The editor of Creative Nonfiction Magazine discusses what writers of narrative should be trying to accomplish in an interview: "Interviewing for news is somewhat different; reporters usually know, more or less, the information they need to unearth. The writer of narrative, by contrast, is often seeking the unknown — the story behind the facts. You won’t always know the story until you hear it; your job as an interviewer, often, is to keep your subject talking."
Tricks of the trade
Colin Schultz turns out 12 posts a week for Smithsonian and that's less than half of his income, so each post is written in an hour or less. That's not enough time for telephone interviews, let alone in-person reporting. So Schultz focuses on analyzing rather than reporting the news: "There are lots of people out there trying to break news. What there are less of, and what you can actually do really well from behind a computer, is help people make sense of the news."
Stephen Burt makes a case in Nieman Reports that journalism and poetry are as similar as they are different: "Many of the supposed oppositions between poems and news just dissolve on scrutiny: Poetry often reacts to public events; poetry can be pellucid (as in Louise Glück or Christina Rossetti) as well as opaque; and journalists can take on complicated ideas with specialized vocabulary (collateralized mortgage obligations, for example, or mitochondrial DNA)."
Pity the poor journalist — buffetted by layoffs and buyouts, and plagued by clueless public relations agents. Lindsay Goldwert has some tips for the latter in a PRNewser post, including this one: "Don’t send mass-emails: Don’t do it. Pick a handful of people and tailor your pitches to them. Journalism is about exclusives — no one wants the same crap you sent everyone else. If you have to send it to 500 people in order to get three hits, you’re doing it wrong."
"If your idea of organized is smacking Post-it notes all over your computer, you’ll quickly discover you need a better way," Sue Burzynski Bullard writes as she shares her favorite tools for organizing her work. Google Calendar gets top billing, unsurprisingly, and Dropbox gets a mention, but there's also a web-based to-do list called "Remember the Milk," a virtual bulletin board called "NoteApp," and a pair of social bookmarking tools, "Diigo" and "Delicious."
Journalists now have to assume that their government will spy on them and their sources, Dan Gillmor argues: "They will have to take many more precautions as they do their work — especially when it comes to the absolutely essential work of finding government whistleblowers. The alternative is being almost entirely neutered, because no whistleblower in his or her right mind today should have much trust in journalists' ability to prevent discovery."
Gini Dietrich writes on PR Daily about a novel approach for getting attention from journalists — a "response campaign" of commenting on stories by targeted writers: "If you are consistent and post intelligent comments once a week, you'll soon develop relationships with journalists who call you when they need someone to interview. Yes, it takes some time. Yes, it's hard work. Yes, it requires you to keep up with your reading. But it works 100 percent of the time."
Do you punctuate your speeches with a lot of "ums?" Does a sneeze from the audience derail your train of thought? Denise Graveline offers some tips for watching your own speeches on video, analyzing your flaws, and fixing them: "Most people's mouths, when at rest, are either flat-lined or slightly downturned, making you look bored or sad. Smiling, even a little, corrects that natural downward turn. You get to decide how much to smile, but smile at least somewhat."
In part of a Guardian series, David Dobbs answers eight questions about science writing, starting with "What's a good science story?" His reply: "In terms of material, I look for three things in particular: an alluring scientific idea or discovery; a scientist who is a highly intriguing figure on his or her own or who can talk engagingly; and either a subject or an event in which we see the idea or process at work." Answers from other writers.
The inverted pyramid may be obsolete as a newswriting model, but its influence lingers in what Mike Feinsilber call "last-things-first" writing — sentences that run in reverse chronological order. Feinsilber explains: "Even inside the story, where the urgency to blurt out the news has been satisfied, we find last-things-first sentences. That makes no sense. It forces the reader to read the sentence and then reconstruct it in his mind to make it make sense."