A note about these transcripts: In the spirit of extending the reach of the conference as much as possible, we’re making available these lightly edited transcripts to journalists interested in pursuing issues covered in the discussions and presentations at Poynter. The transcriber did her best to capture as much of the proceedings as possible, as accurately as possible, but you should be aware of the limitations: participants speaking out of range of microphones, people talking at the same time, etc. In brief, we’d ask you to use these transcripts to help guide your planning, but please do not quote directly from them for publication without confirming the contents with the speaker.
Introduction: The reason I like Chip is that he likes to talk about things that scare people and whether that’s taking on a new beat, dropping into a foreign country or whatever that is. So, when I’m taking on a new project, I often stop into Chip’s office and get a little coaching. Like me, like you, we all do things that frighten us for one reason or another, and Chip simply walks ahead and does it. We all do that as well. I think that the place where Chip, at least, pulls away from my experience is that he manages to figure out a system of how to deal with new, unpredictable, frightening circumstances. So I am always looking for system tips from Chip. So, I’ll turn you over to Chip, who has been at Poynter now almost ten years. He ran the writing program for about seven years. Most recently, he runs the National Writers’ Workshop. He’s senior faculty in the writing/reporting faculty. Chip.
Chip Scanlan — We’re going to spend the next hour-and-a-half together and I will do my best not to sit up here, stand up here, wander out here, and talk about myself completely. I always feel like it’s important to give this disclaimer: At my last job before I came to Poynter and the experience that I’m going to describe to you occurred, I was a national correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers in Washington, DC. And before that I spent some time as a feature writer for The St. Petersburg Times, and before that I spent eight years at the Providence Journal in Rhode Island. But I always like to point out that my career began in 1972—I was five years old, if you were wondering how old I was. It began in 1972 at The Milford Citizen. I see the impressed nods of recognition. “Oh, The Milford Citizen, you mean the one in New Haven?” Yes, outside New Haven, Connecticut. Yes, that’s the one. Six thousand daily, 7,200 circulation on Sunday.
I was Police/Fire/Conservation Commission reporter and The Milford Citizen was known fondly around town as the Shitizen. Now the advantage, of course, of starting at a paper called the Shitizen is that everything is uphill after that. I basically divide my career between the papers without elevators and those with elevators. One of the things about my early years as a reporter is I had no idea what I was doing. Really, none. When I compare that to the one and only time I did some overseas reporting, I’m struck by the similarity. I had no idea what I was doing. I’d like to talk a bit about that experience with you, share some of the lessons, and use that as an entry point into discussing what I think is probably the most important of the writing process, whether you are doing overseas reporting, whether you are trying to find overseas news in a wire report streaming into your newsroom or not, or—and I would argue—whatever story you are working on.
As a reporter, I never really went anywhere, it occurred to me the other day. Well, that’s not true. I would drive from the newspaper office to the School Board meeting or to the Board of Zoning, Review and Appeals meeting. You know, I might leave and drive or I might walk to the police station, but I never went all that far afield as a reporter. Maybe I’d go into the country to do a story about drought and farmers. I never went overseas. I was a reporter for 22 years and only once did I go overseas for a foreign story. What strikes me is that it puts me in a league with some of you who haven’t done this yet and are hoping to do it. I feel the kinship with those—and I was looking at a story, very impressive—with those of you who have done this but it’s not your normal beat, and I want to tell you about the only time I ever did it and the ups and downs of that experience, if you will. This was about in 1989. By then, I’m ten years old, if you’re keeping track of how old I am.
I’m working at the national bureau of Knight-Ridder Newspapers and the bureau was divided—it had about 50 reporters—and more than half of them were Washington correspondents for the local paper. The Philadelphia Inquirer had two or three reporters—big paper. There was one reporter who filed Washington news for Duluth, Minnesota, Grand Forks and Aberdeen, South Dakota. There were about 15 of us that were on the national staff. We covered stories for all the papers. In that way, we weren’t really connected with the paper, so, in a way, nobody had to run our stories. So the challenge was how do you connect with people? How do you write stories? The audience was very skeptical, demanding, and it was outside of Washington. In a way, it was almost like covering a foreign country for the rest of the world who either didn’t get it, didn’t care, weren’t that interested, had lots of stuff in their own lives in their own communities.
One of the things that we used to do at the Knight-Ridder office was have lunches with newsmakers. One day, Louis Sullivan, MD, head of Health and Human Services, came. We would have lunch with these folks and we would pepper them with questions. At the time, one of the questions we asked was…he was really working hard to help America kick its cigarette smoking, its tobacco habit. But at the time, we had become aware that even thought the federal government was pushing hard to get American smokers to quit, they actually were making it extremely easy for American companies to sell the products overseas and to do the kind of promotional activities that they would never do in this country. I believe, in Hong Kong, if you brought in five or six Camel box tops, you got a ticket to a concert. So we were really struck as he danced around that question and really didn’t give a good answer. “Well, why was it okay to push tobacco on foreign people but not okay in America?” He really didn’t have a good answer because he had a problem. That was the administration line. That was the Commerce Department.
So we came out of the meeting and Clark Hoyt—who was the bureau chief—said, “You know, I wonder if there are other examples of us doing this. In effect, exporting our hazard.” I was in that conversation around the news desk He said, “Why don’t you find out, Chip?” Well, as a reporter, I loved any excuse to go on a project. Project means lots of time, maybe lots of space, and many days to avoid appearing in the paper and revealing what an incompetent you are. We’ll talk later about a new definition of ‘project.’ What does ‘project’ mean in your newsroom?
Response: Pretty much that.
Pretty much that? Lot of time? Lot of space? Any other definitions of ‘project’ where you are? Is that basically it? A way to disappear? “What are you doing?” “Uh, a project.”
So I started on this project and I began researching and reporting. And, of course, in Washington, pick a topic at 8:00 in the morning. By 10:00 a.m., your desk will be covered with paper. Millions of activists, advocacy groups, Senate and House staffers, people whose job it is to generate rhetoric, statistics, arguments pro and con. Someone said before I got there, “You’ve got to remember something about Washington. Nothing happens in Washington. It happens everywhere else; they just come to Washington to fight about it.” Okay. So after a few months…my beat, at the time, was social issues so this was kind of up my alley so I’m working on this and continuing to cover my beat as well as I can. I’m on a project; I can’t cover every story, right?
I identified some targets. Pesticides. Gee, it turns out American multinationals sell pesticides in developing countries where the rules for their sale and use are lax if not non-existent. Okay. Pharmaceuticals. Gee, it turns out that American multinationals sell drugs overseas with little of the controls and lots of the marketing that they didn’t do here at the time. Hazardous wastes. Gee, we sent it to Canada. Thanks so much.
I do all this reporting but something is missing from the story. What was missing from this story? People. Exactly. People. Real people, as we call them. People whose lives were affected by this. And so, it’s decided or agreed that I will go to some of these places. Now, of course, I pitch really hard. I pitched, “I’ve got to go to Pakistan to do the anti-diarrheal story, anti-diarrheal medicine story.” Johnson and Johnson, among other companies, sell anti-diarrheal medicines and their big market in this country is adults. That’s the market for Imodium. But in the developing world, who do you think the big market for anti-diarrheals is? Children. Yes. Exactly. Little kids with diarrhea. Of course, lots of diarrhea in those countries. Inadequate water, sewage. But the problem with anti-diarrheal medicines is that in the Third World, the developing world, they weren’t mindful of what we know here, that you don’t treat an infant, a baby, with an anti-diarrheal medicine. Basically, you keep them hydrated. That’s all you need to do. Just give them fluids until it stops.
But over there, they were pushing Imodium in Pakistan and kids were dying. That’s what the people in Washington said, that kids were dying, and they were up in arms about this. And we were selling pesticides in places like Costa Rica, Central America and people were being injured and dying as a result. We were pitching our hazardous wastes over to Canada. We were pitching our cigarettes in ways that we would never do in this country in Hong Kong. So naturally, I said, “I’ve got to go to Pakistan. I’ve got to go to Hong Kong. I’ve got to go to Costa Rica. I’ve got to go to Mexico.” What do you think the answer was?
Response: No.
No, but you’re close, Winston. Think about it. Ron?
Response: Pick one.
Pick one. Very good. You’re not an editor, are you? Pick one. Actually, they were a little more generous. So Pakistan, Hong Kong, Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica. What do you think they said?
Response: Canada is not too expensive.
Canada is not too expensive. Sure. What the heck? “You can walk there from Washington. We’ll give you mileage.” What do you think they said? “Forget it. You are not going there. It’s too expensive.”
Response: Pakistan.
Of course, Pakistan and Hong Kong. But they said, “All right, I’ll tell you what. Mexico and Costa Rica.” You know, there was a budget crunch. And so it was decided that I would go to Canada and talk to people about hazardous waste exports there and I would go to Mexico and look for people who were affected by the sale of pharmaceuticals. And I would go to Costa Rica and do the pesticide story. And, I guess I had my passport so I was ready. Does anybody have a sense of the emotion I felt at the time prior to leaving? Take a guess. Why don’t you write down what emotion you think I felt? Just write down one word, what emotion you think I felt.
Response: Was that before or after 9/11?
Oh no. This was in 1990. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What did you write?
Response: Excited.
Excited. Okay. How many exciteds? Okay. Good. Good.
Response: Does yeehaw count?
Yeehaw? Yes, it does count. Okay. Any others? Rich, what did you write down?
Response: Anxious.
Anxious. Okay. Good. Any anxious here? Just two anxious? Well, come one, what else have we got?
Response: Confident.
Confident. Oh good.
Response: Glee.
Glee. Panic. You’re close. Fear. Any fears or panics? Please, fear or panic? Okay, that’s what I want to see. All right. I need two words. I was scared shitless. Okay. I was always scared as a reporter. I was scared from the first day I walked into the Milford Police Department for The Citizen and I was scared the last day walking into the National Press Building. Would I get the story? Did I have a story? If I didn’t have a story, would I get a story? What if they came out of the meeting? They always look like Scuds coming out of that news meeting, you know, those editors coming out of the news meeting. “I hope they don’t land on my desk. Oh, please.” Could I get the story? Would people talk to me? Could I write down what they said fast enough? Would I write it down accurately? Could I make the deadline? Could I write a good lead? Could I turn it in on time? Would it be accurate? Would they ask me a question I didn’t have the answer to because I’ve been too stupid or afraid to ask it? Not wanting to look stupid. And then, of course, all the way to leaving. I’ve got through it; I’ve turned it in; it’s been edited; good job (the editor lied); I walked out the door.
I walked in the door and the phone rings. “I’m not home. I’m not home yet.” “Daddy, it’s the desk.” “I’m not home.” All the way to 2:00 in the morning, you wake up bolt upright—”His middle initial was ‘C.’” I hope some of you feel this kind of thing. Yes? Okay. Thank you. I always think I’m the only coward in the journalism business. No. I was terrified. I was already homesick and I hadn’t even left yet.
I had no idea what to do so I called Mark Patinkin, my friend. Mark Patinkin—we spent several years together at the Providence Journal—had made a sub-career of doing this kind of stuff. In the early eighties, he went to Africa and did one of the first famine stories from there. He did a great job. And then every couple of years would pack his bags and go someplace. In effect, parachuting in. He wasn’t a foreign correspondent; he was a Metro columnist for the Providence Journal. He did a series about religious strife. He went to Beirut and he went to Northern Ireland. He did a couple of these stories. So I called him up and said, “Mark, what is your single best piece of advice for me?” I told him what I was doing. They had given me a week in Central America and Mexico.
“Okay, Chip, the budget is tight. You’re not going to Pakistan. You’re not going to Hong Kong. You get to go to Mexico and Costa Rica. You’ve got a week. That’s it.”
So I said, “Here’s the deal. I’ve got a week and I’ve got to find these people. You know, I’ve got all the rhetoric; I need proof; I need evidence. I need to prove that this is actually happening. Okay, it’s anecdotal but I need some anecdotal evidence.”
Mark says, “Look, you’re not going to have much time. You’re going to be in a place you’ve never been. It’s going to be confusing. You’re going to be jet-lagged, struggling with language difference.” Those of you who have done these stories, is that right? Absolutely. Right, Mary? You’re tired; you don’t know where you are; you don’t speak the language; you probably don’t feel all that good either, right? Not the first couple of days.
And Mark says, “You’ve got to remember one thing. Find the heart of the story. Find the heart of the story and don’t let yourself be distracted by anything else. Everybody is going to want a piece of you. They’re going to want to meet you. They’re going to want to show you their village. They’re going to want you to come for a meal. They’re going to want you to meet this minister or that minister, or this chief. But you’ve only got time for one thing.” And the thing about doing a story overseas, if you’re not a foreign correspondent and just going over there to bring back a story to report the world home, is you can’t go back. You can’t say, “Well, I’ll go back next week. I forgot something.” Most places you can’t pick up the phone and call up and there’s no PR flack. You know what I’m talking about? You can’t. So you’ve got to get it all before you leave there. And you have to decide—before you go even—what’s the heart of that story in all its anatomical, poetic, metaphorical meanings? The beating heart, the center of the story. And for me, the center of the story was people who have been harmed by this behavior by multinational corporations.
I mean, it didn’t really matter if people weren’t being harmed, I felt, my editors felt. We needed, as Winston said, to be able to put a face on the story. Okay, so ringing in my head, find the heart of the story. And I leave and I fly to Mexico. I need to find some kids who have taken American anti-diarrheals and have been sickened or died as a result. I get there and I’m just, as Meredith said, I’m scared; I’m discombobulated. The day after I get there—maybe the same day—I go to the hospital. You know, I’ve identified places the way you have done before you went there for these stories. You’ve identified sources and places to go and people to see. So I go to this hospital and I’m kind of hanging out hoping. The advocates are giving me the sense that these kids are all over the place. “Look towards the hospital and you’ll stumble over them.” Well, it wasn’t working that way. So, I spent a whole day of watching the treatment of kids with diarrhea. I went to the pharmacies. I bought the medicines that, at the time, you needed a prescription for in the US. And I was coming up with nothing. I didn’t have the heart of my story. I had a really good source—a doctor, a pediatrician—who said he would help me; he would find one for me. Thank you, Doctor.
He said, “You know what? It’s lunchtime. Let’s go to lunch. In fact, come with me to my family’s house for lunch.” “Uh, okay, sure. I’ll come to lunch. I’ve got to eat, right?” So he takes me to his house and for the next three hours I have this wonderful introduction to middle-class Mexican life. All the adult children have converged on their parents’ house—they ate lunch together every day, the doctor, the lawyer, the professor—and it was great. I’m sitting there and the food is fantastic; the conversation is great; they’re telling me stuff, teaching me stuff about Mexico and Mexican history and culture. I’m beginning to worry a bit, but that’s okay.
Then he says, “Let’s go. You know, you need to see Mexico City. I’m going to take you on a tour.” “Uh, well, Doctor, we’re looking for that kid.” Well okay, so he takes me on a tour—a wonderful tour—a native’s tour of Mexico City, through all the neighborhoods and parts of the city. He takes me up to the lungs of Mexico City, to the forest above Mexico City that have these giant trees that are the lungs and do the breathing for Mexico City. He also showed me poachers who are harvesting the trees and, in effect, killing the lungs of Mexico City. That’s fascinating stuff, isn’t it? I’m filling my notebook with this stuff because, man, this is really interesting. And then we finish this tour and he says, “You know what? Let’s stop at my friend, the medical publisher.” This time, I think ‘medical publisher,’ okay, that’s going to fit my story. Maybe he’ll have something for it. So we stop at the medical publisher’s office and we talk and he shows me his magazines. They’re beautiful magazines, glossy magazines, about doctors and drug companies. I’m taking some notes but I’m screwed.
The clock is ticking and I’ve got…I think I have one more day there. I had like three days in each place, with travel time. I didn’t know what I was doing. Basically, I asked my boss, “Will you fund a six-month tour, a cook’s tour of the developing world?” “No, we won’t.” “Okay, how about three days here, three days there?” “Okay, we’ll do that.” And so the next day, I still don’t have the heart of my story. I don’t have…I’ve got kids with diarrhea and diarrhea problems caused by their parents giving them Imodium…not Imodium, no, damn it all, some Mexican product. This was no help. I’m screwed. The doctor says, “We’re going to keep looking.” And I go back to the hospital and…nothing. I got nothing. I got nothing. I’ve got to leave. My plane is leaving for Costa Rica. So, I’m getting my stuff together and the phone rings in my hotel room.
It’s the doctor and he says, “I think I’ve found a case.”
“You think you found a case?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it a kid?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Harmed?”
“The kid’s dead.”
“Really? Was it the American anti-diarrheal product?”
“Yeah. We believe it was.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, not completely sure, but that’s what I’m hearing from the social worker. I think it is.”
Now, I’ve already been down this road a couple of times and it turned out it wasn’t, so I called the desk. Now, I told you I’m going to try to convey some lessons. First lesson when you are overseas, don’t call the desk! Don’t call the desk. Because when I called the desk and asked, “Here’s the deal. I need to stay a couple of days.” What do you think the desk said?
Response: No.
“No. Chip, look, you’ve got a schedule. We’ve got to do this. We can’t stretch it out.”
And I was an idiot. First, I called the desk. Second, I listened to the desk. So I guess that’s two lessons. Don’t call the desk and if you do don’t listen to them. Like a fool, I left for the airport. And, man, I still remember sitting in the back of that cab on the way to the Mexico City airport and the knot in my stomach. If I could have animated what was going on inside my psyche, you would have seen me beating myself, literally beating myself up. “You stupid idiot. What did Patinkin say? Find the heart of the story, you jerk. But no, you had to have your lunch. And wasn’t that a great tour of the lungs of Mexico City? You bozo. Find the heart of the story in Costa Rica and don’t let anything get in the way.”
So we land. I land in San Jose and my translator—a nice English woman —greets me and says, “Sir, I have a bunch of appointments lined up. Would you like to meet the Environment Minister? He’d like to talk to you.”
“No. No I don’t. No. I need a case. I need somebody who has been harmed by an American pesticide.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll go looking for one.”
“No. I need one.”
I try to be a nice guy, but I was an asshole. I was a real jerk, because I said no, no, no to everything she suggested. This interview, this meeting, this lunch, this activist group. I said, “No. I need a case. I have to find the heart of the story.”
The heart of the story for me is someone whose life was affected by this behavior. Because without it, I don’t have anything but rhetoric. I need to be able to prove this. And, I guess within a day and a half, I was standing in a sea of sugar cane outside the village of Pitahaya, Costa Rica and I was standing before a grave in this little village cemetery. It wasn’t a headstone; it was a wood cross, a plain, probably pine, cross. And draped over was a white paper carnation, a wreath of white paper carnations. And the name on it was Heriberto Obando. I’ve never forgotten that name. I always think I’m getting it wrong because I can’t imagine that I don’t have to look in the notes. I always think why is it that 12 years later it’s seared into my brain? But why do I feel I have to check to make sure I get it right?
When I came back, this is the lead of the story I wrote:
Pitahaya, Costa Rica__Even without the chilling warning, “Fatal if swallowed, inhaled or absorbed through the skin,” the skull and crossbones are unmistakable to anyone planning to use Counter, a powerful pesticide made by American Cyanamid Company. Counter is so toxic, the label advises, that a user should wear overalls, safety glasses, a mask, rubber boots and gloves. But nobody was following that advice in May 1988 at a plantation outside the village lost in a green sea of sugar cane. For several days, workers, some of them shirtless, applied Counter in the fields. Most wore sneakers without socks. Some spread the pesticide with their bare hands. No one warned them of the dangers or furnished protective garb, a research team from Costa Rica’s National University later found. The plantation foreman was so mindless of the dangers that he and his son used a sack of Counter as a pillow. On the afternoon of June 1, 15-year-old Heriberto Obando and other workers began complaining of headaches and dizziness; some vomited blood. By the time Heriberto reached the hospital, he was foaming at the mouth. Doctors saved the others but not him.
In the United States, there are worries about minute traces of illegal pesticides on imported fruits and vegetables that may or may not cause cancer 30 years from now. But in places like Pitahaya, legal pesticides, often imported from the United States, are making people sick, even killing them, and the dangers to third-world agricultural workers who raise one-fourth of the produce eaten in the United States is growing, in part due to efforts to protect Americans from chemical hazards. U. S. companies responding to science, public and congressional concern are switching to chemicals that are even more deadly to the people who apply them. “You can apply (unintelligible) from foods and (unintelligible) U.S. consumers, but you still have people here being poisoned,” says Marcie Marosky of the Greenpeace environmental group who is based in Guatemala. In the Pitahaya cemetery, a wooden cross draped with paper carnations marks Heriberto Obando’s grave, a stark symbol of a global death toll from pesticides estimated at 220,000 a year by the World Health Organization.
I’ll give this to you at the end of the session. It’s a series that we produced called “Danger for Sale,” about the hazards America exports to the Third World.
I guess about a year later, the phone rang at my desk and I picked up and I heard a young woman ask if I was who I am and would I be at my phone for the next fifteen minutes. I said, “Yeah.” And she said, “Well, Ethel Kennedy is going to be calling you because you won a Robert F. Kennedy Award.” Now, the Robert F. Kennedy Award is an award created by the journalists who covered Bobby Kennedy in his doomed bid for the Presidency in 1968 before his assassination. These reporters created the award in memory of Bobby Kennedy’s concern for the dispossessed and it’s an enormous source of pride that I won for that story
But that’s not really what matters, at least to me as a reporter and a writer. What matters is that I learned probably the most important lesson of my life as a journalist, and that is every story has a heart and you have to find the heart of your story. If you are going to go overseas or if you are going to go up the street, you have to be relentless and ruthless in pursuit of that heart. I’m grateful to you for listening to me for so long this morning. I have three teenaged daughters, so you can imagine what an unusual occurrence it is for me to actually stand before a group of people who appear to be paying attention. But enough about me.
I’d like you to consider a story that you haven’t published yet or aired yet, okay? How many print journalists are here? Okay. How many broadcast journalists? Okay. My hope would be that it’s a story that this conference is intended to foster, stories like the ones that people in this room have already produced that are the result of leaving America and bringing a story back home. That’s my hope that all of you have a story like that in mind. I think the purpose of this conference is to facilitate a few of those, to foster, encourage the production of these stories. So, if there’s a story like that that you haven’t done yet, put that story in mind for a moment. If you don’t have story like that yet, certainly by the end of the day you will, I have no doubt, so don’t worry about it right now.
Let’s say you don’t have a story that you’re going to travel for. Maybe you’ve got a story about bringing the world home from your own backyard, because the fact is we’re one world and there are lots of people from other places living in America. So maybe you’ve got a story like that, a story that you can bring to your readers about the world without leaving your community. Okay?
Now, can everybody gin up a story like that? Is there anybody who can’t? Because if you can’t, let me know. And this isn’t a test, I swear to God. Because if you can’t, you don’t have to. If you don’t have a story like that right now, you could just take any story you haven’t done. Any story, it doesn’t matter. It just has to be a story that you haven’t finished with. Maybe it’s a story that you’re dreaming of doing. But my preference would be, given the focus of this meeting, that it be that story. Okay?
So let me ask you to write down the slug of that story. And by slug I mean just a one-two word descriptor that might go on a budget. Okay? I guess if I were doing this many years ago, I would have said ‘hazards,’ I guess. ‘Exports’ I probably would have said. Exports. So could you write down just that one word or two word slug. We’re going to make a budget here quickly. Don’t agonize about this. We’re going to work through this pretty quickly.
What’s your slug?
Let’s start with you, Jack.
Response: I wrote ‘exports.’
Exports. Okay. Winston?
Response: Antrim/coweta
Spell it.
Response: A-N-T-R-I-M / C-O-W-E-T-A
Okay. Barbara? One word.
Response: (Inaudible)
I know it’s hard. Come on, you can do one word. Just a slug. I just need to put it on the budget.
Response: Guatemala.
Guatemala. Way to go. See how easy it is? You got one?
Response: International.
International. Okay, Robin. John?
Response: Tobacco.
Tobacco. It’s Ronald and I called you Ron without even asking if that was your nickname. Is it? Ron is better? Okay.
Response: Migrant workers.
Migrant workers. Thank you.
Response: I have two actually. Can I give you both?
No. Okay. Plutonium. Susan?
Response: Agriculture.
Agriculture. What I’m grateful for is that most of these have been words—except for the second one—that I’m able to spell. We can sometimes stipulate whether we want animation with these chart pads or spellcheck, but I don’t think either of these are so equipped. Ramon?
Response: Corrie.
C-O-R-R-I-E. Okay. Doug?
Response: Corn packers.
Corn packers. Okay. Yes, Kathy?
Response: Mine was migrant workers also.
Migrant workers. That’s okay. You get your own. Hi. We didn’t meet. I’m Chip.
Response: Strawberries.
Donna? You said ‘strawberries’? Wonderful. Dee, right?
Response: Cuba peanuts.
Cuba peanuts. I said one or two. Don’t worry, it’s going to get tougher.
Response: Candy canes.
Candy canes. Is that a compound word? I don’t know. Candy canes. Okay. Alice?
Response: Lifeline.
Lifeline. Kalil, good to see you.
Response: Muslim student.
Muslim student. Okay?
Response: Internationalism.
Internationalism.
Response: Vietnamese priests.
All right, I’m going to make this a budget line so just call it Viet priest.
(Comment not audible)
Okay? Pardon me?
Response: (Inaudible)
That’s three words.
Response: How about Mexico work?
All right. Mexico work. Pedro?
Response: Entrepreneur.
Entrepreneur. Hi, good to meet you. Entrepreneur is one of those ones I don’t think I can spell right. Okay. How’d I do? Ben?
Response: Travel.
Travel. Bill?
Response: Citrus.
Citrus. Got it. Chris?
Response: Bug.
Bug. That’s three letters, one word. Way to go. Rich?
Response: Germs.
Germs.
Response: Students.
Okay, so we’ve got a pretty good budget here, huh? Interesting stuff. Students, germs, bugs, citrus, travel, entrepreneur, Mexico work, multinational bananas, Viet priests, internationalism, jackass penguins, Muslim student, lifeline, candy canes, Cuba peanut, strawberries, migrant workers, corn packers, corrie, agriculture, plutonium, migrant workers, tobacco, international, Guatemala, antrim/coweta, exports. Did you have one?
Response: Mandela.
All right. Way to go. Okay. Everybody is going to get one of these and while we’re waiting, anybody have a question? Comment? Okay. Feel free to interrupt whenever you need to.
Because I didn’t know what I was doing when I became a reporter, having never studied journalism, never gone to journalism school, wanting to be a storyteller—actually I wanted to be a rich novelist. Have you ever seen a help-wanted ad for that? I’ve never. Will train. I was always looking for the magic. There had to be a magic formula, you know, because these writers were so great. They were geniuses; they were magicians. So they had to have a trick, right? There had to be a trick. If I could only find out the trick, man. So, I would read interviews with the writers to try to discover that trick. If you do that, you find out that they do have tricks.
E. B. White, who wrote Charlotte’s Web, always started with a martini. Gail Godwin, a very good novelist, lights two different kinds of incense. Rita Dove, the former U. S. Poet Laureate, I’m not making this up, I’ve seen the picture, she stands at this lectern, writes by hand, and she has a candlestick and a long candle. She writes at the end of the day. She lights the candle and as the candlelight flickers on the page, she begins to write.
You know, you’re not writing any of this down? I thought you came to learn. I’ve mentioned alcohol, incense and tallow. I mean, you’re smarter than I am. I was so stupid that’s what I thought was the answer. Hey, I’ll try…I wouldn’t try a martini. I mean, I was a child of the sixties, you know, so I didn’t start with that. The next morning, all these Twinkie wrappers…but that’s another story.
A while ago, I decided you know what? There is a formula for good writing and it’s three Cs. It’s creative work and critical thinking and courage. I used to say good writing is a marriage of creative work, critical thinking and courage until someone—I believe it was a copy editor—said, “You can’t have three people in a marriage.” I said, “Well, let’s pretend we’re in Utah.” Okay. Creative work, critical thinking and courage. We’re going to do some of that. We’re going to do all of that right now. Okay?
The thing I gave you, which we’ll look at in a moment, has to do with critical thinking. Writing is a process of discovery. I didn’t know that for the longest time. I thought that to be a good writer you had to have a way with words, but no, you have to have a way with thoughts. You have to be a good critical thinker. But you have to be able to be creative. There’s a wonderful writing teacher named Peter Elbow. Peter Elbow wrote Writing Without Teachers, Writing With Power, and he says writing involves two mutually opposing skills, creating and criticizing. But because they are in opposition, you really can’t do them together. What happens if you try to do them together? You get something that I used to get a lot. Maybe some of you have had it sometimes. Ever had this? This syndrome? This writer’s disease? Yes, what is that? Keep writing and re-writing. There’s a name for that, isn’t there? I’m surprised you just keep re-writing. Writer’s block. Anybody here ever had writer’s block? Really? Anybody here never had writer’s block? Then get the hell out right now. You really don’t belong here.
I like what Roger Simon, the columnist, says. “Funny, my father never had truck driver’s block.” But we’re writers, right? We’ve got our own carpal tunnel. Well, the thing is we’re afraid of creativity and…I need to demonstrate this. I need an editor. I need somebody who is not an editor and who is a reporter. Kalil, you’re my editor, okay?
Kalil, I’m just back from the Board of Zoning, Review and Appeals meeting. Thank you so much for sending me to that meeting. It was awesome! The Board of Zoning, Review and Appeals. Eight hours. Man, I got such good stuff. How much time do I have?
Response: Thirty minutes.
Thirty minutes. Great. You’re new as an editor aren’t you? Okay. I’ve got time for lunch. Okay. Good lunch. All right. I’m ready to write now. I’m ready. I’m ready to write.
How’s it going?
Okay. I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Okay. All right. I need a soda. Okay.
The copy desk is breathing down my neck.
I’m coming. I’m coming. It’s going to be great. Oh, God, I hear that voice. You know that voice you hear sometimes just as you’re about to write that says, “You suck”? Ever hear that voice? Come on. Yeah? Something like that? What does your voice say?
Response: You schmuck.
You schmuck. What does your voice say, Pedro?
Response: You’re not a writer…
You’re not a writer; you’re a reporter. Yeah. That’s the watcher at the gate. That was Freud’s phrase. The part of the mind that is there to judge, to criticize, which gets in the way of experiencing writing for what it is—a process of discovery.
So there’s a way out of this; it’s called free writing. And the freelancers in the group…No, Doug, it’s not…you mean the stuff you don’t get paid for? No, not that. Who knows what free writing is? Kristen?
Response: You just start writing and (you just let your mind go.
You just let your mind go. There was one reporter that said, “You mean, just let the tape roll?” Yeah, let the tape roll. We’re going to do some free writing about this story. Okay? Now, it’s okay if you haven’t reported this story yet. You have to begin to find the heart of the story and I would argue that has to start at the beginning, that you ask yourself, “What is the heart of the story?” Be mindful that it might change and hope you have enough integrity to say, “It’s not the same.”
So let’s jump over creative work now to critical thinking and take a look at this handout. David Von Drehle is a wonderful writer, reporter, editor for the Washington Post and about eight years ago he was a runner-up for the Jesse Leventhol Prize for deadline reporting. We asked him…that’s a great prize. You can win ten grand for one day’s work. And he nearly won it. This story begins on Page One, but skip over that. Turn the page please. You can read that story at your leisure and you can decide whether you like it or not. What’s more important is the essay that he wrote that begins on the second page here, how he wrote the story. Kathy, see down there where it says, “the day of Richard Nixon’s funeral”? Could you read the first paragraph? And then we’ll just go from Kathy to Donna to Dee and just across that back row. We’re going to ask you to read, each of you, a paragraph. So could you start?
How I Wrote the Story
David Von Drehle
The day of Richard Nixon’s funeral was unseasonably cold. The sky was overcast, and the air was damp. I don’t know why a wet chill goes right to the bone, but it does. Sitting in the press tent, watching the minutes tick away toward deadline, I lost the feeling in my fingers.
But then deadline always makes me shiver.
My seat was next to the team from The New York Times. Earlier in the day, I watched them arrive with the same sick feeling pitchers experienced watching the ‘61 Yankees take the field. Maureen Dowd, Johnny Apple, David Margolick – they were so deep in talent they had a Pulitzer Prize winner, William Safire, shagging quotes. So I was cold, and I was scared.
At a time like that, you have to fall back on the basics: Sit down and tell a story.
What happened?
What did it look like, sound like, feel like? Who said what? Who did what?
And why does it matter?
Okay. Stop now and write down that question: Why does it matter? And put a number one in front of it, on your pad that you’ve got there. Just write it down. Why does it matter?
Chris?
What’s the point?
Okay. Stop there. Write that question down: What’s the point?
Why is this story being told?
Okay. Write that one down too. Number three.
What does it say about life, about the world, about the times we live in?
What does it say about life, about the world, about the times we live in?
All right. Beautiful. Write that one down too. You have four questions. Why does it matter? What’s the point? Why is the story being told? What does it say about life, about the world, about the times we live in?
And Bill, if you could just wrap it up with the next paragraph.
Newspaper writing, especially on deadline, is so hectic and complicated – the fact-gathering, the phrase-finding, the inconvenience, the pressure – that it’s easy to forget the basics of storytelling. Namely, what happened, and why does it matter?
Thank you. And I think we can replace ‘newspaper writing’ with ‘news writing.’ Regardless of medium, those are the same challenges we all face. What happened and why does it matter? I often tell reporters and editors, “We’re in the news business but we’re not just in the news business. They don’t need us anymore. They don’t need us anymore. They can get it in twenty seconds. They can get it in ten seconds. They can get it across their television, their favorite sitcom now.” You know what? When a journalist goes on vacation, he comes back and says, “You know, I didn’t read the paper or watch the news in two weeks.” “You didn’t? How did you survive?” They don’t need us. But they do need us, I would argue. Because we’re not just in the news business, we are in the meaning business. And I think that’s true for any journalist today, but certainly for the journalists who are trying to do this kind of work. We’re trying to bring the world home. We’re trying to make us understand what it means to be alive in another part of the world and how that affects us, how we are connected. We must find the meaning if we have any hope to connect the world abroad with the world home. And we do that with critical thinking. We do that with questions like David Von Drehle poses. I would argue those are the readers’ questions. Those are the viewers’ questions. So what? Why does it matter? What’s the point? What is this thing on TV? What is this thing in the paper? And what does it say about the world, life, the times we live in?
I don’t know if readers are actively asking that one, but boy if you knew, if you turned on the news, picked up the paper, that you would get that question addressed, I believe that would make us indispensable. Now, of course, to do that we have to address those questions. Notice I didn’t say answer. We may not be able to answer them but we must address them.
So now I’m going to do some thing that Peter Elbow would say is impossible. Peter Elbow says that writing calls on two mutually opposing skills: creating and criticizing. Separate creative work from critical thinking. I believe if you marry—and there are just two partners in this union—free writing with David Von Drehle’s questions, you can begin the quest for the heart of the story, because every story has a heart.
And so what I’m going to ask you to do is turn off that—as one reporter said, “that you suck FM.” That’s what plays in my head. You suck FM plays all the time. I’m going to ask you to free write the answers to these questions. I should say the answers. I’m going to ask you to address those four questions about antrim/coweta and agriculture and strawberries and internationalism. Okay? And the way it’s going to work is you’re not going to do what most of us do at a time like this—we cogitate: I need a few hours, days, to think about this.
I’m going to say the word ‘start’ and when I say the word ‘start’ you are going to begin writing as fast as you can. And you’re not going to lift your pen from the pad until you hear the word ‘stop.’ You’re not going to worry about spelling. You’re not going to worry about punctuation. You’re not even going to worry about syntax. You’re just going to talk to the page, because you’re going to hope that you’re going to connect with that voice that is you. You know, when your mom says, “Hey, what happened last night?” “Well, Mom, in a stunning development, the City Council last night…” We don’t talk like that. I’m trying to get us to race past that voice that says, “You’re a reporter. You must talk authoritatively.”
So the first question…what’s the first question on the list? Why does it matter? Okay, you’re going to get thirty seconds and it’s going to be about ten seconds so I know some of you are trying to get ahead of it. Sorry. Just talk to yourself. This story, why does it matter? Ready? And don’t stop writing until you hear the word ‘stop.’
Yeah, your story. Your story. Why does the story matter? Ready? Just the first question, and for thirty seconds, and you cannot stop writing until I say ‘stop.’ Ready, set, go.
Okay, stop. Beautiful. Sometimes this is the point where I need to say look, some of you are going to write the answer and you’re going to go “Why does this matter?” Because it’s important. “Okay, I’m done.” No. You want to keep pushing because there is a moment of resistance. “I nailed it” or “I got nothing left.” And that’s when you take that little extra push and experience writing for what it is—a process of discovery. And you discover something that surprises you. If you have surprised yourself, your chance of surprising a reader increases, I think exponentially.
Now, I would argue that this kind of work applies to every story we do, but it strikes me, looking around at these stories in this group, that this kind of work is even more important when you are trying to bring the world home. We’ll talk a bit about this.
Now, what’s that second question? What’s the point? Ready? You’ve got thirty seconds. Write the whole time. Three, two, one, go.
Okay stop. Now you can do this if you need to…we’re not used to doing this with our hands. What’s the third question? Why is this story being told? You’ve got thirty seconds. Ready? Five, three, go.
Okay stop. Now that last question. That last question is: What does it say about life, the world, the times we live in? I love this question. I think, boy, if I could get answers to that in the paper or on TV, I would be so happy. Tell me a little that I don’t know so I’m going to give you forty seconds because that is such a good question. And Jack, you stopped before the time was up. I can’t allow that. Ready? Go.
Stop. Okay. I think we need a Boicean moment. Think we need a Boicean moment? John, you’re the man in charge. Do you think we need a Boicean moment? Ah, good. John says we should. Okay, everybody stand up please. Now the thing is, a Boicean moment, of course, is named after…anybody? Boice. Okay. We’ve got some smart people here. Not just any Boice, Dr. Robert Boice, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the State University of New York, Long Island, Stonybrook, and a licensed psychotherapist with a practice limited to blocked writers. I swear to God. That’s who Dr. Boice treats, blocked writers. In fact, he is the author of How Writers Journey to Comfort and Fluency: A Psychological Adventure, in which he discusses his treatment of blocked writers. He said, “Writers need to be comfortable. They need to be fluent.” And it doesn’t matter what you are writing with, if you’re writing with a video camera, a still camera, a pen, it doesn’t matter, you’ve got to be comfortable and fluent. But you remember me, back then, trying to write that Board of Zoning Review story to make Kalil proud of me. I was like in a pretzel.
Dr. Boice says you’ve got to relax. I am hoping that if sometime during this day you are beginning to lag a bit and it’s like, “Jeez, how much longer is this thing going on?” that you might say, “Can we do a Boician moment?” Because what Dr. Boice said was, “I just like to do a quick relaxation exercise before I write.” He encouraged us to do this at the seminar and I did it and I felt better. Now, you want to spread out a little. You never want to turn a Boicean moment into a Boicean assault. Okay? So you just want to spread out enough until you can do a windmill without giving anybody a subdural hematoma. And you’re going to close your eyes—I close my eyes. Do you think to heighten the relaxation response? No I tend to perspire heavily at the idea of a whole group looking at my armpits. It’s really awful to me. I close my eyes. You don’t have to. Put your legs slightly apart. You’re going to do this windmill thing and breathe in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth. We’re going to do three of them, of course, because the rule of threes prevails in writing. Think about it. Beginning, middle, end. Faith, hope, charity. Moe, Larry, Curly. It’s all in threes. Okay. Ready? So let’s Boice. Okay. Let’s do three.
Okay, now take out your wallet and remove a ten-dollar bill. Put it under your chair and leave the room quietly. Ah, darn. Okay. Please sit down. So anytime you want to relax, just say, “Hey, Bill, can we Boice?”
Actually, there was another reason I did that because I didn’t want you to think about the heart of your story. I didn’t want you to think about the heart of your story. I could have just said, “Don’t think about the heart of your story.” That would have worked too. I have one more question for you and that is: What is your story really about? What is your story really about? What’s it really about? I’m going to ask you to answer that question. I’m only going to give you ten seconds, but don’t worry because you can only have one word. You can only have one word. It can be a compound word. You can use punctuation. If you know German, you could probably get more than one but…one word. I want to ask you what is your story really about at its most basic, central, fundamental, elemental? What’s it really about? I know it’s about exports and tobacco, but what’s it really about? Okay? You’ve got ten seconds. Write that word.
Was that yours? What’s your word?
Response: Growth.
Growth. That’s not a good one. Ah, good.
Response: Connection.
Connection.
Response: Love.
Love.
Response: Possibilities.
Response: Change.
Response: People.
Response: Fear.
Response: Equality.
Corn packers. Equality?
Response: Yes.
Response: Jobs.
Response: Money.
Response: People.
People? Okay, now look, there’s not going to be any cheating in my class. It’s like that Woody Allen story about the kid who flunked the metaphysics test because he was caught looking into the soul of the boy next to him. Forewarned, okay? All right. People.
Response: Personal.
Response: Home.
Response: Sociopathology.
Oh, I’m impressed. Whoa. A hyphen and everything. Socio…socio…I can’t even say it, for God’s sake.
Response: People and change.
All right. Yeah, it’s great when you get two folks together. I’m serious.
Response: The American dream.
Yeah. I’ve got to give you a shot. I’m feeling generous today. American dream is one word, isn’t it? It is now. Yes?
Response: Change.
Response: The end. One word.
The end? That’s one word? You’re right. Very good. Thank you.
Response: Obscurity.
Response: Fairness
Response: Epiphany.
Epiphany. Wow. The exercise is to sum up what your story is really about in one word. You guys are really good. You are really good. Growth, connection, love, possibility, change, people, fear, survival, epiphany, equality, jobs, money, people, hope, freedom, personal, life, home, sociopathology, people, change. I love it. American dream, rights, change, the end, obscurity, fairness.
You know, it’s interesting because these are the budgets that we produce in our newsrooms on a daily basis and I’ve often thought that we should have another budget like this. I’d think it would make a great house ad. “Tomorrow you’ll read stories of growth, connection, love, possibility, change, hope, epiphany, equality, fairness.”
What’s the difference between Column A and Column B? What do you think is the difference? One’s cognizant and one’s effective.
Response: This is the scientific part. This is what we build.
I’m impressed. What do you mean?
Response: This is the topic. We put this in a test tube. This is what we feel about it, what we help the reader feel.
Beautiful. Beautiful. I love this work. Learn something new every day. Cognitive, effective. Yeah. What do the rest of you think? What’s the difference between Column A and Column B?
Response: One is more specific than the other.
One is more specific.
Response: One required us to think a little bit more.
One required you to think more. Okay.
Response: One is a budget line and the other is a real story.
One is a budget lie and the other is a real story. That’s great.
Response: The column on the right is what everybody can connect with.
Yeah. You know the fault of the Socratic method, I guess—Socrates really wanted the student to come up with something really better and the cognizant effect is a real revelation for me today. But the one that I always look for is universality, that which connects. I think that what we are as journalists is the bridge. We’re the bridge between worlds, between domains, if you will. Most of the domains—law, medicine, the political sphere—but, of course, you, with these kinds of stories are perhaps even, I would argue, if not the most, an incredibly important bridge to connect us.
I spoke to a bunch of college kids a while ago and one of them asked, “What do you think about the war coverage?”
I said, “You know what saddens me most about it? The nationalism. I’m saddened by the nationalism.” I’m an idealist; I’m a romantic. I’m a reporter; it’s like synonymous. Maybe not everybody is but there’s got to be a reason why we would take a job that pays so little and is so hard and…but journalism allows us to bridge worlds, to take the world and bring it home.
I would argue that because of this work you did…and think about it. You spent approximately two minutes and fifteen seconds of critical thinking and you married it with creative work. I would argue that I wouldn’t be at all surprised when you publish this story that at least one of these words or phrases appears in the published version, in the broadcast version. And I’m not talking about the articles, ‘a,’ ‘the.’
Also, you’ve gotten close to finding the heart of the story. So, now I think it’s easier to answer these questions. And just jot the answers down. Who is this story about? And if you know the name, write the name down. If you just know the class, write the class down. But who is it about?
Anybody got a name? Who is it about?
Response: Me.
It’s about me? Okay. Who is it about?
Response: Tobacco farmers and families.
Tobacco farmers and families. Okay. How many times do you write a story or read a story and say, “Wait a minute. What’s this about? Why aren’t they in the story?” I mean, in a way, this is very basic and so fundamental to what we do and we have a tendency, in think, to forget it. Okay, so it’s tobacco farmers and family.
Now, let’s say it’s time to plan your trip. Where do you have to go? Put some locations down. Where do you have to go to discover, to reveal, to find the heart and to be able to report the heart and bring it home? Where do you have to go for that? Where do you have to go? And it can be everything from an address to, at this point, a vague place. I could not have told you Pitahaya, Costa Rica, but where I had to go was to Heriberto Obando’s grave and then, of course, to his family’s house. But I had to go to his grave. Where do you have to go? Anybody?
Response: Middle East.
Middle East. You’ve got to go to the Middle East. How about you?
Response: Guatemala.
Guatemala. Of course. Did we expect anything less? Pedro, where do you have to go?
Response: This guy’s house or the restaurant he owns.
Yeah. Terrific. Dave, where do you have to go?
Response: Middle East.
Middle East. Rich, where do you have to go?
Response: Fishing dock.
Fishing dock. Dennis, where do you have to go?
Response: To their homes in their home country.
Yeah. How many of you knew this was what your story was about before you wrote this?
Response: I’m still not sure.
Yeah. You’re still not sure. I’m glad to hear that because I think when you can experience writing as a process of discovery, your chance of discovering something new and presenting something new is greater. And if you can tone down and find the heart…My mentor, Donald Murray, taught me many years ago that an effective piece of writing has a single dominant message. Effective writing has a single dominant message, a.k.a., if we put it up here, this is the subject of the story; this is the meaning. If this was Lit 101 class, what word might we use? Theme. And the reason I like ‘theme’ is that if you look it up in the dictionary, it says ‘meaning in a word.’
Tad Bartimus, a brilliant reporter for the AP, a foreign correspondent, now writes a column, covered Vietnam for them, used to say, “What’s your story in six words?” Well, in light of the economy, I downsized it to just one. You can do it a variety of ways. You can do it with one word; you can do it with six words; you can write a headline. What I’m giving you now is a handout, four checklists of questions. You’ll see the very first question is ‘focus.’ Okay, so I’ve got all these notes. I’ve done all this reporting. What does it mean?
I would argue that you should be doing this from the moment you get the idea, the assignment. But you’ll see a whole bunch of questions that can help you discover the meaning, to discover the heart of the story, so that you know before you go what you are looking for, so that you can start this quest for with a Grail at the end.
Another thing I want to give you is just a column I wrote. I write a column twice a week for Poynter online called Chip on Your Shoulder. I started out life as a chip off the old block; now I’m a chip on your shoulder. This is a little piece about David Von Drehle’s four questions, which is included in the larger handout.
I’d like to ask you to respond quickly to three questions. Write these questions down.
What surprised me?
What did I learn?
What do I need to learn next?
One of the joys of journalism is, of course, that you get to be a perennial student. I guess one of the joys of teaching is that you get to be a perennial student too. And these three questions are designed to help you continue the learning beyond today. I would argue that at the end of every experience to ask yourself these three questions to become a reflective practitioner. We say we like to attract two types of people to the Poynter Institute, that’s faculty and students. Practical scholars. Reflective practitioners. To know why something works.
What surprised me?
And you can ask this about anything. What surprised me about this interview? What surprised me about that trip to Pitahaya? What surprised me about whatever?
In this case, we’ve been together for almost an hour-and-a-half. What surprised you about finding the heart of your story? That’s the thing I’d like you to address now. I’m going to give you twenty seconds just to quickly talk to yourself. What surprised you about this exercise? What surprised you about this exercise, any part of it? Your story—what surprised you? Ready? Go. Twenty seconds.
Okay.
2. What did you learn? What did you learn in the last hour-and-a-half about yourself, about your story? What did you learn? Twenty seconds. Ready? Go.
Okay. And the last question…
3. What do you think you need to learn next?
Ready? Twenty seconds. What do you need to learn next? Go.
Okay. And finally…Do you have a question? Write it down. The last ninety minutes must have raised at least one question in your head. Write that question down. What question do you have? Anything. It could be about your story. It could be about this session. Something that, today, you can look for the answer.
Okay. This is an historic moment. I’m going to end before the time is up. So, I’m going to end in about two seconds. I think you’ve done brilliant work here and I, for one, have an interest in seeing all these stories. I mean, the subject matter intrigues me, but these resonate with me. Knowing this, you have material to help you answer all the other questions that will come on this journey. Who do I talk to? What do I need? How will I start? How will I end? I’ve got a mountain of stuff; what do I leave out? What’s the heart of your story? That will answer it for you.
I wish you the best of luck finding the hearts of this story and all of them. Thanks very much.
