The station house, like so many others in New York City, became, in the days after, something of a shrine. The names and photos of the men who died were posted near the door. People, strangers mostly, still come by to leave flowers, notes, and cards there. -- from "Firehouse" by David Halberstam
After 50 years of bylines, David Halberstam says he still has "fun being paid to learn." The Pulitzer Prize winner and author of 19 books made a point echoed by several speakers at the sixth annual Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism: if you're not a passionate reader and don't enjoy legwork as much as writing, your stories won't come alive.
Nearly 1,000 reporters, freelancers, editors, and publishers from every state and 20 countries braved fierce snow storms to polish -- in conference director Mark Kramer's words -- "the craft of human-scale reporting."
Halberstam told them, "You're sustaining quality in journalism in an age rather inhospitable to it." And underscoring good reporters' continued dedication to quality were Pulitzer-winning feature writers Madeleine Blais (
Miami Herald) and Lisa Pollak (
Baltimore Sun), participants at previous conferences but here this year just to listen.
Many of the 49 prominent speakers reminded everyone to blend inspiration with digging, savor the unexpected angle, enjoy learning, and always make sure your readers know how you got the story.
Kramer, writer-in-residence at Harvard's Nieman Foundation, has contended that such narrative touches as scene setting, dialogue, and sensory description can improve every article in the paper. And Prize-winning Wall Street Journal reporter Barry Newman -- known for his short, witty features -- said you can create "scenes" in routine stories by observing your subject in conversation with someone else.
"Narrative has made us think a lot more about how we reach readers," said Jack Hart, managing editor of the Oregonian, a co-sponsor of the conference with the Nieman Foundation, The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, The Boston Globe, and the Harvard Book Store. "The narrative renaissance is part of the general renaissance of newspapers to maintain circulation."
A recent study by Northwestern University's Readership Institute finds that unique, high-quality content, connection with writers, and stories that are hard to put down rank high among the motivations for buying the paper.
Halberstam, who made his reputation as a New York Times Vietnam correspondent, has been a role model for the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, and has written books on everything from foreign policy to baseball, said reporters who don't "have fun" won't make it in the profession.
Among his tips:
- Always keep in touch with sources. He's tapped decades-old acquaintances for new projects.
- Your most important question comes at the end of each interview: "Who else should I talk to?" The more people you contact, the best anecdotes you can choose from. He said he can spot an article that lacks reporting "density" -- when the author "cheats, and does a two phone call story."
- "You should spend as much time reading as writing, or you'll never get over the high jump bar (to better prose). Read very good papers," like the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New York, St. Petersburg, and Los Angeles Times.
- "Break the code of the writers you admire. Try to find out what they did."
- "You should read at least a book a week, fiction and non-fiction," adding that detective novels tend to have the best structure.
- "Your language has to suit the occasion. Don't hype up in the wake of tragedy." He made sure to "underwrite" "Firehouse," his book-length study of a ladder company destroyed by 9-11. In general, he dislikes adjectives, and doesn't want his prose to seem too "writerly."
Of course, "writerly" fly-on-the-wall narratives telling how someone "felt" can trigger readers' skepticism, making them wonder "How did the reporter know that?"
Hart, who has edited two Pulitzer Prize-winning stories and contributed to a third, acknowledged this problem. He noted that journalism's recent scandals center around plagiarism and invention, not narrative. Nevertheless, he said narrative writers are "rightly subject to more suspicion ... The narrative form ups the ethical ante and it's easy to slip and hide lapses."
Hart's formula for guaranteeing narrative accuracy includes carefully organized notes, tapes and other background material, double checking with sources, and "prosecutorial editing" -- constantly asking reporters, "How do we know this?"
* * *
"The boy does not understand. His mother is not talking to him. She will not even look at him. Enrique has no hint of what she is going to do. Lourdes knows. She understands, as only a mother can, the terror she is about to inflict, the ache Enrique will feel and finally the emptiness." -- "Enrique's Journey" by Sonia Nazario,
Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times special projects reporter Sonia Nazario's "fly on the wall" series on a Honduran boy's struggle to find his mother brought her this year's feature-writing Pulitzer -- and some ethical dilemmas.
She said that following the trail of "at risk" people, such as migrant workers and illegal immigrants, produces compelling journalism but raises questions about if and when to intervene.
"A story has to convey reality," she declared. "You can't change things, and I tell (my subjects) my rules upfront: 'I can't help you.'"
But she will step in if someone she's covering "is faced with imminent danger or would suffer irreparable harm. Only you know where that line is."
As examples, she said she wouldn't share her blanket with Enrique, or give him money to make a crucial phone call. But she did alert authorities to a young rape victim's continued peril.
Rick Meyer, her editor on the series and himself a Pulitzer feature writing finalist, also faced a complex problem -- how to assure readers that Enrique's saga was scrupulously accurate without slowing it with traditional attribution.
Sonia Nazario said that following the trail of "at risk" people ... produces compelling journalism but raises questions about if and when to intervene. |
"We wanted readers to have it both ways -- a lickety-split narrative uncluttered by 'he said' while letting them see exactly how we got this stuff." He said he and colleagues decided on extensive endnotes showing the sources for every scene.
Initially skeptical about the need for such elaborate efforts to reassure readers, Meyer said he changed his mind after the Jayson Blair scandal erupted.
Meyer said he was shocked to find that many people Blair had falsely claimed to have interviewed thought that was how reporters usually operate. "We have more of a credibility problem than we're willing to recognize," he said.
Jacqui Banaszynski, Seattle Times associate managing editor, made a similar point. The Pulitzer-winning feature writer called narrative journalism more difficult than investigative reporting.
"It's harder to watch a baby die" than to confront a corrupt official. "This is not 'soft' news and we need to write and edit with the same rigor as investigative reporters (with) line-by-line documentation. Show (readers) our tricks and take this as seriously as investigative reporting."
She urged newspeople to think like readers, not like journalists. Don't always do the cliché interview, like cops at a crime scene, for example. Instead, ask the random layman's question.
After a Sikh cabby was attacked by someone screaming about Islamic fundamentalists in the wake of 9-11, for example, a Seattle Times editor's simple query, "What is it with turbans, anyway?" led to a richly-illustrated and well-received 75-inch story about how different kinds of turbans reflected varied backgrounds.
She called radio talk shows a good way to identify topics on peoples' minds -- topics that can sometimes develop into "trend" stories.
She warned against relegating such widely-discussed subjects to the feature section. Since readers don't put stories into "news" or "feature" categories, why do we, Banaszynski wonders. She described an editor who deemed the ongoing debate over the risk and benefits of Hormone Replacement Therapy a feature story, not a news story.
* * *
"Afternoons with the Allens smell like infield dirt and freshly mowed grass." "What a Lineup" by Lane DeGregory, St. Petersburg Times.
While Halberstam emphasized the "importance of searching for the nobility of ordinary people," these are the only ones St. Petersburg Times feature writer Lane DeGregory likes to cover.
Lane DeGregory is "always on duty" in search of the unique, the bizarre, or sometimes the sad experiences of everyday folks. |
DeGregory, whose work has won several national awards, is "always on duty" in search of the unique, the bizarre, or sometimes the sad experiences of everyday folks.
Lunch counter eavesdropping, scanning classified ads and laundromat notices, and following billboards off the freeway have produced pieces about a bachelor seeking true love in a sub shop, an egg deliveryman who listens to his dead wife's songs, and a fur bikini maker.
She profiles "people behind the important people." Instead of going backstage with a rock group, she hung out with their bus driver, who had some fascinating stories to tell. Assigned a routine Miss Florida pageant feature, she focused on a fellow whose self-assigned mission is to prepare the contestants.
Chatting with everyone, sometimes with her young children in tow, has led her to: a gravedigger's tip that a man was going to be buried in a coffee pot, a man who arranges monster truck mud bog trips, and a couple who married on a carnival midway.
"Don't be a snob," she stressed. "No story is not worthy of you. There's always a new way to tell it." DeGregory, who tries for "conversations, not interviews," told reporters to "invite yourself over" to your subjects' house. "Be there when they decorate the Christmas tree. Be there with them in their space and vacuum up the details, like CDs and old photo albums -- details you'd never think to ask on interviews."
* * *
"Willie was a dark frog, in his way; he was young, and exquisitely muscled, in the upper leg, where it mattered, but the competition was savage and his jockey was just a kid." The lead of "Jumping Frogs" by Cynthia Gorney
Gorney, an American Society of Newspaper Editors' feature award winner and associate dean at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism, once called "compulsive reading" a vital ingredient of reporting success.
"You have to have know five times as much as you're ever going to use in the story. The only really essential quality of a writer is crazed curiosity. (You should be) passionately interested in everything."
She keeps long assignments focused by acknowledging that "you're not going to be an expert." Always ask, "Where's the action?" and "obsessively repeat the mantra W.M.S. - 'What's my story?'"
Gorney underscored her point with an example from her New York Times Magazine story on knee surgery. Since "I wanted to show how smart I was," her research included veterinarians and resulted in a manuscript twice as long as the assigned length. So now, her motto for not going off track is
"No dog's knees!"
On extended projects, she recommends constantly doing a "budget line. If you can't articulate what the story is about in two or three sentences, you have a problem." Another way to keep focus: "Tell an uninterested person what you're working on."
Her trick to avoid writer's block: stop in mid-sentence. "It's a magic boot in the behind" to keep going the next time you sit down at the keyboard.
* * *
"She remembers the sting of the switch beating out the rhythm of her father's words against her bare legs." "A Good Whuppin'" by DeNeen L. Brown, Washington Post.
DeNeen L. Brown, Washington Post Canada bureau chief and an American Society of Newspaper Editors' award winner for non-deadline writing, told listeners to think of themselves as storytellers, without obsessing over the nut graph or the 5 Ws. "Tension brings the reader into the story," she said. Use the "English 101" devices of conflict, drama, and personality to show how subjects reveal themselves.
She said a lead should enter your subject's thoughts and establish an "intimate relation with the reader. You're really saying: Sit down and listen to me."
