Jeff Pearlman - Anatomy of a story

Great read. Thanks for the links. The last line was killer.

 

Wow. Amazing reads, both of them.

(Tip for those who haven't clicked the links yet: Read the anatomy first. The story will just knock you out. Read that last.)

 

Just finished it and it's definitely entertaining. And not just the stuff about clubbing and Charles Haley's penis. The football stuff is terrific, too, which I think makes the book all the better. It's truly a great narrative arc about the rise and fall of an NFL dynasty, and the characters drive it - Jerry Jones, Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer, namely. The quotes are amazing, guys just giving spot-on candid assessments of teammates, about guys being slow, guys being lazy and on and on and on.

One thing I wondered as I read was how people who were cooperative felt about their portrayal afterward. Mike Shula is one. Pearlman absolutely lambasts him as an inept buffoon as an offensive coordinator, but there are plenty of "Shula says" quotes in there, meaning that Jeff actually talked to him. Not that Pearlman has an obligation to treat people he spoke with with any deference, but I'm not sure they likely feel the same way.

Another thing I admired - not to take this thread too far off the tracks - was how well he integrated original reporting and research. An NFL team like the Cowboys has been so picked over by news coverage, magazine articles, instabooks and biographies that there's a ton of information out there. You can probably write a pretty good book without ever picking up the phone actually. I'm a sucker for end notes, and I was impressed by what a good job he did finding what was already out there and working it into the narrative.

 

That photographic memory of the minutiae of the past is a true separator.

Great, great stuff.

 

That would have been an immediate green light

 

re: "That would have been an immediate green light"

Really? Who would have taken it? Aside from Latham's hometown paper? (No disrespect meant to the sources.) It's a very poignant and well-reported non-story, in my view.

Also, consider this tangent: if that story would have been about an Olympic athlete, I'm pretty sure everyone would be up in arms about hearing violin strings and what a cliche, oh boo hoo...regardless of how beautifully written or produced.

 

I'm curious, from others who have read "Boys Will Be Boys," what did you think of the quoting of fellow media members? Michael Silver is quoted a lot in there. So is Randy Galloway. They give some of the best quotes and anecdotes in the book, actually. Largely because media people are more likely to be candid than athletes, who sometimes still follow the code of omerta years after retiring.

But I know we've had discussions around these parts before where people questioned the use of fellow media members as sources.

 

Of course you quote media. They are part of the story.

 

That's what I think, too. I've seen other people express a different opinion at times on this board. Not with relation to Pearlman's book specifically. Just in general.

 

If you don't understand why that story wouldn't be green-lit, you may have to set a record for my fastest sent to the Ignore Gulag.

 

I can't believe the number of people in this business these days who seem to think that a story has to be local to have any interest. A great story is a great story. Is it all the better if has a local tie? Of course. But it sickens me all the small-minded people in the business who dismiss an idea if it's not local.

 

Good story. Pearlman's one of the best. This was obviously done under time constraints, but for most of us, that's how journalism is done. It's great to see why and how he did things the way he did given he was under the gun. An instructive lesson and a nice medium-length story.