A Reporter at Large

Paul Hagey — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:26:54 +0000

Emily, live-blogging. Serious.

Our own Jacqui

Paul Hagey — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:25:20 +0000

She’s hot here. Her sessions are packed, and everybody gives her a thumbs up.She broke down writing at a session on Saturday, which she called Literary Forensics. It involved analyzing the parts of speech writers habitually use and diagramming them in a story to see their physical layout and interrelationship. Highlight all your verbs in a piece; and then look at the result; if you just read them, how does the action flow. Jacqui suggests: instead of using multiple adjectives, find better, more descriptive verbs; i.e. sit down heavily = slouched, etc. She also stressed: make adjectives really work, used them to move beyond mere description into definition.

Grey Ladies Online

Paul Hagey — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:23:19 +0000

Multi-media editors from The New Yorker and The New York Times, Matt Dellinger and Andrew DeVigal talk about the expanding web situation. I’ll focus on The New Yorker, simpler and more up our alley (?!). Dellinger has been there from the beginning of the online force of The New Yorker, since 2001. A major redesign of the website occurred sometime in 2007. Check it out here. He said that writers are not required at this point to do multi-media but he can see in the future that might be the case. Interestingly, he said that the blogs are the same style as the Talk of the Town peices from the 40s and 50s — “that was a blog.”Dellinger says that multi-media still offers the opportunity for experimentation, exploration and he “doesn’t wait for permission” to explore and experiment and recommended the same to the audience when starting out with multi-media. Audio is the easiest he and DeVigal agreed; it’s something that reporters already do: record and listen. It is worth it to try to get into. I plan on contacting Dellinger about his suggestions for hardware/software; I’ve emailed him and I’ll share his answers when they hopefully come. Multi-media note: Dan Baum said that if he was a journalist starting out now, he would buy a ~$3500 broadcast camera and move to a foreign country and start producing journalistic pieces and a living. He moved to Zimbabwe (I think) with his wife when they met to do journalism years ago. He lives in Colorado now.Note: Overheard Baum complaining to New Yorker multimedia editor, Matt Dellinger, about being ‘fired’ this year from the magazine.

Dan Baum S,M,L,XL

Paul Hagey — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:13:21 +0000

Friday afternoon, former New Yorker writer Dan Baum talked about the various formats of a story, specifically in relation to his experience covering Katrina for The New Yorker. He was the first person to do blogs for them at that time, and expressed frustration at being fact-checked three/four times a day for his blogs, hmmm.He appreciated the daily blog because he had to “get out all the time.” He also referenced Jimmy Breslin as the proto-blogger — a commentator who actually went out and reported.Interestingly, Baum said he doesn’t tape record. Mike Sager tape records everything. It takes all kinds. But he did say that he takes multiple pictures with a small digital camera when he’s out, and when he’s writing an article or a blog he puts them around him to set the atmosphere and help in the immersion, and also the recalling of details. This technique reminds me of one that Anne Hull mentioned in an interview with Tom French (I sent it to Advanced Writing); she makes mixed CDs that encapsulate a particular story for her that she’s working on and lets that become part of her life as she writes the story. Side note — in a short time talking, Anne Hull said that our Jacqui Banaszynski was the best journalism teacher she is aware of. Baum also said that he experimented with the video function on his digital camera and showed some of the results; they were very interesting. It doesn’t take much to add that to a story it seems, in the online format at least. In the medium format of his work in New Orleans, the Talk of the Town pieces, Baum said that he would explore things without knowing right away what the story is, a situation he called “The joy of long-form journalism.” Indeed. Blogging, however required him to learn fast then write. Another interesting facet to Baum is that he and his wife are a team; she edits everything he writes. Hmmmm. They do one byline to deal with editors more smoothly. She helped him focus his eventual Katrina article for The New Yorker, “The Lost Year” from August, 2006, found here. Somebody in the audience congratulated him on the article, and he lowers his head and turns red a little, not out of modesty, but out of sadness; he doesn’t like the story: “I thought is stunk.” Surprisingly, he mentions the “New Yorker de-flavorizer.” Specifically, he mentions that the New Yorker editor(s) shifted the focus of the piece from the exploration of the disaster of Katrina in the context of race and class to one of beauracracy (sp?).—Note: Right now, Roy Peter Clark from the Poynter Institute is talking to the director of this year’s conference, Constance Hale and today’s (Sunday’s) keynote speaker, Sherry Turkle, about his 50 writing tips section that occurred yesterday and his general writing pedagogy. He says this is perhaps the greatest Nieman ever (est. 2001). I don’t think we (John Fennell, Emily, Jill, and I) necessarily agree; the conference this year is newspaper heavy. Apparently, there’s some drama and the new director this year doesn’t have the same connections as the previous one, Kramer. He left (drama) because he felt that his work in editing the book of the Nieman Narrative deserved some monetary attention. I am up here having breakfast near RPC and the director etc. because Emily, Jill and I got bumped up to the club level — 29th floor (the top floor). Anne Hull and Dana Priest were eating in here yesterday morning when we were. Back to RPC: He is saying that it is very important to notice what you do right; as a golfer he says that it is important for him to have a coach let him know what he did (his form) when he hit the ball very well — he applies that to teaching idea to writing. (Berkley, I said hi from you to RPC). — Back to Baum, he said that if video doesn’t look great then don’t use it. He said that in general in The New Yorker piece “You can’t tell the story of New Orleans with just facts,” which made the fact-checking requirement of The New Yorker tough.

Hull and Priest — The narrative of investigative journalism

Paul Hagey — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 21:09:12 +0000

Anne Hull and Dana Priest keynoted this morning. They described in detail their process of doing the Walter Reed Hospital story for The Washington Post, which many people project will win a Pulitzer Prize this year. Anne Hull said that this was an interesting project for her because “the highest impact I’ve had [in previous work] is to make someone cry.” This story helped reform some of the miserable conditions of the government hospital, located in/near D.C.Interestingly, they made a good team: Priest goes to the system (precision), and Hull goes to the people (relationships). The combination of the two makes for a great narrative as seen in the piece (hearsay — haven’t read it yet). Read it here. I will continue this later as time and demand requires. Any demand?

Nieman Narrative Postings

Paul Hagey — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:48:12 +0000

Check out the conference schedule here.Anne Hull, etc. See Nieman Narrative Conference 2008 page. Anne Hull (podium — far right) showed up to the conference with dark maroon hair and matching nails — scandalous.See the pages on the right for certain topics, more coming later.New Yorker writer Dan Baum with moderator Walter Ray Watson, a producer with NPR’s Weekend Edition and current Nieman Fellow, talks about the frustrations of dealing with fact-checking his daily 1000-word New Yorker blog from New Orleans, just after Katrina. It was the first blog for the New Yorker. More to come later. Adios.