What's due next time

So read Chapter 3 in the textbook.

Read also these stories -- printing them out might be best for us to discuss. But be prepared. Heck, there might be a reading quiz.

On the run from everything but each other
A Frantic Search
Life at $7.25 an hour

And due via email to me tcfrankel @ gmail-dot-com by next Wednesday (so sent BEFORE 11:59 p.m. Tuesday):

5 narrative story ideas. Maybe just a couple sentences each fleshing them out. Review this tips list for recalling that you need to think about action, access and beginning/middle/ends.

Finding great stories off the beaten path

Finding great stories off the beaten path

Week 3 -- Where do ideas come from?

Feature article ideas / Story types/ Where do they come from?

Be one on whom nothing is lost.

                  -- advice from Henry James

Sometimes the story is different than what you think

That's what Michele Norris said recently about a story she wrote back in 1989 for The Washington Post. Norris today works for NPR. But back then she was doing a story about the crack epidemic hitting the nation's capital -- a two-part narrative about a 6-year-old boy whose mother was a crack addict.

Well, she was doing one kind of story. But she switched gears during her reporting -- and went after the best story.

You need to be open and flexible with your story ideas. Always be willing to change gears, always be alert to the sound of the story calling you.

(Interesting, too, that in this interview, a quarter century later, she is asked if she knows where Dooney is today. Disappointingly she doesn't.)

why you don't make stuff up

That Star Wars guy in "Shattered Glass."

So this is a bit of a downer, but it's important and interesting:
Don't make stuff up.

That's about the only rule in journalism. It's hard and fast. Every news story -- narrative or otherwise -- carries the unstated opening of, "What you are about to read is true." That's what the reader expects. That is the starting point. And from there, the world is your oyster.

Journalism does not tolerate plagiarists, fakers, liars, fakers.

Take the case of Stephen Glass. Remember him?

More about that Dr. V story

Journalists are in full meltdown and navel-gazing mode over that Dr. V story in Grantland.

Wow.

Two more pieces of interest about the controversy.

This Op-Ed from the New York Times about how this story is part of a wider problem known as "longform" --- where form overrides function. Basically, people are praising longform narrative stories without actually, gasp, reading them or thinking about what this all means.

Hmmm....

Maybe.

Also, this rant from Drew Magary in GQ (point No. 2 in the piece) is kinda spot on, while still being a little over the top.

Lots of stuff to think about it.

No class tonight, Jan. 23, but .... read on

So I'm sick as a dog. Strep throat. No one else in house has it. So I'm fairly certain I caught it hanging out with some meth junkies for a story I'm working on. Alas. I guess I could've caught something worse. I could make it to class tonight, I am ambulatory but I'm a loopy and I have no voice. I would have to pantomime our discussions.

We will make up the lost class later this semester. But not all is lost -- in fact, only about one hour -- because I planned on us doing a reporting/writing assignment in class anyhow. 

And you all will still be doing that. 

How? Well, read on....

Editor's reaction to Dr. V story

That didn't take long. Grantland, which published the controversial Dr. V golf putter story, apologized
and explained at length what went wrong.

Here is the editor's take and then a piece by a transgender writer.

A feature story and a suicide

So journalists everywhere are talking about this feature story published this week in Grantland about this woman who invented a great new golf putter -- but who also had a lot more going on in her life.

You don't need to read the story.

But the controversy is this: The writer started out looking to write a story about this obscure woman who invented this putter and ended up finding out that pretty much everything about this lady was a fabrication -- from her name, to her college degrees to her job and, well, her sex.

The woman turned out to be a man.

And, as recounted late in the story, as the author pushed forward on the story and the subject asked him to stop, he didn't -- and the subject killed herself.

Yikes.

Reading for next week

So, game on. Read Chapter 1 in the Feature Writing textbook.

And read these three (3) stories below. One is about Lindsay Lohan. And the other is about Joe Biden. And the other is about ... a kid you've never heard of.

You'll see you don't need someone famous to do a compelling story -- in fact, it might be harder to write something compelling about someone like Ms. Lohan (overexposed, nearly famous for being famous) or someone like Vice President Biden (a politician, ugh, someone who you think you know everything about, who you might not like very much at all).


Print them out. Print them on paper front and back -- because they will slay trees, otherwise.

Read them with a pen. Underline, circle anything that catches your eye. Anything that surprises you, anything that makes you say, "Wow, that's a great detail!" or "Wow, that made me FEEL something!" or "Wow, I wonder how the reporter got that?"

We'll talk about the stories next class.

Have you heard the one about Joe Biden? by Jeanne Marie Laskas, GQ

Here is what happens when you cast Lindsay Lohan in your movie by Stephen Roderick, NYT Magazine

Amid churchgoers, orphan Davion pleads for a family by Lane Degregory, Tampa Bay Times

After the sky fell

Oklahoma City Bombing

Corpse on Union Street

Sacred texts