Tear this up before I send it in...LONG 4-day FEATURE (20 minute read, 100 inch)

I may be just the boy walking out of the ice-cream shop, staring at the Justice League as they fly past, but I will say this – this is important writing.
You've managed to make me care about soccer balls (when I detest the sport), people I've never heard of and will likely never again and Afghanis that remain a blip of my CNN-watching screen.
That's what good journalism does. So, congrats.

 

Re: Tear this up before I send it in...LONG 4-day FEATURE (20 minute read, 100 i

Snuka,

Nice nice work. Two pre-advice caveats: I haven't had time to read it all; I'm a kid. Just wanted to say that, as someone who frequently tries to write ledes like yours and is often embarrassed by their over-the-top-ness reading them months later, I agree with Jones - you'd probably be better off killing the first little bit and starting, instead, with your best "scene." The readers will easily decipher the grand themes.

As for quotes: I agree fully with DD...less, almost always, is more - not least because limiting the number of quotes you use forces you to 1) tighten the flow of your narrative, since you don't have the benefit of their natural transition...ary qualities, and 2) think deeply about what your subjects have actually SAID in the stuff they've said. For me, usually, quote-eliminating multiplies the number of sharp/insightful lines I write.

Good work, man! Take care.

 

Brother Snuka,

I feel like Nature Boy Buddy Rogers comin' to your side. Re: the top. I'm going to offer a minority dissent here. I don't mind the idea of an overview at the top, but I would do it differently. I would just start with an image of the boy holding the soccer ball.

Four acts, so important, yet so trivial.
Four places, so independent, yet so interdependent.
Four people, so close, yet so apart.
One soccer ball.
Alone, this is just about a man who buys a soccer ball, a man who ships a soccer ball, a woman who runs an internet blog about a soccer ball, a man who drops a soccer ball.
Together, it’s about bringing light to what is otherwise dark, joy to what is otherwise sadness, peace to what is otherwise war.
They are connected by a string that spans two continents, two countries, two philosophies.
At the end of the string is a A small boy in Afghanistan clutches a soccer ball . A Nike ball (describe it a bit) stamped with a Made in Wherever. In fact the ball fell from the heavens. He’ll hold on to that ball like a new father cradles a baby. Maybe do a bit more here. He’ll look up to the sky and wave at a smiling pilot, the same pilot he might’ve thrown rocks at just weeks before.

A little more description and specificity along the way in this lead. How tall he was, maybe that he had seen a helicopter crash or tanks roll through the streets or some such. A springboard line at the end of this first section, a tease, about a story of how the ball fell from the sky and landed in his hands--that he can't hope to understand all the things that happened half a world away, like the decisions to go to war, but knows something about the kindness of strangers, some he'll never meet or somesuch. Mr Jones suggested that you could get around to the kid later, just the ball and the chopper ... I guess you could do it that way but if you want a face on the story teasing the way in, I'd go with the kid.

Anyway, it's some good work, good reporting.

YHS, etc