The Thread to Discuss - and Learn From - Good Writing

Got another story I ripped through this afternoon that's worth your time. It's sort of like the one St. John wrote, but I think the writing is a bit more intimate, and the difficulty level of reporting it must have required is practically off the charts.

Kurt Streeter, who has been churning out a lot of great narratives for the LA Times recently (including two that made it into 2006 BASW), followed a football player from the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, Calif. for a season. The team was not very good, awful in fact, but that almost makes it better. It's not an earth-shattering piece of writing -- I liked it very much but didn't love it as much as some of Kurt's pieces -- but the reporting it must have required is staggering, and worth admiring.

It was an interesting choice to focus on just one kid. Not sure what I think about it.

There are a couple phrases I thought were awkward early on -- ("The air is filled with muffled quiet.") -- but the story drew me in anyway. It's also a great example of showing, not telling. I think there is only one quote in this story that's not dialogue. And it's from a coach.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-me-shawn28jan28,1,5767553,full.story

Here is a box that ran with the story, explaining how some of the reporting was done. Photos were pretty good too.

 

Not sure if I'm if this is a thread with an audience of one, but I'm going to keep posting stories here. Again, I encourage you to post your own, or discuss the ones I've posted.


This is one of the most powerful pieces of political journalism I've read in awhile, which is fitting I guess, because no one writes with more "authority" than Charlie Pierce. His sentences, especially his endings, always sting like a right hook to the chin. Chuck Hagel was, in many ways, just a name to me before reading this piece, but after reading it, I could feel a lot of his pain. It's a story about where we come from, what shapes us, and why Hagel understands, in the way many of his colleagues (on both sides of the aisle) do not, the cost of war. Read it if only for its chilling, sad, beautiful final line, which haunted me for some time after I was finished, the way great writing should.

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/chuckhagel0407

Well done, Charlie.

Other than the ending, this was probably my favorite part.

 

On the Josh Hamilton thread BYH has posted a terrific multi-part story from a few years back by Anne Hull when she was with the Palm Beach Post on Josh Hamilton - lots of foreshadowing of the difficulties he had, and spot on writing and reporting. Worth a look.

 

I will check that out, and possibly add it to the stuff here, especially in light of my fawning over the Sheinin piece.

Anyone who has read the three-part series and wants to comment on it, talk about its strengths and perhaps quote from their favorite passage, is more than welcome to post it here.

 

Great thread.

Charlie Pierce is the man. That story sings, and I hate stories about politics.

 

Took me awhile to get to these today, but I'd like to thank BYH for posting these three Josh Hamilton stories by Anne Hull on another thread that are simple an outstanding piece of narrative journalism. As BYH said, these stories to clearly foreshadow some of the stuff Hamilton ended up facing (the tattoo scene gives you chills) but it's also a really good story about minor league baseball, and simply a great piece of writing. I'd really like to know how much time Hull spent reporting this story, because the details are incredible. For some reason, the first piece had the most energy for me, but all three were great.

Again, thanks BYH.

By the way, Hull now works at the Washington Post, and she is one of the two reporters (Dana Priest was the other) who spent four months on the Walter Reed stuff. I didn't know much about her before, but I'm a big fan now.

Part One: http://www.sptimes.com/News/102499/Worldandnation/Greener_than_grass.shtml

Part Two: http://www.sptimes.com/News/102599/Worldandnation/The_roughnecks_of_sum.shtml

Part Three: http://www.sptimes.com/News/102699/Worldandnation/Ring_the_bell.shtml

 

From the Fugees story:

ugh.

Questioned by this reporter is terrible. That's the kind of crap one of our bozo cops reporters gets away with.

And did anyone else feel that the story just ended kind of abruptly?

 

*tips cap*

Once in a while I contribute something worthwhile. Glad you all thought it was worth posting here.

DD, it seemed to me she spent the entire summer with the team 24/7. There's stuff in there from the dugout I don't think she got second-hand. It feels and sounds like she was in the dugout.

The writing and reporting here is just exquisite. While Hamilton is the focal point, Anne Hull does a beautiful job of describing the first summer in professional ball: How it starts so innocently, with the million dollar bonus kid Carl Crawford having no idea how to read a box score and Princeton playing in front of a full house...and how the anonymous repetition of the season eventually swallows the kids up and breaks everyone down, killing the dreams of many and forever hardening the few who survive.

As I said on the Hamilton thread, this story is so good on so many levels it alternately intimidates (as in: Fuck, I'll never ever be that good) and inspires (as in: Fuck, I want to be this good).

DD, thanks for the props and for posting it in this particular thread. Hopefully it generates some discussion.

 

The impressive thing to me is that while she clearly was new to baseball -- I'd be surprised if she'd ever been on a baseball field before -- she just as clearly had a reporter's most necessary skill: she could get herself to the people and to the places that made the story come alive.

I'd say doing that series was more a test of her ability than the Walter Reed stories of this winter.

And whatever happened to Hamilton's parents? Omnipresent in Hull's series, they seem to have disappeared from his life. At least they don't show up in stories of his comeback. Probably a great stage-parent story there.

 

I did feel like that was somewhat abrupt, Wonderlic. You're immersed in the narrative for 90 inches, without any mention of a reporter or a narrator, and then BAM, you're hit with St. John's presence right near the end.

However, even though it was awkward, I felt like the Times probably decided it was necessary, in the name of full disclosure, to make it clear that the kids continued to play soccer on those fields after their own reporter affected the story. I don't think it's any secret that the Times has sort of a stuffy style, so it struck me as a product of that. But I agree, it was a bit jarring.

 

It seems clear that she was, more or less, a part of the team for three months, and when you get that kind of access and are simply allowed to observe, you can get some wonderful stuff. (Knowing what to get, and then knowing how to present it, are much harder and a credit to Hull as a reporter and a writer.) You really have to tip your cap to the St. Pete Times for committing to something like this. I assume they essentially said, "Yeah, you can spend three months on the road with the team in West Virginia, then Massachusetts." Reading over it again, I think almost none of it was reconstructed. I think all of it was witnessed first-hand.

I wonder how she went about asking the Devil Rays for permission to follow Hamilton, and what made them decide to green-light it. Seems like in the age of diminishing access, teams are much more likely to laugh in your face if you ask to do this kind of thing.

Dave, I'd be surprised if she was totally new to baseball, unless you know something about Hull that I don't. The story read like it could have been written by someone who had spent a lifetime around baseball. No awkward phrasing, no clunky paragraphs that made me think she was trying to convey something she herself was green to.

Why did you get the sense that she was new to baseball and had never been on a field before?


Here, by the way, is a very insightful Q & A Hull did with the Neiman people (after a story she did on female immigrant workers) where she talks about narrative journalism, and the power of shutting up and observing. Obviously spending six months working on a story is something that's totally unrealistic for 99.5 percent of journalists, but the stuff she talks about here is important if you want to attempt this kind of writing someday, whether you're spending one day with a subject, or 200 days.

http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/narrative/digest/essays/hullintvw-soennichs-nnd.html

 

I admired the work, don't get me wrong....it was beautifully done...but the way you can read a player's body language, I read her baseball language....it was always just a bit off, like someone using a learned second language....that's to her credit, by the way, and more so if it didn't sound off to you......and I thought she pumped up the drama of the playoff a bit much.....