award for non-deadline writing, talking.

Have a favorite example of a writer putting a person on the page? Share it here.

 

"Where do you get your ideas?"

When writers, especially good ones, finish a talk and open up the floor to questions, that's invariably one of the first to come up.

Generating story ideas is a perennial challenge for many of us--witness the enormous and growing popularity of Al's Morning Meeting, the online fountain of story ideas furnished through the unstinting efforts of Poynter's Al Tompkins.  

The best writers seem to have a steady supply of great ideas. I used to covet Tom French's story idea list when we worked together in the features department of the St. Petersburg Times in the mid-1980s. It stretched for pages. 

Like Al Tompkins, Tom had a well-developed sense of wonder that he has never lost and the world seemed to provide a steady stream of story ideas he wanted to pursue.

You can find story ideas anywhere if you're open to them. Ellen Barry of The Boston Globe has found them in the yellow pages.

"I must have been stuck on the B's because I did baby models and bronze baby shoe salesmen and baby modeling agencies..." she said in Best Newspaper Writing 2002.

I've come to the conclusion that it's not so much a question of where you find story ideas but how you find them. Here's one of the simplest ways: I ask reporters to leave the building and walk five minutes in any direction and write down every question that comes to mind.

Todd Volkstorf of the Wilmington (N.C.) Star had taken just one step outside when he heard a noisy airplane and wondered why his town seemed to be getting so noisy. The question led to "Quest for Quiet," a front-pager that introduced readers to a noise expert, noise haters and a weird guy who loves the sound of planes screaming overhead.

If you're having trouble coming up with story ideas — or you're supervising reporters whose idea files are skimpy -- there are several creativity tools that can help you take full advantage of your own private idea generator -- your brain -- to guarantee a regular supply.  

Brainstorming

More resources

BRAINSTORMING A Web page that gives an overview of the technique and suggestions for individual and group brainstorming. SCENARIO BUILDING Wired magazine's Web page devoted to the techniques of scenario building, including examples and essays by futurists. Al's Morning Meeting Every Story Starts with a Good Idea by Steve Buttry Bookshelf de Bono, Edward. Serious Creativity. New York: Harper Business, 1992. Klauser, Henriette Anne. Writing on Both Sides of the Brain. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986.

When Susan Trausch of The Boston Globe, who won the American Society of Newspaper Editors award for editorial writing in 1995, sits down to write on deadline, she doesn't turn to her computer keyboard like most journalists. Instead, she picks up a pen and a legal pad.

Before she can tell editorial page readers what to think on a given subject, she first has to find out what her own thoughts are.

The notes she makes in those first moments make sense of the jumbled thoughts in her head. They will drive her reporting, plan her structure, make connections -- all in rehearsal for the writing to come.

"Then I turn to the screen, and somewhere in that list is a lead," she told me when I interviewed her for Best Newspaper Writing 1995.

With her legal pad and pen, Trausch is employing a basic creativity tool known as brainstorming. 

Brainstorming is simple: You simply choose a topic and make a list of everything that comes to mind.
Unfortunately, brainstorming is absent in most newsrooms I'm familiar with, I believe, because one of its essential qualities -- withholding judgment -- is a foreign concept to many reporters and editors. We are often most comfortable in the role of critic or watchdog. If a watchdog doesn't bark, it's not doing its job. For some people, it's a lot easier to piss on someone else's idea than generate their own.

There are no bad ideas in a brainstorming session because it's a time for creating ideas, not criticizing them. (That comes later.)

Here's how to do it: Brainstorming can be a solitary exercise or can be done with other reporters and editors. The key is to suspend critical judgment.

• Write down as quickly as possible, including all the ideas and related thoughts that surface on a particular topic.
• Don't stop to evaluate items.
• Don't worry if the ideas seem lame; don't cross out or ignore any idea.
• Don't worry about spelling or punctuation or fill in details.
• Write in your personal shorthand.

Once the flow of ideas has petered out, then and only then do you review and evaluate, discard and organize, clarify and expand. Look for the information that surprises you or that connects with other information in an interesting, unexpected way.

Here's an example of brainstorming at work:

BRAINSTORMING A SCHOOL BUDGET STORY
Reporters often complain that the nature of the news they cover is boring. Government meetings, budgetary matters, legislation aren't the stuff that gets their creative juices flowing. Maybe that's why newspapers are so boring. 

Let's say the School Board is meeting next week about the school budget. The superintendent of schools has proposed a 140-page budget for the next school year with proposals for 5- and 10-year spending.

What happens when you turn off the inner critic and just let the ideas fly about the making of the budget?

• How many people participate?
• Who participates? Teachers? Principals? Students? Parents?
• Is it top secret or an open process?
• When does the process begin?
• "Mr. Holland's Opus"
• Are there any teachers whose programs are being cut in the budget?
• Which programs are getting the biggest bite of the budgetary pie: computer science or the arts? Football or girls basketball? Why?
• Inflation and the "three R's"
• What does it cost to run a school in the 21st century?
• How have school supplies changed -- from chalk to computers -- and how does that affect the budget?

That list took about seven minutes. It's sketchy, but it got me thinking about a budget in a variety of ways: It not only unearthed questions that I need to answer but introduced, via a popular movie ("Mr. Holland's Opus"), a possible angle to explore.

Try brainstorming with a colleague or your editor. Two heads can be better than one, especially in a brainstorming session. Ideas spark other ideas. Remember the first rule of brainstorming: There is no such thing as a bad idea.

Mapping and Branching

Brainstorming is a linear process. You write down ideas, usually in list form, that march from top to bottom. But the brain processes ideas in other ways. Some people think in nonlinear fashion. Mapping and branching are techniques that accommodate that way of thinking.

By letting you start in the middle, return to the start and go on to the end, and then go back to the middle and start over, these techniques allow you to retrace your thoughts and add afterthoughts, says Henriette Anne Klauser, author of "Writing on Both Sides of the Brain." "And often the afterthoughts," she says, "are the most valuable aspects."

This time, instead of making a list about a story idea, put the topic or subject in the center of a page. When you get an idea, draw a line out from the center and write the idea at the end. If that idea triggers a new one, draw a new line from that word or return to the center and draw new lines for each idea. Continuing with the school budget, draw a map that encompasses the school budget idea and tracks your mind's journey.

Klauser and others interested in left brain-right brain activities believe that mapping and branching more accurately reflect the way the mind works. Our minds don't work in a straight line, but rather more like a pinball machine, bouncing ideas off one another helter-skelter. I like to think of it as drawing a map of your neural synapses firing.

Here's how mapping a story on a proposal to change a bus route might look:

(Click here to enlarge image from Reporting & Writing: Basics for the 21st century)

Now try the same exercise using the branches of a tree.
Here's how it worked for me on a different topic: The crisis in child support enforcement.

(Click here to enlarge image from Reporting & Writing: Basics for the 21st century)

Notice how nonlinear thinking takes you into new areas.

Scenario Building

Trying to imagine the future is big business today. Corporations the world over employ futurists to help them envision markets, products and structures that will respond to future needs. Journalists can borrow their techniques to help stay abreast and ahead of the news.

Here's an example: Imagine it's the year 2025, a quarter of a century from now. You are 25 years older.  Sketch a scenario that describes where you live and work. Where do your parents live? What are their needs?

Now that you have built the scenario, consider what news stories you could write.

Daybook

A daybook, or journal, can be a seedbed for ideas. Use it to record your observations, ideas, memories, imaginings, details, overheard conversations and lines of writing that pop into your head but that will evaporate if not recorded. Keep it with you and write down your ideas as they come to you. Set aside part of the day, when you get up or before you go to sleep, to fill out the fragmentary thoughts you've jotted down during the day.

Where and how do you get story ideas? 

Separated at birth?

Tony S.

I first got interested in The Sopranos when someone told me I looked like the star. I was insulted that someone would mistake me for a middle-aged balding mobster until I tuned in the HBO mega-hit. (After all, when I was much younger my mother used to claim I resembled Omar Sharif, but that was many hairs ago, and she was prejudiced.) These days I'd be happy to be mistaken for James Gandolfini (he's the balding middle-aged guy above right) whose nuanced, sympathetic performance as mob chieftain Tony Soprano is so captivating that during one show in the latest season, I blurted out to my wife, "I'd go to Tony's funeral!"

More resources

Shrinks Talk Sopranos A Slate Roundtable The Sopranos Official HBO site Tony's Hometown Paper Newark Star-Ledger Fight Sopranos Withdrawal SopranoSue's Fan Site

Like many fans though, lately I've been suffering Sopranos withdrawal, a syndrome that develops after the current season finishes its run and we have to wait many months for a new one to begin.

To counter it, I recently picked up a copy of The Sopranos: Selected Scripts from Three Seasons which reproduces the shooting scripts of five episodes, including my favorite about the hapless adventures of Tony's underlings, Christopher and Paulie, after an errand at the gaudily-mirrored apartment of a Russian gangster goes sour and they have to dispose of his body. The pair spend a bone-chilling night in the New Jersey Pine Barrens hunting for the victim who turns out to have nine lives. Static over cell phones between the pair and Tony lead to a hysterically funny mix-up, one of the comic throughlines that makes the series so unexpectedly appealing:

EXT. STREET - DAY
Tony walks down the street outside Slava's, talking on his cell phone as he heads to the Suburban.

TONY
(through some static)
It's a bad connection so I'm gonna talk fast!
The guy you're looking for is an ex-commando!
He killed sixteen Chechen rebels single-handed!

PAULIE
Get the fuck outta here.

TONY
Yeah. Nice, huh? He was with the Interior Ministry.
Guy's like a Russian green beret. He can not
come back and tell this story. You understand?

PAULIE
I hear you.

EXT. WOODS - DAY

Paulie clicks off, looks at Christopher.

PAULIE
You're not gonna believe this.
(off Christopher's look)
He killed sixteen Czechoslovakians. Guy was an interior decorator.

CHRISTOPHER
(amazed)
His house looked like shit.

Bada-Bing!

What makes this collection invaluable for any student of the writing craft is the four-page introduction by David Chase, the series creator. In it, he reveals the writing process behind the Sopranos, a series that reflects Chase's love for "the foreign films I loved as a young adult for their ideas, their mystery and their ambiguity..."

I've boiled it down to a step-by-step run-through of the journey that Chase and his fellow writers take to produce one of the most successful series in television history:

1. Outline story arcs or "touchstones."
Touchstone is Chase's term for what journalists call the "focus," or theme, that is, what the story is really about. As the show's creator and executive producer, these are his call. "The main theme of season 2," Chase explains, is "plateau therapy -- it deals with what Tony discovered and acknowledged in therapy during season one and the feelings these insights evoked."

2. Fill in the outline.
The touchstone will play out over the season's 13 episodes, each of which features three to four story "strands -- What we call an A, B, (the main storylines) C, (a less major strand) or even D storyline, usually a comic runner."

As a template, Chase uses the "Happy Wanderer" episode, the one where gambler David Scatino loses at high stakes poker and pays off Tony with his son's SUV: "The A strand of the story is the spider-fly relationship between Tony and David and how they both behave according to their true natures ... The B story is the relationship between Meadow and Eric Scatino (the two men's teenage children) ... The C strand is Tony finding out he has a retarded uncle, and the D story is the funeral for the father of Tony's brother-in law."

3. Flesh out the story
In the writing room, Chase and the show's other writer/producers "flesh out the story for each episode, listing the 'beats,' i.e. scenes, for the A-D stories, one story at a time, on a wipe-off board. Each strand has a beginning, middle and end and could stand alone as films."

That explanation helped me understand why the Sopranos, unlike almost all other TV fare, so often delivers the narrative satisfaction of a feature film, that sense that characters have reached a resolution, if not a final stop. At its most frustrating, especially in the episodes leading up to the final one last season, episodes stopped frustratingly short of climax.

Each episode has about 35 beats; with the main A and B strands each getting 13 scenes. The C strand gets 5 or 6 and the comic runner D plays out in "just a few beats."

4. Cut and (Scotch) Tape
The scenes on the board are typed up and then "literally cut apart with scissors" and then "married" together with Scotch tape in the order of the complete script. "For example, a scene from story A could be followed by a scene from B, then back to A, then C and so on," Chase explains.

Once the writers are satisfied with the scene order "aka story" the taped pages are retyped and voila: an outline that the writer, whoever he is, must faithfully follow.

5. Writing and Whacking
Scripts may go through 10 drafts, revised with notes from Chase and other producers, before they're seen by any of the cast or crew. And even after filming, Chase may spend months in the editing room, generating "many cuts all the way to the final -- which could include reordering and omitting scenes."

"I firmly believe," Chase says, "that the more time a filmmaker has to edit, the better a piece will be."

What impressed me about Chase's deconstruction was the way the process mixes creativity with mechanical procedures, equal parts brainstorming and Scotch tape. Even the most creative enterprise involves a measure of tedium. 

Now as I wait for the Sopranos' next season to start- - Will Tony sleep with the fishes? Will Carmela run off to Italy with Furio? Will Christopher stay off smack? Will Meadow find her own mob man? Will Dr. Melfi get Tony back on Prozac and into the witness protection program? -- I can watch the reruns and watch as each strand of the Sopranos' stories weaves a dramatic experience that compels millions of law-abiding Americans to turn a stone-cold killer into a star.

It's a fascinating process, and one that I think any storyteller can profit from studying. I'm grateful to David Chase for revealing it.

Displaying a refreshing humility for someone who's achieved such success, Chase concludes his essay by paying homage to a legendary Japanese filmmaker and an attitude about craft dedication that he clearly emulates.

 "I remember Akira Kurosawa saying at age 80-something that the great thing about filmmaking is you're constantly learning. He was still learning, he said."

And despite the Sopranos' critical and commercial success, Chase says, "We're continuing to learn."

Mailbag

Dear Chip:

Have you ever come across any handy ways in which reporters in the field organize and catalogue their contact information? Despite my fondness for electronic doodads, computer upgrades and the like, I have always resisted the idea of a PDA. But as I find myself in need of a simple, reliable system for organizing my contacts, I'm wondering if I could make use of one.

Here's the thing: as a wire service reporter, I am often called upon to dredge up a contact with whom I haven't spoken in a long time. Often it's next to impossible to locate the number, let alone get the person to remember who I am. I am confident that if I had a reliable system for cataloguing contacts as they arise, including being able to keep track of the last time I was in touch with them, I would be better able to cultivate my crop of sources, get to them more quickly when news is breaking, and ultimately -- indeed, ideally -- get to them beforehand so that I can break it.

In many respects, it's simply a question of being better organized, I know. But what's the best way to break things down? I used to file people by category or beat, but then often couldn't find someone if I knew their name but not the category under which I had filed them. Microsoft Outlook seems a logical choice, and I am giving that a go, but I've been using it for years and still haven't mastered it.

Do you know of any decent software, book, system or other tool that would allow me to cross-reference sources by name, category and/or other pertinent information, something streamlined enough not to make the entry of contact information such a chore?  Perhaps one day you or your Poynter colleagues could provide us with a tip sheet on how to make the best use of contact database programs like Outlook, because I know for sure I'm not doing that now.

Cheers

James McCarten
Senior Ontario Correspondent
The Canadian Press

Dear James,

I'm looking forward to hearing what folks out there have to say about the best way to keep track of sources. Like lots of reporters, for much of my career, I used a Rolodex -- that time-honored device that kept removable white cards in a rotary file -- to store names and phone numbers of sources. 

I thought I had made a leap forward in the 1980s when I created a text file in my computer where I entered names, titles, and phone numbers (and additional info that seemed pertinent, such as mailing addresses) and could use the search function to locate a name or number.

It all seems so primitive now. When I got your e-mail I opened Microsoft Outlook 2002 and created a new contact. I cut and pasted your particulars into the appropriate fields, putting you just a few mouse clicks away when I need your phone number or address. For me, accessibility is rivaled by the relatively limitless opportunity to enter information (everything from nicknames and birthday and anniversary reminders to assistant's names and numbers); the kind of stuff that would overwhelm my Roledex files or at least tax my pathetic penmanship. This information is also available away from my desktop. I carry a handheld Handspring visor which contains a mirror-image of my Outlook data that is easy to synchronize. I like the way I can use the "Find" feature to scribble a name and come up with a contact.

But I'm not a power-user so I imagine I'm barely scratching the surface of functionality that contact management software offers to reporters. So let me toss it out to my readers and see what they can teach us about the best ways to keep track of sources in the 21st Century?

How do you keep track of sources?

E-MAIL NEWSLETTER

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Reporting and writing the news demand courage. Or as Melvin Mencher, the legendary Columbia J-school professor put it: If you're going to be a reporter you have to be counterphobic.

Counterphobia, defined in an online glossary of psychiatric terms: "Deliberately seeking out and exposing onself to, rather than avoiding, the object or situation that is consciously or unconsciously feared."

Journalism means regularly approaching complete strangers and persuading them to tell you things they may not want to tell you.

Here's how Steve Myers, a Poynter reporting fellow, described his on-the-job assertiveness training: "I was surprised the most by the fact that I was able to get over my fears of doing the actual reporting. No matter how the writing of the story turned out, in my mind it was secondary to the fact that I knocked on all 18 doors on 56th Avenue S. I felt a little bit like an encyclopedia salesman, but I got over the nausea in the pit of my stomach by the fourth or fifth house."

What may help is knowing that many people are terrified of journalists. Although it may be hard to believe, most people will be more afraid of you and the power you wield as a reporter than you are of them. Consider what J. C. McKinnon, a burly, stern-faced St. Petersburg police officer, once confessed to a group of reporting fellows: "I carry a can of pepper spray, a Glock pistol and 51 rounds of ammunition. But you've got something that can destroy me: a pen and a notepad."

If you're avoiding doing something -- getting started on an ambitious project, making the phone call, knocking on the door, visiting a part of your community you've never been to before -- acknowledge that you're anxious and then go do it. When I'm really paranoid, I make a point of writing in my journal whatever my fear is, what I expected would happen, and then reporting back the outcome. Invariably, the feared result failed to materialize. On those rare occasions when it did, I found that I handled it. Even after 22 years experience, I found I had to keep reminding myself that people usually want to talk. 

Assertiveness reflects a belief in yourself and your role as a journalist in a democracy. You have the right to ask questions, to approach someone for an interview, to request information. The flip side, of course, means that the person you're asking has the right to say no. Assertiveness also demands empathy. You have to understand that you wield power as a journalist. Your press pass will get you places the general public can't go. As a reporter, I've watched doctors try to impregnate a woman through in-vitro fertilization, sailed on a freighter, followed police on a drug bust. But freedom carries responsibility. 

Don't be afraid. Or, rather, be afraid, but do it anyway. 

Be counterphobic. 

After all, as a savvy editor once said, journalism is all about one thing: Gulp. And go.

Have a story to share about overcoming fear on the job?

Mailbag

It wasn't a pretty sight. When the Raelians, a cult that bills itself as "the world's largest UFO religion" and was founded by a French TV journalist who says he got the idea after he was "taken up in a spaceship by a 4-foot-tall, green-skinned, long-haired, oval-eyed alien" meeting aliens, announced they had successfully cloned a human being, the news media stumbled over itself to report the news.

Major papers splashed the story on the front page. TV news trumpeted. The cable chatterati went into overdrive. That was Dec. 27.

We're still waiting for the proof and all signs indicate we shouldn't hold our breath. 

All the "cloning talk" reminded John Sweeney, public editor of the Wilmington News Journal of a speech by medical ethicist Arthur Caplan to the Organization of News Ombudsmen in 1996. He shared the column he wrote for his newspaper back then. I think it's worth re-reading.

More Resources

Another Cloning Flashback The Atlantic Who are the Raelians? Time.com Cloning for Dollars Los Angeles Times (registration required)

Skeptic debunks notion of scientific breakthough

By Public Editor John Sweeney
Arthur Caplan has a warning for news consumers: Don't believe everything you read or hear about medical breakthroughs.

Real life isn't Hollywood. Genuine breakthroughs are rare.

Caplan directs the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Not only does he study what researchers claim, but he closely watches what reporters and editors cover them.

He has found that hokum makes headlines.

There's something tragic about that, he said. The victims of deadly diseases and their relatives follow these developments closely. They may read that a new process shrinks tumors or they may hear a TV reporter extol an experimental drug. They get the idea that a cure is only steps away. But these steps are only preliminary in many cases and human testing is years away - if it ever happens. Worse, sometimes reporters unknowingly pass along bad information presented by unscrupulous doctors and researchers.

As a counter to a lot of misinformation floating about, Caplan offers nine reasons to be skeptical of press reports about medical breakthroughs:

1. Reporters and editors don't have a firm grasp on biomedicine's history. "Biomedical progress comes in steps, not leaps," Caplan said.

On the other hand, our society is quick to reward doctors and scientists who report breakthroughs. "These steps are important to careers, but not to patients," Caplan said. A development may be an important step forward in a long chain of important steps. But that doesn't translate into a cure or longer life for those suffering now.

Lobbyists and special-interest groups often seize on small developments to gain publicity that will coerce the government into granting more aid.

The stock market plays a role as well. The announcement of a successful study - no matter how tentative or specious - can send a biomedical stock soaring.

2. Reporters and editors often have little sense of the contemporary sociology of biomedicine and health care.

Research is done in teams today, Caplan said. Scientists work on large-scale research projects, often with big money coming from commercial sources who maintain a proprietary control over the information scientists produce.

It's not just one scientist in one lab. It's dozens, maybe hundreds of scientists and technicians in laboratories around the world.

Caplan said it's important to ask of any scientific development: Where is the money from? Who benefits?

3. Humans need to counter a tendency toward wishful thinking. Watch out for doctors dressing up small gains as big advances.

4. Beware of the commercial interests of newspapers, radio and TV stations. A breath-taking breakthrough means bigger audiences.

5. "Breakthroughs" feed America's love of technology.

Americans love the rescue fantasy, Caplan said. We easily imagine technology coming to our aid just in time.

6. Press-release journalism feeds the breakthrough mentality.

Doctors and scientists are sophisticated about publicity. They supply reporters with boiled-down versions of scientific journals. The news is spoon-fed to reporters, with all of the technical terms explained and with backup scientists to add weight to the claims. The bad news and the qualifiers are conveniently left off.

7. The breakthrough mentality fosters anti-bureaucratic feelings.

"It's a popular American fantasy," Caplan said. Push the deadbeats at the Federal Drug Administration aside so entrepreneurial scientists can win the day.

8. Reporters and editors often hold a childish view of how science works.

This, Caplan said, fits in with a science phobia among many journalists. Many journalists learned science from the movies. It's one righteous man accidentally stumbling on the answer. Or maybe it's the anti-establishment rebel forcing the dolts to wake up.

9. Much news coverage of so-called biomedical breakthroughs fails to understand the nature of a breakthrough.

"Everything isn't a breakthrough," Caplan said. Nobel Prizes are awarded to scientists for the small steps that lead to scientific progress. For a genuine breakthrough, the reward would be a kind of immortality.

--The News Journal June 2, 1996

It's too bad more editors and news directors didn't have Caplan's list in front of them before they exercised their news judgment on the cloning story.

It's not too late to post them.

Elsewhere in this webspace, Dr. Ink has sparked a flurry of debate on the topic of deadline. It was prompted by a lively discussion among newscoaches. There's little disagreement that a field called "history in a hurry" demands timely production. But achieving that goal is incredibly difficult. Writers and editors coping with the demands of the ticking clock need a new way of looking at the deadline--the writer's greatest nemesis and ally.

The problem lies in the part of speech--singular noun. As anyone who has ever written a story knows, the process is not a mad unbroken sprint to a finish line. Meeting the demands of journalism--from the exigencies of production to the need for stories that are accurate, fair and compelling--means jumping a series of hurdles, each of which presents its own challenges and time demands.

My suggestion: Simply add an s to the word. In another of those delicious paradoxes that make writing such a continually challenging and rewarding activity, we see the writing task not as one of making a deadline but rather a series of deadlines that every piece of writing requires.

Rethinking the Deadline

Instead of one deadline, imagine a cascade of them that occur during every step of the process of reporting and writing a story. Beside each one estimate the time you will--or can--take to complete each one. Some obviously take more time, but there isn't an assignment that won't involve these actions whether you have 90 minutes or two months to complete.

IDEA DEADLINES
1. Discuss story idea
2. Write a budget line--3-4 sentences that sum up the best possible outcome. (Remember this is a draft, written in sand not concrete.)

REPORTING DEADLINES
3. List sources--people, records
4. Prepare and conduct interviews
5. Locate records, other documentation

COLLABORATION DEADLINES
6. Discuss story with your visual journalism colleagues. (Photojournalist, graphic artist, designer)

FOCUSING DEADLINES
7. Focus the story
8. Answer focusing questions that will help you answer the essential questions that an effective story addresses
9. Draft a nut graf

More resources

Deadline tips from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Self-editing for TV reporters by Deborah Potter Helping Reporters Make Deadline: A NewsCoaches Discussion Conquering deadline writing Compiled by Laurie Hertzel Writing Clearly on Deadline by Steve Buttry

ORDERING DEADLINES
10. Devise an order for your story
11. List elements in five boxes

DRAFTING DEADLINES
12. Write a discovery draft, written without notes
13. Read and respond to that draft
14. Make the changes in that draft
15. Deliver a draft to your editor
16. Listen to your editor's response

REVISION DEADLINES
17. Read story aloud, noting good, bad, ugly: bumps, errors, strong points, mispellings, etc.
18. Make changes
19. Fact-check
20. Spell-check
21. Deliver story

For many writers, the problem isn't making the deadline as much as it is being blind to the reality that a story involves multiple deadlines within the process of reporting and writing. Whether you're a reporter trying to beat a deadline or an editor grappling with late copy, the simplest solution may be one that seems the toughest. But that's the life we've chosen.

So line up the hurdles that stand between you and the finish line.

On Your Mark.
Get Set.
Go!

What does it take to be a great beat reporter?

The best beat reporters I've known are well-organized, determined, with a clear sense of mission and a wide range of sources. They are constantly reading about the beat and striving to learn new things. They are well-versed in the language, issues and events that matter. They are judged by the breadth of their knowledge and their success at communicating the important stories on their beats.

More Resources

Upcoming Seminar: Covering the Beat (Jan. 6 deadline) Turn the Beat Around by Diana K. Sugg The Baltimore Sun

Beat reporters in the Knight Ridder Washington bureau faced a difficult challenge when I worked there in the early 1990s. We weren't on the top rung of the newsgathering ladder. 

"People here aren't going to answer your calls first," I remember news editor Bob Shaw telling me. "At the end of the day, there may be a stack of messages from reporters. By the time they've finished calling The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the networks, it's time for them to go home. So how do we get the stories, the information, the access we need?"

Reporters handled it differently, Shaw said. 

Owen Ullman and Ellen Warren, the White House reporters, did it with persistence by demanding that officials treat them with the same respect as more high-profile competitors. 

Ricardo Alonzo Zaldivar, Charles Green and David Hess did it in Congress by being everywhere, from committee hearings and bill markups to news conferences, and by talking to as many people as they could. 

Mark Thompson at the Pentagon and investigative reporter Frank Greve did it by knowing the turf so well that often their sources wanted to talk with them to find out what they knew.

Probably the hardest part of being a beat reporter is staying on top of things and dealing with sources you have to return to every day even if you've written a story they don't like. Unlike other journalists, beat reporters every day face the challenge of encountering sources who may not be pleased with their reporting. That experience, although sometimes painful, helps instill the quality of persistence that defines good reporters. 

That's a lesson George Judson learned early in his career. Judson's first job in newspapers had been in rewrite, turning other people's reporting into stories. Years later when he went to work as a reporter at The Hartford Courant in Connecticut, he saw what he had missed. At the Hartford paper, newcomers at the paper were assigned to cover a specific town — everything from police and fire news to zoning commission meetings.

"What they were learning (and that I was not learning as a rewrite man) is that they had to go back to the same people day after day and develop relationships that got beyond the superficial, to find out what was going on that wasn't quite public," Judson recalled in My First Year as a Journalist, a collection of insightful memoirs by reporters and editors looking back at the lessons of their first year. "They had to learn to be better reporters than I was required to be."

Beat reporting takes courage, discipline and judgment, knowing which story has to be written today and which can be put off. It requires teamwork with an editor and other reporters. Working quickly: getting to sources and obtaining information and then writing on deadline stories that give the news and why it matters. Not getting into a rut.

Some reporters take a limited view of their beat. The city hall reporter haunts the corridors of power but rarely visits the neighborhoods where the decisions take effect. The police reporter shoots the bull with the desk sergeant but spends little time talking with victims or suspects. Beat reporters get comfortable with their sources, the jargon and the process, forgetting who they're working for.

Defining your beat is crucial, says Jane Mayer, who covered the White House for The Wall Street Journal and is now a staff writer for the New Yorker. "Beats can be constricting," Mayer says in "Speaking of Journalism: 12 Writers and Editors Talk About Their Work." She says, "Some people think that if you cover city hall you should never talk to anyone outside city hall. But I urge anybody whose job is to cover a narrow assignment to interview everyone who touches your beat."

Mayer's suggestions for broadening your beat include: 

"Interview the caterers who come in with the food, interview the photographers who take the pictures. Talk to relatives. Talk to officials who come in contact with the person you're covering. Those things can lead to wonderful stories, and generally people who are on the periphery are looser with the details than those working directly for the person you're covering." 

Covering a beat isn't easy. For me, schmoozing was probably the toughest part. You often feel like an alien, especially during your first days on the job. You have to acknowledge your ignorance and learn the language, learn the process, learn the people. The best reporters know how the world works, whether it's the world of law enforcement, the laboratory or the corporate boardroom. That takes time, dedication, discipline and courage. Beat reporting demands a wide range of skills, talents, attitudes and work habits. Which ones do you think are most important?

[What does it take to be a great beat reporter?]

Whether or not a tape recorder is superior to note-taking by hand is one of the enduring newsroom debates.

But first, before the arguing begins, a little history:

On May 6, 1937, Herb Morrison, a reporter for a Chicago radio station, was in a New Jersey field recording the arrival of the German dirigible Hindenburg, using a primitive machine that recorded voices on a wire coated with a magnetic substance. When the hydrogen gas-filled metal-frame airship exploded in flames, killing 36 people, the reporter's emotion-filled narration became the first recorded material broadcast on a radio network, according to journalism historian Mitchell Stephens. In 1945, at the end of World War II, the victorious Allies discovered that the Germans had developed a machine that could record voices on a coated paper tape. That invention eventually replaced the wire recorder and led to the magnetic tape recorders used today. (Ed Ellers, whose knowledge of technological history outstrips mine, has posted a challenging comment, to which I've added a link featuring an account written by Jack Mullin who made the "discovery."

Before then, newspaper reporters could only scribble to record their observations, quotes and other information collected during their reporting. Many reporters today carry tape recorders as part of their basic reporting equipment.

"Without a tape recorder, you really can't capture the full emotional breadth of what people are saying to you," says Mitch Albom, the Detroit Free Press sports columnist. "When you're talking to a grieving family, the way they say things, sometimes even a small little sentence, or the way their voice trails off is very important to re-create the mood and the spirit."

In such sensitive reporting situations or when a verbatim transcript is essential, many reporters share Albom's fear: "I don't trust my penmanship to try to get it down." That fear of missing something important, especially in an electronic era when radio and television crews are recording news events, prompts many reporters to use the tape recorder as a backup to their handwritten notes. The advent of new media, and the convergence of news reporting technologies, also means that today's reporters may be asked to provide sound for their story.

Journalistic lore is rich with stories about reporters whose tape recorders failed or who couldn't take notes until after they had left the interview. In those cases, the reporters wrote down or dictated into a tape recorder everything they could remember from the interview. Reporters ask whether they can use verbatim quotes reconstructed from memory. Some reporters do it, but having used a tape recorder for much of my career I'm less likely to trust my memory. Bear in mind that working from memory is one of the most common causes of journalistic inaccuracy.

Mark Thompson, Time Magazines's Pentagon correspondent, Pulitzer Prize winner, and my former colleague in the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, makes this pro-taping argument:

"After nearly 30 years of reporting, I find that the key attribute of tape recording is rarely mentioned: When scribbling notes, one tends to be too busy transcribing instead of listening. The use of a recorder lets the reporter listen carefully to what his/her subject is saying and come up with far better follow-up questions than is possible while concentrating on getting Answer 1 right instead of coming up with Question 2."

I agree, although my principle reason for taping interviews is the abysmal quality of my note-taking and penmanship. Over the years, I've used a variety of tape recorders: Sony Walkman recorders, even an expensive minicassette model with a clip-on microphone that supposedly was standard issue at the Central Intelligence Agency. In August, when Catholic Digest assigned me to write a day-in-the-life profile of a parish priest who's a star on Spanish language television, I considered going high-tech and buying a mindisc recorder like the ones wielded by public radio journalists, but I wimped out and bought the latest in a series of inexpensive Radio Shack models that have always stood me in good stead.

It's not necessary to spend large amounts of money. Just make sure that whatever model you buy is equipped with a counter. That way if you hear something you know you may want to use, you can note the place on the counter and find it without having to listen to the whole tape. Remember to reset the counter to 000 when you turn the tape over or insert a new tape. The counter feature is especially important for broadcast and online journalists who need to locate quotes precisely.

Not everyone likes the tape recorder. "The machine, surprisingly, distorts the truth," argues Lillian Ross, a profile writer for The New Yorker. "The tape recorder is a fast and easy and lazy way of getting a lot of talk down ... A lot of talk does not in itself make an interview."

Ross and other critics say recorders encourage laziness in reporting.

Of course, reporters who don't want to use a tape recorder don't have to, although they often feel compelled to justify why using a machine for an interview is a bad idea. Tape recorders break, tapes and batteries run out, a siren goes by, drowning out all sound just as the subject whispers, "Yes, I did it. I embezzled the animal shelter's cash fund." Even if you get all the quotes, the tape still takes forever to transcribe. All these arguments are valid.

Still, even technology-averse reporters wish they had a tape recorder going during some interviews, especially when the pace is fast or the content compelling. It's estimated that even a speedy note-taker can get down only 25 to 30 words a minute, a fraction of the 100 words a minute of a normal conversation.

Matt Schudel, arts critic for the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., prefers a notebook, but when he interviewed Southern writer Reynolds Price for a magazine profile, he said "I was glad I had a tape recorder to convey the beauty of his spoken words." Even so, Schudel believes he listens more attentively when he takes notes. "I have to be an active listener. I ask better questions and participate more fully in the conversation."

Even tape recorder fans know better than to put all their notes in one medium, however. Albom notes that "I work with a notepad even with the tape recorder, because I don't trust technology."

It can be equally dangerous to trust the human ear. I once covered a speech by journalist and grammarian Edwin Newman along with a reporter for the local campus daily. I had a tape recorder. The student reporter, I assume, did not.

Compare the two versions of the same speech:

Recorded Version:

People like Edwin Newman because he makes them laugh. He does that by making fun of "the jargon, the mush, the smog, the dull pompous, boneless, gassy language" that afflicts the world today.

Unrecorded Version:

"We have no hope of dealing with things unless we dig ourselves out of the smog, the bog, the hash and the jargon. ..."

The bottom line: Smart reporters learn how to take accurate, detailed notes by hand and use the tape recorder in those instances when a verbatim record is valued (such as press conferences or other events where electronic media are present). As a 21st-century journalist, you may also be required to collect audio to post on your website.

[Do you use a tape recorder? Why or why not?]

What's the Story Really About?
A filmmaker uses focus to find the heart of "Nicholas Nickelby"
 
Focus can affect all the decisions a writer makes -- from the reporting to the revision. 

Online Reslurces

The Process Approach to Reporting and Writing Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page "On the Art of Writing" Sir Arthur Quiller Couch

Douglas McGrath, a writer and director, confirmed that principle in his description of the process that turned "Nicholas Nickelby," Charles Dickens' third novel, into a new film. He tells the story in a detailed piece in Sunday's New York Times that recounts the thinking process behind the film -- a series of carefully-made decisions on everything from color to props.

McGrath accepts the widely-held view that "Nickelby," the tale of a penniless young man's struggles to reunite his family, published in 1839, is not one of Dickens' best novels. "For all the novel's many glories," he says, "its meandering structure can sometimes diffuse a reader's interest, and there are indisputable longueurs and lapses of pace."

How many of us can look at a draft of one of our stories (or worse yet a published version) and make that same criticism? Since the best stories reflect an overabundance of reporting and an overappreciation of anything the writer has drafted, story bloat is a common weakness. Putting your story on a diet is one of the most painful remedies writers face. 

McGrath found that weakness a helpful ally as he struggled to turn a 879-page novel into a 108-minute feature film. (Want to read the book? Project Gutenberg offers a free electronic version.)

"But paradoxically, in being one of his lesser novels, Nicholas Nickleby is in some ways better suited to film than his superior novels," says McGrath. "Because the structure is so loose and so many of the vignettes are not closely tied to the main adventure, deciding what to eliminate is not impossible."

The key for McGrath was focus, theme, what scriptwriters call the story arc or touchstone. Whatever it's called it's the essence of the story -- what the story is really about:

"Despite its title, the novel 'Nicholas Nickleby' is about all the Nicklebys: Nicholas; his mother; his sister, Kate; and his uncle, Ralph. The most gripping and engaging of the stories is Nicholas's struggle to find security and happiness for his mother, his sister and himself, while Ralph seeks to separate and then crush the family."

Once that was settled, then the writer had it relatively easy. He had a benchmark by which to choose: "I decided to retain or eliminate each element of the novel based on its relevance to that story."

The lesson for journalists, scriptwriters, anyone trying to write is clear: You have to decide what your story is about. Then, no matter what the genre, all the decisions that follow are clear.

When ignored focus can damage a story. 

McGrath believes that was the problem with an earlier film version of Nicholas Nickelby, the 1948 movie by Alberto Cavalcanti. A sterling cast and striking design draw you in quickly.

"But almost as quickly," McGrath says, "you realize that you don't feel much for anyone — a surprising response to a Dickens piece. Whether out of affection or lack of nerve — people get very touchy when you play with a novel they love — Cavalcanti seems loath to part with Dickens's characters, even when they don't bear directly on the story. But keeping so many characters and incidents means that scenes have to be rushed through. The movie feels like a trip through Nicholas Nickleby Land on a very fast monorail. Look, it's the Mantalinis! Hey, there went the Kenwigses! Whoa, wasn't that Peg Sliderskew?"

"Whether out of affection or lack of nerve." 

Love for your prose can be a dangerous thing. That's why the quote "Murder your darlings" is so apt. (Often misattributed, it was Sir Arthur Quiller Couch, an English critic, who offered the advice in a 1914 lecture.) Over the years, I've learned that the phrases, sections, scenes that I am most fond of invariably improve a story once they're removed. (I wish I knew why.)

But failure of nerve -- courage -- may be the major reason why writers find it so hard to focus. What if I get it wrong? I can't decide!! It's about so many things! (Can you hear the whine?) 
    
Tough. It can't be. An efffective piece of writing has a single dominant meaning -- a spine, a tow rope that pulls the reader through the churning waters of a story.

Unlike Cavalcanti, McGrath bit the bullet. "I chose to have fewer characters but to give them more time to develop, in a way that would, I hoped, deepen the audience's connection to them."

That's what a writer wants and needs. Connection.

Take a look at one of your stories. Decide what the story is about -- really about. Boil the essence down to a word, a phrase. Then use that as the yardstick to measure the entire piece and make the tough cuts that may need to be made.