Lede in Esquire: Pushing the bounds of "nonfiction"?

But, Buck, what's odd is that there are other parts of the story where he writes things like, "... police believe" and "... according to police reports." So why not here?

 

A) It would have killed the lead and B) It wasn't (in my opinion) necessary.

IJAG, again you make my point: "I can read it and know he wasn't there."

Yes, you can.

 

Good essay about this kind of stuff:

http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=3491

Do not add. This means that writers of nonfiction should not add to a report things that did not happen.To make news clear and comprehensible, it is often necessary to subtract or condense. Done without care or responsibility, even such subtraction can distort. We cross a more definite line into fiction, however, when we. invent or add facts or images or sounds that were not there.

 

And, FYI, I'm not merely bothered that the author wasn't there. We've all recreated scenes that we weren't present for. Jones did it for 17,000 words in his Iraq story. I don't have an issue with that.

My issue is that the subject of the scene was by himself and died before he could tell anyone about it, but Vann is recreating the scene down to him sitting on the bed with a gun on his lap and checking out his own tattoo in the mirror.

The rest of the piece is straight out of the sealed 1,500-page police report -- which, BTW, was leaked to Esquire -- and interviews with Kazmierczak's friends.

The lede just doesn't jive with the adherence to what can be proven that guides the piece the rest of the way.

 

What's the upside to that looser rope? That it might be more entertaining to some?

What's the downside to that looser rope? That people might believe everything in the mag is similarly fudged.

I don't believe there's a lot of integrity there. I have a problem when the editorial side does front-of-the-book wardrobes -- supposedly buying advice for readers -- and every piece of attire is from an advertiser when there are identical items that are not only better-made but cheaper.

So, yeah, it's no breaking news to regular readers that Esquire places its readers third, behind its advertisers and the whims of its editors and writers. Knowing that doesn't mean we have to endorse it.

If Esquire's editors want to believe they make the rules, they are kidding themselves. The readers judge them by our rules, not theirs.

 

i tried to read the article but stopped. i couldn't handle the short, choppy sentences. and the lede was no good.

 

Boy, really? People who are universally down on newspapers are applying our ethical standards to magazine writing?

Not seeing it.

 

I've reached my redundancy saturation point, but: Poynter is about newspapers, first and foremost.

 

Nope, readers judge by their own standards. If they're supposed to make allowances on this story, they're going to think Jones took the same liberties with his. Which is unfair, because Jones said everything he wrote was fact-checked. You spend all that money getting one story right, and it's all undone by lowering the standards on another story.

Everyone's an expert at something. If you go to message boards devoted to men's fashion, the common perception is that Esquire and GQ are either ignorant about clothing or whores for their advertisers. No doubt the cops reading this story think it's bullshit. Editors don't set the rules, readers do.

 

So apparently all the guys mentioned in the essay - Tom Wolfe, Liebler, etc., etc., were newspaper guys? Didn't know that. Thanks.

Not to sound like an asshole or redundant, but you're just flat wrong in this case. No gray area.

 

I'm not concerned with all the very prominent and respected people in the essay, just that paragragh.

And Jesus, if you're going to tell me that Tom Wolfe never added a single detail or recount of a happening based purely on extrapolating from known facts, then I don't know know what to tell you. That's a 99 on the 1 to 100 scale of naivete.

As far as being flat wrong, well, I guess that's it then.

 

Then Tom Wolfe was wrong, too. And plenty of people think so. Same thing with Truman Capote. The standards have been established by now. They were still evolving then.