On quotes and veracity
The next time you read a magazine article, ask yourself, “Do people really talk like this?”
I’m referring to the paragraph-long quotes in long pieces where the truth of the story matters even more than the nitty-gritty accuracies. If you’re going to keep your reader submerged in the narrative of your work, how can you […]
On Narrative Nonfiction
This has to be brief.
Much like the real thing, the education of journalism in its later stages, piles deadlines upon deadlines, so there isn’t much time to opine on the philosophical underpinnings of pedagogy.
I am writing mostly narrative nonfiction these days. It is an exercise in psychology.
Narrative functions not on the level of events and […]
End of Days
The last threads of faith are scattering from my frayed talis. Slick-haired weatherman just told me tomorrow, mother nature’s gonna kick my ass. So I looked it up on weather.gov. 45 and breezy.
So let me get this straight….
a car barrels through scuffling pedestrians in Manhattan. A man breaks both kneecaps. The driver speeds away. Next […]
A Brief One
Keep your eyes open. This is the essence of journalistic preparedness. At Columbia News Service, a Spring-semester class that puts assignments on a news wire run under the auspices of the New York times, and which goes out to over 400 newspapers nationally, we have five articles to write over the course of the semester. […]
Starting Hard
February 7, 2008
Writing the long form is a different animal. Material is gathered in the same ways – conducting interviews, pounding the pavement in hope of the random pickup, doing historical research – but the process is entirely different.
Quotes are molded to fit the form, ideas are fleshed out in lengthy, luxurious strokes of thought. […]
Dispatch from an Interview
January 24, 2008
Ten minutes after a laughing conversation about experiences decapitating small mammals, the scientist and I entered into journalistic no-man’s land. He says to me that the university should be very proud about the research he’s been doing; and that I should write that.
Later in the day, walking in the blustery uptown winds across […]
Gonzo Soup, A Dweezil Halloween
January 17, 2008
gonzo : 1 : idiosyncratically subjective but engagé 2 : bizarre 3 : freewheeling or unconventional especially to the point of outrageousness
Wikipedia on the Origins of Gonzo: The term “gonzo” was first used by Boston Globe editor Bill Cardoso in 1970 when he described Hunter S. Thompson’s The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and […]
Cold Shoulder
January 17, 2008
On Saturday, I am sitting in a very cold, very drafty room in upstate New York. The room is in a house which is rather cold and drafty all over. Outside, it is snowing and the sounds of college students on break splinters through the wet air. Inside, the shuffling steps of people […]
Respite
December 11, 2007
Twenty-four hours ago I wasn’t happy. Thick in the middle of an exam on law and journalism, my head was deep in supreme court rulings. NYT v. Sullivan, Cohen v. Cowles, Bartniki, Food Lion, Shulman, Sanders, the list goes on. These cases outline the borders of how press can function […]
Knuckling up for the new year
December 30, 2007
Things move fast at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
The first semester went by in a blur. Like some distorted bender upon which you find yourself trolling the late night cracks in the sidewalks, boarding the wrong subway and getting into a fist fight just blocks from home (an experience I’d rather not […]