Let me set one thing straight: I don’t believe that audio is necessarily the best way to tell a story. But I’ve spent more than a decade in this beast called radio, or “the theatre of the mind,” as it was described to me when I started, and I still harbor warm and fuzzy feelings [...]
Monthly Archives: September 2009
The Oregonian’s Shawn Levy on how to find the story
At last weekend’s American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors conference, keynote speaker Shawn Levy spoke about “getting the story” and the connections between writing books and journalism. The film critic at The Oregonian, Levy has written five books, including King of Comedy, about comedian Jerry Lewis, and his most recent biography—Paul Newman: A Life. In addition to his work at The Oregonian, he blogs about film and professional soccer, and tweets compusively, suffering from what he calls “monkey brain.”
Levy suggested reporters should “look high, look low, and look sideways” when researching, and he praised the investigative reporters who taught him how to dig for a story. He talked about the “high”—academic institutions and libraries that offer arcane documents and details. He connected the “low” with tabloid accounts and stories on a subject, and the concept of looking “sideways” with looking for what else was happening in the life and community of a subject at any given point in his life.
Read more from his talk.
Starting with pictures
The St. Petersburg Times’ latest narrative project started with photographer John Pendygraft’s wife giving him an assignment. A medical reporter, she had been covering the policy issues of the health care debates, but rarely got more into her pieces than a quote from those struggling with healthcare issues. After meeting a woman who was going through insulin [...]
The Boo Radley character
Today at the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors (AASFE) conference, St. Petersburg Times reporter Lane DeGregory talked about how her Pulitzer-winning feature “The Girl in the Window” came together. The multimedia project narrated the discovery and adoption of seven year-old Danielle, who had been so neglected by her mother that she was still [...]
Interview with Chris Jones: Building a mystery
by Andrea Pitzer |
September 11, 2009
Excerpts from a September 2009 interview with Chris Jones on “The End of Mystery,” in which a team of investigators recovers bodies and determines the cause of a helicopter crash off the coast of Newfoundland:
Q: How did you find out about the investigation into the Newfoundland crash?
A: I live in Ottawa, Canada. This was a big story in Canada—it [...]
Dissecting disaster: Chris Jones’ “The End of Mystery”
The first Notable Narrative for September takes a police procedural as its template. The article begins with the loss of a Sikorsky S-92 helicopter in March 2009 off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada. This Esquire story from Chris Jones tracks the investigators who work to unravel the cause and manner of death for all [...]
Interview with Ed Kashi: Taking it beyond the media
Interview by Andrea Pitzer |
September 3, 2009
We talked with photojournalist Ed Kashi about visual storytelling, advocacy journalism, and his photo series on Trans Amadi Slaughter, an abattoir on the Niger Delta.
Q: At the Digest, we’ve talked about whether a series of photos needs to work the same way as a print story: a character, a conflict, rising tension, climax, resolution. Do you think a photo montage or a slide show functions by the same rules? Or does it have a different narrative structure?
A: I think it can go both ways. The beauty or the exciting aspect of multimedia is that we can try new things. It seems like some proponents are saying there’s only one way to tell a narrative: the beginning, the middle, transformation, and the end. There’s nothing wrong with classic modes of storytelling. They’re effective, and they’ll continue to be effective. There’s a reason they work.
