Tom Hallman, Pulitzer winner at The Oregonian, spoke about print narrative and its future at the recent American Association of Sunday and Features Editors conference.
Nieman Storyboard posted his talk, which included a lot of uplifting thoughts about what storytelling means to people and to newspapers, things like:
The way we can define ourselves is by telling stories.
and
At every newspaper, storytelling can be the tonic to help us get through these times. For the writers, it means they connect with the readers. For the newspapers, it helps brand a paper in the community.
He also said some provocative things:
But I do worry about the next generation because they are not schooled in the craft of reporting. They’re more interested in writing than they are in reporting. And many of them feel entitled, saying, “I want to be a writer. I don’t want to spend two years covering cops.”
and
One of the negative things coming out of the golden age of narrative journalism is the whole writing coach, seminar, Nieman conference thing. We still have a little bit of that hanging on
now.
As you can tell just from that stuff, it's a good read.
Lots of interesting stuff here, most of which I agree with, some I don't. But I think the best thing he said was this:
ReplyDelete"I’ve been on both extremes. I had one major project I was working on for a long time, and it was not healthy in a sense. Because the act of writing is something you keep practicing. Writing frequently makes you hone the skill of getting it done."
Reporting can drag on, breaking news can reshuffle your budget, but at the end of the day, when it's time to write, it's time to write. Then re-write. I know the longer I've tried to drag out the concept on projects, the worse the results.