Required reading

So I'm going to read your narratives, and you're going to read these two pieces:

The $1 million bill piece, by yes me, in the "Next Wave" book. Some of you already have read it. That's cool.

And Esquire writer Mike Sager's explanation of how he hunted for the right person for his story about an ugly person living in Los Angeles. The city of beautiful people.

Yeah, an ugly guy. I remember reading this story when it came out and thinking, how did he ever make that approach? "Hi, you're ugly. Want to be in a story about that?"

And it's important to you all because it's something we've talked about a lot recently. How to shop for the right person to tell your story. You start with the notion that you want to do a story on some idea, some notion, some statistic -- and you look for the right person to tell that story.

It's important and difficult.

Be prepared to talk about it.

And you also should read -- at least several paragraphs, to understand what the story -- the original article.