Covering what some consider the 'fringe' demands our best

This story hit home with me. It's not a great narrative, or even a great feature story. It's The Washington Post's ombudsman explaining why he thinks the paper was doing its job when it did a takeout on one of the most visible leaders of the "Birther" movement.

The Post caught flack for story because many people -- readers (and journalists, too, I'm sure) -- think the "Birther" people are wackos, and giving them ink gives them credibility, and giving them credibility is wrong and could even be dangerous.

We caught the same kind of flack a couple weeks ago when we put a Twitter gadget online to pull in tweets from an anti-health-bill rally in D.C.

"why are you covering this like it's a legitimate story?" AdamBeck5 asked. I responded (on behalf of the YDR account): "There were York County voices in a national debate about a huge issue that might be resolved in a couple of days. Seemed timely."

The Twitter widget is its own animal; it's basically just a ticker of opinions and thoughts on a particular topic. But I think it's critical for us to remember that, when we report on controversial issues, people or organizations, we ask questions that need to be asked and answered, and we tell stories about why people are acting in the way they are. If we do those stories well -- if we have context, if the tone is right, if we aim to shed light on the issue and the actors -- we are doing our job.

In fact, in a way, we are doing the best work we can possibly do. People are doing things, trying to accomplish things -- why? what does it mean? who agrees with them? who opposes them? What does this tell us about our society and culture?

Sometimes we assess a policy stance or a line of thought or a course of action -- e.g., the "Birther" movement -- as being so off the charts that to treat it seriously is to undercut ourselves as serious journalists. My argument here is that we do exactly the opposite; we make ourselves indispensable.

The key is to get it right. And to do that, the reporting has to be deep; the writing must tell a true story, keeping spin and lies out; and the piece must not have, as its goal, to discredit its subjects. And to do all that, we have to shed the idea that we're wasting our time on a fringe element that we shouldn't be "legitimizing." We are, in fact, doing good journalism.

Telling a great story

In the next couple days I am going to post a Q&A with the writer of the Washington Post's metro crash story.

Eli Saslow, a graduate of Syracuse University, is a fantastic writer and reporter. I met him this year though a mutual friend, but was a fan of his writing before that.

One of my favorites is "In Flag City USA, False Obama Rumors are Flying." His story about the son of a Redskins coach was chosen for inclusion in the 2008 edition of The Best American Sports Writing.

If you have some questions for Saslow, please leave a comment or send me an e-mail. I am going to try to send them to him by the end of the week.

Little things add up to big things

Here's a Washington Post narrative piece on the Metro train that crashed, focusing on a handful of passengers and built around a last-one-on, last-one-off structure.

There are a lot of things to take from this story, but here's one that struck me: The detail of the guy walking from the front of the car to the back. It happens early in the story. The writer notes that this guy was all about protecting his personal time, and being in the back of the car put him closer to where he wanted to go when he left the train. "That seemed important," the story says. And it was, as you'll find out.

But the reporting tool to take from this is: Clearly, the reporter asked the guy to recreate everything he did on the train. When the guy said he walked from the front to back, the reporter had to have asked, "Why did you do that?" And the guy must have answered, to save time. How much time? the reporter might have asked? A few seconds, the guy may have answered.

But the reporter didn't stop there. He/she must gone on to a Metro train and paced it off -- allowing him/her to give you the info that, basically, nine seconds made the difference for this guy.

For a narrative, no question is too small, no answer insignificant. You need everything you can get, because only when you have that can you truly take someone through the crucial scenes in your story (or, in this case, the entire story).