Can less be more? The value of ignorance came up this week at the Modern Language Association’s annual conference in Philadelphia during a session titled “Literature and Journalism.” Rob Nixon, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, talked principally about nonfiction writing and scholars making forays into journalism. But some of his ideas are instructive for [...]
Monthly Archives: December 2009
Picturing community: an interview with Los Angeles Times’ photographer Francine Orr
Photographer Francine Orr had experience reporting on poverty and humanitarian crises around the globe. But while working on “Gimme Shelter,” an audio slide show about L.A.-area homeless people living under a bridge, she found plenty to cover—and plenty to fear—right in her own back yard.
[caption id="attachment_1488" align="alignleft" width="176" caption="L.A. Times/Francine Orr"]
[/caption]
Orr spoke about the dangers of reporting on mentally ill addicts:
“There’s such a history of random violence along the river. Everything is okay there until it’s not, and sometimes you don’t have warning before it changes. I always had to be aware of who was standing behind me, because I didn’t want someone to smash the back of my head while I was doing my work.”
And on how she views journalists’ responsibilities to subjects, Orr had this to offer:
“I’m a journalist; I’m not a social worker. If I do my job well, I present the story in a truthful manner, in an accurate manner, in a somewhat compassionate manner. I leave it to the viewer, to the reader, to respond. If they feel there is a need or an injustice that requires some action, that’s their role. My role is to present the story.”
Read the full interview.
Intimate journalism: thoughts from a veteran and a beginner (part 2)
Storyboard recently talked about visual storytelling and intimacy with two very different journalists: an independent 30-year veteran and a newsroom staff photographer just two years out of graduate school.
Yesterday, we learned how Dallas Morning News reporter and relative newcomer Sonya Hebert immersed herself in the world of end-of-life care and came back with powerful stories. [...]
Intimate journalism: thoughts from a veteran and a beginner (part 1)
Storyboard recently talked about visual storytelling and intimacy with two very different journalists: an independent 30-year veteran and a newsroom staff photographer just two years out of graduate school. Tomorrow, we’ll learn what it was like for a seasoned pro to turn a camera on his own family in the midst of crisis. Today, we hear from Sonya Hebert of The Dallas Morning News, who finished a master’s program in visual communications in 2007.
Hebert’s two large-scale efforts to date include a look into adult palliative care at Baylor University and a portrait of a family whose baby lived only five days as a result of a genetic defect. Her video of the baby and his parents pairs beautifully with the print story in “Choosing Thomas,” a multimedia project selected earlier this year as a Notable Narrative.
On trying to shoot intimate pictures of sick adults under less-than-ideal conditions, Hebert says,
“What we saw over and over again was a patient in a bed in a hospital room. Visually it looked all the same, so it required tuning out what I was hearing, and really looking. Thinking, ‘How can I tell this story visually?’ Sometimes it was getting tight in on someone and waiting for them to look up in a certain way in a dark room—being ready for something to happen.”
Later, Hebert struggled with the challenge of making Thomas, a terminally-ill baby, fully human for viewers:
“In the middle of editing, I didn’t feel like the reader could fall in love with Thomas. I was worried about doing a story about a baby to begin with, and he was tougher, because he didn’t do a lot. There were just a few moments where he was like a normal little baby and you could see how cute he was. There’s a clip where he’s sneezing, and TK is saying, ‘Oh, that was my eye!’ It was something to bring a lighter side to the story before we got into the heavy dying part.”
Read the full interview.
Nieman Reports: trauma narratives
The Winter 2009 issue of Nieman Reports, “Trauma in the Aftermath,” has a lot to offer storytelling journalists. Richard Mollica of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma warns against “toxic trauma stories.” Former South African Broadcasting Corporation reporter Antjie Krog talks about the danger of interfering with history while covering it.
In a session on visual [...]
Adrienne Mayor on putting the story in history
Adrienne Mayor was a 2009 National Book Award finalist for her nonfiction book The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy. Mayor, a visiting scholar at Stanford University, has made a career of writing about monsters, myth, and dirty fighting in antiquity. In this interview, she dishes with us on building [...]
Targeting the Good Cell
Here’s a narrative challenge: recount a quarter-century of lab experiments conducted by several investigative teams working separately from Kyoto to California. Now make the story urgent and give it a sense of Olympic-level competition that might change the face of medicine.
Mark Johnson delivers, with “Targeting the Good Cell,” a three-part narrative from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. [...]
Statistics as story: narrative journalism by the numbers?
Earlier this year, at the first TED conference in India, Hans Rosling predicted the year and month that India and China will overtake the West and return Asia to world dominance. He began in classic storytelling mode with a personal anecdote.
“Once upon a time, at the age of 24” Rosling said, “I was a student at [...]
Mother Jones’ Dave Gilson: There’s a riot goin’ on
“Any minute now, Cell Block J is going to blow. My gang has occupied the long cement gallery outside our cells and we’re itching for a fight.”
A scene from the opening of a prime-time cable series? Nope—it’s the lead from a story in last month’s Mother Jones. Dave Gilson’s piece narrates a mock riot in [...]
Visual narrative and still photography: is a picture worth a thousand words?
This week, Michael Zhang (@PetaPixel) tweeted a link to this striking photo gallery of the Athens riots, which is composed of AP, AFP and Getty images. I was particularly intrigued by the role-reversal in this shot of a policeman as he retaliates.
I would argue that the pictures as a whole, and even some single images, explore the [...]
