How it's done . . .




Gay Talese on old-school long-form reporting. He may be old, but he's still the best. (Suffer through Rather's intro; Talese is worth it. The second part of the interview, not quite as sharp but still worth watching, is here.)

I completely disagree with Talese on one small portion - the internet makes it much easier to do research, which should mean that you can do more of it. It can be invitation to be lazy, but that's a separate problem.

The great difficulty of "literary journalism" - a terrible term - is that it's easy to use the technique to disguise inadequate reporting. Not to pick on the NYT (cough-cough), but here's a lead from the other day on a feature story that uses techniques that come directly from the new journalism movement, and just happens to illustrate the problem:

ALPINE, N.J. — Last month, passengers on the Metro-North Railroad trains that run along the Hudson River looked up from their tepid coffee and their iPads to find the familiar view transformed. Just south of Hastings-on-Hudson, it looked as if a giant hand had carved a gash in the umber face of the Palisades, the wall of jagged cliffs that towers over the west bank of the river, depositing a huge mound of boulders below.

Nice writing, but wait - tepid coffee? iPads? Everyone on the train????

Where did those exist? Was there real reporting there - or did the reporter draw conclusions based on a) skimpy observation, b) her prejudices, c) something that might sound cool?

The writing is very nice - but the first job of journalism is to report the truth, even in small things. That value must stand above the value of entertainment, whether you elevate it by calling it "literary" or not. Talese points out that doing that is very, very expensive, both in terms of time and actual $$.

The people who were in the newsrooms when Talese was young - the old-timers who taught him - understood that, and were suspicious of overly "literary" prose. They'd have pounced on 'umber', if it made it to the copy desk. Those old-timers kept Talese honest. The problem today is finding others to take their place.

* New Journalism: Another term for the writing Talese and others championed, beginning in the 1960s. A bit more inclusive.