Fantastic piece on a heartbreaking tale

Beautiful piece. And nice use of the paper's multimedia devices.

John answers questions about the interview and reporting process here:

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=123767

 

Thanks for this, Gingerbread. Good, good stuff.

225 inches.... Wow.

 

The praise is deserved. Take a bow.

 

I second that thanks to gingerbread for posting that link to the Q&A. Those were some very interesting and honest answers by John.

 

With so much negativity on this board lately, I'd really like to keep this thread up high on everyone's radar. Call it a therapeutic tool, or whatever, I just don't want to see this disappear onto the next page. ;D

 

Absolutely incredible. Every bit of it is outstanding, but I don't think I have ever seen a story that puts such a fine point on the little nuances of a relationship like this one did. I knew how it would end, but for Michelle and Jake's sake, I just couldn't handle the inevitability of it all.

Masterful work, Mr. Romano.

 

Indeed.

 

andykent, do you have a secret crush on John?

 

No Huck. Like I said earlier, it was such a strong piece and I feel more worthy of discussion than some of the other threads, like Justin Blanchard over on the U-T thread. It has been exactly a week since it ran in the St. Pete Times, and I just didn't want to see it relegated to the second page yet. 8)

 

This reminds me of the story I read through a link on here about the officers who break the bad news and then work with the families afterward. Both feature the hard truth, artfully told.

 

John,
A few questions, if you happen to return here.
**You write in the Poynter forum: "I gave the outline to cohort Gary Shelton and asked what he thought. He sent me an e-mail that eloquently expressed the story's real meaning. I showed the e-mail to my wife and she said Gary summed the story up in three minutes better than I had in three weeks."

Can you share Gary's e-mail? I'd love to know how he summed up such a tragic, romantic love affair.

and you write:
**There were two scenes that I thought would play big roles in the finished product. Early in Michelle and Dave's courtship there was a moment where she was coming to his base at Fort Benning to take part in an anti-war protest, and he was horrified at the idea. He eventually talked her out of it. That scene was one of the last things to get cut."

Those details show the heart of what Michelle and Dave were. Did you take out the scene because it had too much political implication? I can see where the reader might have stuck on their differences, but it also highlighted the strength of their love, because in the end their differences didn't matter.

In any event, I can't get their story out of my mind. You did a phenomenal job. I doubt it's been easy for you to let it go, either.

 

Got a message from Ira this morning about some questions on the story. I feel really awkward doing this because it seems rather pompous, but I do appreciate the kind words and so I'll try to answer without sounding like an ass. (Or, some would say, sounding like myself.)

In a big picture sense, the story follows the outline very closely. What changed during the writing process were the Oct. 22 sections (i.e. the Iraq sections) that broke up the story.

We knew this was going to be a long piece and I was concerned with how to keep readers interested. At one point, we considered using Dave's journal entries between each section of the story but I dismissed that as too much of a gimmick. What I wanted was some sense of pacing or drama. I finally figured out I had talked to enough of Dave's colleagues in Iraq and had enough material from his journal to reconstruct the events of the day he died.

So, basically, I followed my outline to do the backstory and then interspersed the Oct. 22 sections to, hopefully, build some sense of impending doom.

And, no, I did not talk to resident Pulitzer Prize winner Tom French. I'm not even sure I'm allowed on his floor of the building.

Someone asked for Shelton's synopsis that I talked about on a Poynter Q&A. For those of you who read Gary regularly, you know there may not be a more talented person in our business. I often use him as a backboard, and this story was no exception. I even used a variation of one of his lines for a tease to the section. His email was long (insert desk joke) so I'll just offer a small portion of what he wrote:

"John, this is a wonderful-and-horrible story. Even reading the outline, it
is clear this is a young woman's life rushing at you all at once, the joys
and the sorrows, the love and the loss. It is a romance of misplaced
kids that turned into a war story that ends in sadness and of those fleeing
moments in between. It's a story about how precious life is and how rare
love is....''

As for editing the anecdote about Michelle's plans to attend an anti-war rally at Dave's base while they were dating, it was just a victim of circumstance. In the original outline, I was using that scene to set up the epilogue (in which I wanted to use Michelle's conflicted reflections on the war). Before I finished writing, however, President Bush visited CentCom in Tampa and offered to meet with Michelle's family. That changed the top of the epilogue. I tried working the anti-war rally in other places, but it felt forced.

Whew. I hope all of this does not sound too self-indulgent. Please understand, it is only because of the graciousness of your posts that I felt compelled to answer these questions.

john