The Write Stuff

William Safire, the Nixon speechwriter turned Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times, cared deeply about words and the way we use them. It’s fitting, then, that his obituary today paid homage to his longtime column on language as well as his famously alliterative phrase about the press, “the nattering nabobs of negativism.” The Times’ Robert D. McFadden also showed us how the use of small but specific details add up to a masterful description:

He was hardly the image of a buttoned-down Times man: The shoes needed a shine, the gray hair a trim. Back in the days of suits, his jacket was rumpled, the shirt collar open, the tie askew. He was tall but bent — a man walking into the wind. He slouched and banged a keyboard, talked as fast as any newyawka and looked a bit gloomy, like a man with a toothache coming on.

The obit also included, for both our edification and amusement, Safire’s “rules for writers”: Remember to never split an infinitive. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. Avoid cliches like the plague. And don’t overuse exclamation marks!!

Safire lived by words.  And he left us words to live by.

The death of one of our great writers, John Updike, sent me on a search for memories. Although best known for his novels and short stories, Updike was an extraordinary observer of real life, whether it was the glories of a pencil or the last at-bat of baseball legend Ted Williams. Here’s a memorable piece from Oct. 22, 1960 that had me on my feet cheering from the first sentence to the last:

The afternoon grew so glowering that in the sixth inning the arc lights were turned on–always a wan sight in the daytime, like the burning headlights of a funeral procession. Aided by the gloom, Fisher was slicing through the Sox rookies, and Williams did not come to bat in the seventh. He was second up in the eighth. This was almost certainly his last time to come to the plate in Fenway Park, and instead of merely cheering, as we had at his three previous appearances, we stood, all of us, and applauded. I had never before heard pure applause in a ballpark. No calling, no whistling, just an ocean of handclaps, minute after minute, burst after burst, crowding and running together in continuous succession like the pushes of surf at the edge of the sand. It was a sombre and considered tumult. There was not a boo in it. It seemed to renew itself out of a shifting set of memories as the Kid, the Marine, the veteran of feuds and failures and injuries, the friend of children, and the enduring old pro evolved down the bright tunnel of twenty-two summers toward this moment. At last, the umpire signalled for Fisher to pitch; with the other players, he had been frozen in position. Only Williams had moved during the ovation, switching his bat impatiently, ignoring everything except his cherished task. Fisher wound up, and the applause sank into a hush.

Understand that we were a crowd of rational people. We knew that a home run cannot be produced at will; the right pitch must be perfectly met and luck must ride with the ball. Three innings before, we had seen a brave effort fail. The air was soggy, the season was exhausted. Nevertheless, there will always lurk, around the corner in a pocket of our knowledge of the odds, an indefensible hope, and this was one of the times, which you now and then find in sports, when a density of expectation hangs in the air and plucks an event out of the future.

Fisher, after his unsettling wait, was wide with the first pitch. He put the second one over, and Williams swung mightily and missed. The crowd grunted, seeing that classic swing, so long and smooth and quick, exposed. Fisher threw the third time, Williams swung again, and there it was. The ball climbed on a diagonal line into the vast volume of air over center field. From my angle, behind third base, the ball seemed less an object in flight than the tip of a towering, motionless construct, like the Eiffel Tower or the Tappan Zee Bridge. It was in the books while it was still in the sky. Brandt ran back to the deepest corner of the outfield grass, the ball descended beyond his reach and struck in the crotch where the bullpen met the wall, bounced chunkily, and vanished.

Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs–hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn’t tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted “We want Ted” for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he refused. Gods do not answer letters.

Although his writing often seemed effortless, Updike worked hard at his craft. Here’s an excerpt from an interview in which Updike, even though he’s discussing his short fiction, teaches an important lesson to those of us trying to write good stories:

With any short story you try to write first sentences that will in some way pique the readers’ interest, and then a lot of middle, and then you try to write a last sentence that will in some way close the case, close the issue, resolve it all, and leave him or her with a satisfied feeling of having seen a complete picture.

Take another look at the passage about Williams’ last at-bat. See how Updike applies his formula — a stage-setting first sentence, a middle that builds on it, and an ending that leaves readers satisfied. Then try to use his advice in your own work. You’ll be glad you did.

For more of Updike’s advice to writers, check out this excellent summary.

The occasional newsletter from the Writing Coaches at the
CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

Tim Harper        Room 413 (or hanging out in the newsroom)
Tuesday         noon – 5 p.m.
Wednesday         10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
Thursday         noon – 5 p.m.
Or by appointment:  tim.harper@journalism.cuny.edu

Contact Heath Meriwether anytime at heath.meriwether@journalism.cuny.edu

—

“The language we use matters.” — President Barack Obama, Jan. 26, in interview with Al Arabiya network.

While President Obama was referring to the words used to describe the situation in the Mideast, he provided a refreshing reminder about the power of language in what we do.

Joshua Cinelli, in his commencement speech for the Class of ’08, conveyed what life was like for his classmates. His words bear repeating:

“We wrote beat memos, went to community board meetings.
“We went on cop ride-alongs, we studied Near vs. Minnesota and freedom of information laws in legal and ethics, we learned the research methods of the 21st century from a document frame of mind.
“We learned boots-on-the-ground journalism.
“As one professor is fond of saying, journalism today is more than twittering in your underwear.”

Joshua’s words underscore what is said every day in classrooms and the newsroom around here. The new technologies for telling a story, like Twitter, are useful but it is the “boots-on-the-ground” reporting that will define us as journalists.  Joshua capped his speech with an homage to Studs Terkel, who spent a reporting lifetime listening to the stories of ordinary people:

“The lesson Studs Terkel can teach us is one of the most important we can ever learn and I hope you take it with you.
“To listen. Let me say that again in case you missed it. To listen.
“Asking the questions is only half of our job. The other important part is to listen carefully and with great skepticism. And not just to the politicians and the power brokers, but to everyone who has a story to tell.”

SHOUT OUTS

As Jere Hester already has noted, there’s been no shortage of good work between semesters.  We particularly liked how Rachel Geizhals provided not just a news lede but some historical context for the Bushwick neighborhood that gave her Brooklyn Eagle story far more meaning:

BUSHWICK — The FDNY’s plan to cancel night shifts at several firehouses — including one in Bushwick, which was ravaged by arson in the 1970s — is reawakening bleak memories and igniting new fears for some New Yorkers.
Bushwick’s Himrod Street firehouse will be one of four to lose a night shift come mid-January as the FDNY reduces expenses to meet budget cuts. Company 124, the search-and-rescue unit at Himrod Street, will still serve round the clock, but Engine Company 271, the fire-dousing unit, will only operate from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
“Fire service is like insurance,” said Rodrick Wallace, an epidemiologist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute who has studied Bushwick’s fire history. “To save money, are you going to cancel your health insurance over the weekend?”

BTW, what a strong storytelling quote!

Hats off, too, to Collin Orcutt, who has started a web site, Box Score Beat (http://boxscorebeat.com/), that reports on the people reporting on sports.  Without getting on a soapbox, Collin makes a compelling case for why beat writers make such a difference.  Because they’re there every day, learning about the people they report on, they can uncover such delightful insights as Jack Quick of The Oregonian recently revealed to his readers:

Remember the movie “Shawshank Redemption,” where Andy Dufresne wrote a letter every week to the state to get books for the prison library? Well, the same concept is under way with the grandmother of Blazers center Joel Przybilla. The octogenarian plans to write NBA commissioner David Stern a series of letters complaining about the $7,500 fine Przybilla received for his part in an altercation with New Orleans center Tyson Chandler on Friday. Chandler was ejected and suspended a game for throwing a punch. Przybilla said he was stunned at the fine, but was handling it better than his grandmother.
“She said she is going to keep writing Stern until she hears back from him,” Przybilla said, smiling. “And believe me, she will.”

Speaking of sports, Tim Persinko scored a knockout with his Canarsie Courier feature on boxer Dmitry Salita, a practicing Orthodox Jew who cannot work or travel on Saturdays.  We particularly enjoyed the observation from Salita’s long-time trainer, Jimmy O’Pharrow:

At sundown on the Saturday of his Garden bout, Salita hurried from his home in Midwood, to make it to the Garden in time for his 9 p.m. match. Before entering the ring, Salita had a rabbi say a prayer in the dressing room. After that, O’Pharrow said his own prayer in the dressing room.
“It wasn’t the same thing but I guess it was the same thing,” said O’Pharrow. “Go out there and kick some butt, period. I didn’t say it like that when I said it to the man upstairs, but that’s what it basically meant.”

With that as our inspiration, let’s continue to kick some journalism butt during the rest of the semester.

Cheers,
Heath & Tim

Gene Roberts’ first editor was blind but it didn’t deter him from teaching the young reporter out of the University of North Carolina one of the most valuable lessons of his long, storied career.

“Make me see,” the editor of the Goldsboro (N.C.) News-Argus would demand after he’d heard Roberts’ daily farm column read to him. It’s a lesson Roberts never forgot as he went on to cover the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War for the New York Times and, as editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, lead his newspaper to 17 Pulitzer Prizes in his 18 years there.

The journalism icon, now 76, who teaches writing and the history of the press in the civil rights movement at the University of Maryland’s College of Journalism, spoke at CUNY last Thursday to students in Prof. Michael Arena’s investigative journalism class and, yes, a few awestruck professors.

Here are Roberts’ Rules of reporting and writing, some suggested reading and one plan for how to get a job:

•    Make Me See. Whether it’s a sweet potato that looks like Gen. Charles DeGaulle or the scene of a brutal civil rights confrontation, write visually so your readers feel like they’re there..
•    Make your writing conversational. His News-Argus managing editor had Roberts read both the print and radio versions of the AP Wire.  The radio wire was far easier to read, which taught Roberts another valuable lesson.
•    Make sure you understand what your story is about. Write a simple description of why your story matters.  We call it the nut graf.
•    Get the height of the smokestack. Roberts told a story about legendary editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who sent a reporter back to the streets when he couldn’t tell him the height of a factory smokestack.  The moral of the story:  Details matter. Specific details matter even more.
•    Read good writing and ask why it works, and apply those lessons. Roberts recommends the annual “America’s Best Newspaper Writing,” an annual compilation by Poynter of the reporting and writing winners of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) awards; he also suggested “Writing for Story,” by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Franklin, who annotates his book with his writing strategies.
•    Learn your craft. Learn  how to report and write. Don’t get hung up on whether you’ve mastered the latest technology of delivering news; it’ll probably change by the time you graduate.
•    Do it all. Luckily, that’s part of the curriculum here.  In his early years, Roberts covered everything at small dailies — cops, courts, government, politics, breaking news.  He also bounced from being a reporter to an editor and back, which made him even better.  Here at CUNY, you work online, broadcast and print.
•    Work for a small daily or broadcast outlet where you have to learn to do it all (See above).
•    How to get a job, according to Roberts.  Go to a small newspaper, show up at 8 a.m. and stick around all day to talk to the editors who can hire you.  That’ll show the initiative and aggressiveness editors want to see (and it’ll save time-starved editors from having to respond to a letter or email).