Jeff Pearlman - Anatomy of a story

As a non-journo, I thought this was fascinating:

http://jeffpearlman.com/?p=1134

And the story:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/jeff_pearlman/03/04/anthony.latham/index.html?eref=T1

 

That was OUTSTANDING...the anatomy as much as the story, the latter of which had a powerhouse ending.

Thanks for linking, SS.

 

Why was he driving? I thought John Rocker was his driver.

 

Jeff is always a great read.
I just wish I knew how he managed to live a life away from his laptop.

 

both the blog and the SI story were great reads. Thanks for sharing.

 

Wow. What a great story.

 

Excellent story, and a great timeline on how he put it together.

 

The SI story was elegant and told with class, but I would love to have known how he would have done step 9 1/2 (which freelancers always have to do): pitch the story to an editor and get a "yes" before sitting down to write it.

I suspect he would have had an awfully hard time getting the idea accepted because the essence of it is: Friends/family still mourning other athlete who also died in boat accident.

zzz

 

Interesting stuff.

And this thread gives me another opportunity to tout Pearlman's Cowboys book, "Boys Will Be Boys." Just finished it, and it's terrific. Details, pacing, humor -- it's a great example of how to present a ton of info and make it really readable.

 

What editor wouldn't want that, especially now?
The question is, would a freelancer go through all the earlier steps of tracking down participants and doing interviews without the story being accepted? It's not easy calling someone's mother and telling her you'd like to do a story on her dead son, but you're not sure anybody will run the story, but would she mind talking anyway? Being able to say you're from SI gets around some of that.
Fabulous work by Jeff, all around.

 

Obviously the timeliness of the story is what makes it interesting. Pearlman shows this isn't the first time an accident like this has happened to athletes.