Vlad Jecan

At the Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference at Harvard University in 2002, Bob Giles moderated a discussion between eight writers on the best approach to creative non-fiction. Giles opened the discussion by asking a relatively simple and direct question: “What does it take to do fine narrative writing?”[1] Each practitioner answered differently, some have emphasized technique and theory while others have simply shared their experiences. However, I found a few answers that might be appropriate to describe and maybe help to define narrative journalism.

Chip Scanlan, an associate professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism who has won numerous awards for writing and who was an active reporter, feature writer and national correspondent for various print publications, answered the following:

“What it takes is immersion reporting. It’s just being there, immersing yourself so that the writer inhabits the story and, by taking up residence in the story, it seems to affect everything, including choice of language and, most of all, the sense of authority that a good narrative has.”

Immersion journalism or reporting enables the writer to become partially involved in the story in order to detail the event from a personal perspective, or, as Nancy M. Hamilton says “the ability to report by climbing into the skin of the actors, to get inside their heads”[2]. Immersion reporting may be regarded as part of narrative journalism because it deals directly with characters and also offers the writer complete freedom of approach. The author, as he or she is relatively involved in the subject to be reported, decides from which angle to write and can fully control the point of view. At the center of the story are the actors, or the characters, which may be individuals or even objects. An emphasize on the characters adds Jacqui Banaszynski, professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and Pulitzer Prize winner for feature writing, when she answers Giles’ question:

“You need to have character, there has to be something or someone for the reader to hold on to or for you to build the story around.”

Clearly put, Banaszynski’s answer facilitates a more detailed view of narrative journalism. Usually practitioners tend to have people as their main characters, however, others write literarily about things. During the conference Banaszynski told the story a friend of hers named Pete Sleeth, “an investigative-just-the-facts business reporter” who has spent two years covering the forest service for The Oregonian. One day they decided to do a profile of a nearby mountain, Mt. Hood. Pete was supposed to do the fieldwork and keep a weekly diary which he would send to his friend. Banaszynski recalls that “at one point he looked at me and he said: Don’t you dare make me interview the mountain. You’re not going to make me interview the mountain, are you?” Unfortunately for Pete, he had to interview the mountain, but the result was “a 200-inch profile of a mountain that’s got humor in it and soul and passion.” These, as we shall see, may be considered key ingredients for fine narrative journalism. However, one imperative detail remains omitted. What about the author? How should he/she tell a story?

Rick Bragg, Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing winner, offers an answer for both Bob Giles’ and our above questions:

“I think exactly the same way that you live life, you write narrative. It doesn’t have to be a formulaic thing where you start with a formula. And it doesn’t have to lead methodically through conflict to resolution and that kind of think. To me, narrative has always been a pretty or telling passage, strong, violent, tense three or four paragraphs, if it’s done right and it’s not any more complicated than that.”

Bragg’s intervention into the discussion goes beyond theory and technique and basically adds the notion of feeling the story. Theory is available only to serve as a guide but never to be used exclusively, it may help but cannot (or should not) produce a story. However, to feel the story, which probably means writing a piece coherently without using a predetermined set of rules, the author must have practice. Using just experience, the author has the freedom to experiment different approaches to his or her stories. However, this can be used to its full potential only if the author accepts the responsibilities of a journalist. After all, narrative is a widely accepted style of journalism. Emily Hiestand said during the conference that “when you write in a more personal voice, you have most, if not all, the main journalistic responsibility to be scrupulous, to get it right, to have as much intellectual humility as you can, to fact check, and to report thoroughly.”[3] Narrative journalism comes in when “you add to those responsibilities some additional literary responsibilities.”

The core responsibilities of the journalist are truth and objectivity, although, at the rise of the trade facts and opinions were frequently mixed. In the early days, newspapers reported mainly on the availability of products and services and occasionally inserted political essays. Real news were hardly to be found and “what news they did report, they injected with strong doses of their own opinions”[4] Even more, “early editors considered their opinions right, and therefore reporting those opinions was truthful journalism.”[5] It took almost two centuries for reporters and editors to understand that fact and opinion do not go along very well. Therefore it is perhaps necessary to offer a short account of the history of narrative journalism to see how it has evolved over time. It may also show us the border between literature and this type of journalism.

The Making of Narrative Journalism

The discussion regarding the origin of narrative or even plain journalism is still glowing. Regarding the later, a few key dates may be worth mentioning.

Various scholars of journalism go as far as attributing the invention of the trade to the Greeks, to the Romans and other see its appearance in the Renaissance while only a few consider the rise of journalism in the early 18^th century and its ageing process in the following century. However, it must be mentioned that the first known surviving news pamphlet dates from 1513. Published under the title Hereafter ensue the trewe encountre or Batayle lately done betwene Englande and Scotland, it informs of the Battle of Flodden.[6] In England the government exercised direct control over all aspects of the economy. A pamphlet, including the one mentioned above, was subjected to royal authority for propaganda.[7] ‘Taxes on knowledge’ were introduced in 1712 in order to “make pamphlets and newspapers too expensive for the large majority of people.”[8]

A direct consequence was the appearance of the tax evading press or ‘the unstamped’ newspapers. However, we can hardly consider them newspapers as most publications served as platforms for publicists of various political convictions to express and discuss their opinions. Feeling that their writings will certainly influence readers and change the course of events, publicists “feel passionately about the cause they promote and write emotionally about it.” [9] The result is that they were not objective at all, but “very combative”. When the taxes on knowledge were abolished in 1861, papers had to compete with others for more readership and profit. Political beliefs were gradually set aside. Thus, reporting turned more factual setting the perfect environment for it to eventually become “a fact-centered discursive practice.”[10]

It was during the same – 18^th century – time that narrative journalism made an entrance. Daniel Defoe is famous today as the author of Robinson Crusoe, but for the students of journalism he stands out for writing The Storm. Published in 1704 as The Storm: or, a Collection of the most remarkable Casualties and Disasters which happen’d in the Late Dreadful Tempest, both by Sea and Land, to give its full title, it is not a work of fiction. It is an account of the worst natural calamity ever recorded in British history written based on the stories of people who were directly affected by the hurricane. In order to accomplish this, Defoe solicited accounts through advertisements in the 1666-founded London Gazette and in the Daily Courant. He received letters from sailors, women, clergymen, ‘gentlemen and honest countrymen’ from all over England.[11]

Defoe was, of course, a witness himself and describes his experience, but most important is that he personally verified every letter and when he couldn’t, he would publish the letter and warn the reader that “it is second-hand testimony.”[12] This is probably the first example of narrative journalism because the author focused on characters by describing their experience and emotion. Defoe balances the anecdotes with scientific facts and evidence of his research in this matter by offering records of barometric pressure taken before and after the hurricane.[13] Overall, The Storm may be viewed as “an early demonstration of the role of the eyewitness reporter during and immediately after a disaster, out and about in the streets, dodging danger as he talked to people.”[14] Furthermore, Defoe quoted people in order to have an authoritarian voice and to bring his story alive.

The moment everything came together for narrative journalism, however, was centuries later when Truman Capote published In Cold Blood, the book that defined the genre. Capote first established the principles that would later guide his writing and waited for the perfect subject “not likely to darken and yellow with time.”[15] Eventually, Capote found it while reading the New York Times while reading a short story entitled Wealthy Farmer, 3 of Family Slain. “After reading the story it suddenly struck me that a crime, the study of one such, might provide the broad scope I needed to write the kind of book I wanted to write” he later said.[16] The book tells the story of a wealthy wheat farmer, his wife and two youngest of their four children who were found bound and gagged and then shot at close range. It seems, however, that the author was not interested directly in the murders, “what Capote wanted to discover was the effect of the killings on an isolated community, its inhabitants and the family itself.”[17]

The book is split in four parts, namely The Last to See Them Alive, Persons Unknown, Answers, and finally, The Corner. From the first to the last part, the reader is guided through the events described with sharp lucidity and vivid details. The first part is about the lives of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith in the days leading up to the murders, the second part covers the investigation of the police, the third is reserved for the confession of Perry Smith and the last part deals with their conviction of the first-degree murder, the pronouncement of the death penalty and their execution.

Capote concentrated the people involved in the tragedy and outside observers. He conducted interviews with various people, including the murderers and especially with Perry Smith, whom he had followed even through the execution. Capote later recalls: “I was there. I stayed with Perry to the end. He was calm and very brave. It was a terrible experience and I will never get over it.”[18] Indeed, he was there, in fact he was there every minute his story developed. The interviews were done without using a tape-recorder or even taking notes, he said he could achieve 95% accuracy by listening carefully and later writing down what he had heard.[19] In this way, Capote “climbed into the skin of the actors” and was able to compose a novel purely based on facts.

Truman Capote had the necessary time to complete the information with additional research, just like Defoe. But can narrative journalism survive under pressure, especially under harsh conditions and emotional challenges? Can an author remain impartial when reporting war?

Another good example of narrative is the work of Martha Gellhorn. She began her career as a reporter for a small local paper in the US. In 1936 Gellhorn was in Stuttgart doing research for a novel when she read in the German press about the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. “I read the newspapers, coarse and belligerent in tone, which is how I learned of the war in Spain, described as the revolt of a rabble of “Red Swine Dogs”. Those few weeks turned me into a devout anti-fascist.”[20] Immediately she made her way to Madrid. What she had found was a beautiful, historic city under siege. Gellhorn frequently took notes of things she observed, the character she met or saw and the dialogue she overheard. These observations were later inserted in her reports. Gellhorn tried to use careful characterization of people in an attempt “to show rather than tell, making issues more personalized and thereby more comprehensible.”[21] She employed various literary techniques “to make the sounds, the smell, the look, the feel come through,” yet everything based on fact.

One day in Madrid, Gellhorn noticed an old woman holding a terrified boy by the hand and she wrote:[22]

“You know what she is thinking. She is thinking she must get the child home, you are always safer in your own place, with the things you know… She is in the middle of the square when the next one comes. A small piece of twisted steel, hot and very sharp, sprays off from the shell; it take the little boy in the throat. The old woman stands there, holding the hand of the dead child, looking at him stupidly, not saying anything, and men rush out toward her to carry the child.”

With the first line she makes the reader part of the story and certainly capturing attention. Beautifully described, the story would have been empty weren’t for Gellhorn’s narrative capabilities. If we employ the popular inverted pyramid technique to rewrite the above, thus turning it into a common news report, it would become something like this:

Madrid – Artillery fire devastated the central square killing a child and leaving many wounded.

A child was severely wounded to the throat by a piece of shrapnel after an artillery shell landed 15 meters away. An old woman was accompanying the child and suffered minor injuries. Men rushed to help the child but it was too late, he was dead.

The difference of the impact on readers in incredible. My example would be read in 20 seconds and forgot in 5, but the way Gellhorn employs narrative is definitely appealing to the audience. She describes the anxiety of the “old woman”, her concern for the child’s safety and the shock of the child’s death when she remained stunned, incapable of immediate response.

Gellhorn’s style of reporting is dominated by observations of people, their lives and situations.[23] The Spanish Civil War was the first war; seven others would be reported as well.

The Vietnam War had definitely influenced her style. Reporting from Qui Nhon provincial capital where civilians received medical care, she reported that they were treated “under conditions suitable for the Crimean War.”[24] At this point, the way she wrote became more personal and became what was later known as “journalism of attachment.” Gellhorn’s reports were published in the London Guardian, but in the United States only the St. Louis Post-Dispatch printed her articles because she raised forbidden questions over the US involvement in Vietnam. She addressed a series of sensitive issues including the casualties among civilians:

“We, unintentionally, are killing and wounding three or four times more people than the Vietcong do, so we are told, on purpose. We are not maniacs and monsters, but our planes range the sky all day and all night, and our artillery is lavish and we have much more deadly stuff to kill with. The people are there on the ground, sometimes destroyed by accident, sometimes destroyed because Vietcong are reported to be among them. This is indeed a new kind of war”.

John Pilger believes that Gellhorn would have dismissed the term journalism of attachment. He said that “Martha Gellhorn was a fine journalism because she gave priority not to a fake “balance” but to finding out the truth”, and former BBC war correspondent Martin Bell noticed that journalism of attachment is “a journalism that cares as well as knows… that will not stand neutrally between good and evil, right and wrong, the victim and the oppressor.”[25] However, it comes as no surprise that this form of journalism is hardly available anymore. Isn’t this practice similar to that of the editors of the 18^th century who mixed fact with opinion and thought that their views represent truthful journalism? It may be so.

Nevertheless, Martha Gellhorn’s contribution to journalism is without question significant. Her style of writing and concern for characters has added a personal touch to narrative journalism. As practitioners before her, she also emphasized the need to be close to the story, to immerse in the story, to observe and report. She always felt that by being there she could show her readers how humans can destroy other humans. By the end of her career she had reported almost every major war of the 20^th century. However, long-time friend and editor Bill Buford has another opinion of Martha Gellhorn:

“There’s something wrong with somebody who wants to go where people are being shot… The ones who are really weird, the real screwballs, are the ones who… keep going back for it and can’t stop. In a way, that was what was so compelling about Martha Gellhorn. She was desperately trying to get a paper to send her to the Gulg War. She must have been eighty-six. Loopy.”

Dissecting Narrative Journalism

Each of the above examples concerns a separate aspect of narrative journalism, but what all have in common are characters and the authors witnessed directly the events on which they have reported while completing their work with additional research. Defoe turned to science and people, Capote to interviews and research and Gellhorn focused on showing rather then telling by employing the various information she had acquired empirically. Yet, how is a narrative constructed?

Basically, it depends on the writer and how he or she chooses to present a story. The author may have a formula or write “the same way as you live life.” However, there are some elements which every author seems to use: scene, characters, point of view, drama, relevant detail and dialogue.

Practitioners of narrative generally prefer to set the scene first to avoid confusion. David Segal wrote a piece for The Washington Post[26] about a reunion of 9/11 survivors of the Mariott Hotel. He starts by setting the scene as following:

Nearly everyone watching TV on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, saw something they considered unimaginably horrifying. But not Frank Razzano. He watched the twin towers burning and recalled a story he’d read years earlier, about a B-25 bomber that crashed into the Empire State Building in the mid-1940s. People died but the structure wasn’t severely damaged and firefighters put out the blaze.”

It is not very detailed and doesn’t have to be as the reader immediately knows that what follows is related to the September 11 attacks. The scene can be set more directly as does Sudarsan Raghavan in an article for the same publication[27]:

On a pile of bricks, someone had left a pink plastic flower, a pair of glasses and a book with crisp, white pages. They glowed in the black debris of Mutanabi Street, which by Friday had become a graveyard of memories. At 9:03 a.m., a man in a rumpled brown suit walked past dark banners mourning the dead. He stopped near the flower and the book, which was opened to a chapter on the virtues of Baghdad.

By offering a complete scene from the first two paragraphs, chances are high that the reader will get more involved and as Thomas Berner puts it “the more a writer shows a story happening the more the writer can compel a reader to read on.”[28] Setting the scene at the beginning of the article saves the writer the trouble of adding an introduction which in some cases can damage the piece.

The actor, or the character, is presented in the scene only in the first example, while in the second the character’s identity remains undisclosed. However, in Segal’s piece, Frank Razzano is not the main character and the story is not based on his experience. The article gradually introduces more characters which have shared an experience in one way or another.

It is Wednesday, September 8, 2009, around 9.30 am when suddenly, my phone rings. I pick up and hear the voice of my colleague Caddy Adzuba from Radio Okapi on the other end of the line.

In this example[29] – published by the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) the author becomes a character and introduces a second. This suggests that the writer tells the story from her own point of view. Generally, for a piece of considerable length which has numerous actors, the author tends to be objective, as may be the case of David Segal’s article for The Washington Post. Today, most practitioners of narrative journalism accept their journalistic responsibilities and adopt a neutral approach. An exception may be considered when the author becomes a character and thus directly involved in the story. In the article for the IWPR, Jolly Kamuntu writes about the threats to her live and that of two colleagues. It is perhaps unimaginable in this case to present the story from another point of view as it would be close to impossible for the author to write from the point of view of the person who threatens to kill her. Choosing the point of view can be crucial to the story as it can “lack impact when told from the wrong’s person’s point of view.[30]

The drama is emphasized differently by every author. It may also depend on the story and the author’s approach. Berner appreciates that “literary news writers put drama into their stories by the way they arrange their information into scenes.” As such “tension is achieved in the way they present the information, not necessarily in the information itself.”[31] Jolly Kumantu in her article for the IWPR writes about death threats she and two colleagues have received. She sets the scene, introduces the characters and the then adds the following:

“I take the phone and find a message in Swahili saying, “As you are in the habit of interfering in topics that are none of your business, convinced that you are untouchable, we are going to touch you. We have already received the authorization to start with Caddy, then Kamuntu, then Kintu Namuto..: a bullet in the head.”

The tension is kept by adding additional information:

“My husband is away on a business trip in Minembwe more than 200 kilometres away from Bukavu. I remember that I will be alone at home with my two little daughters, and I shiver even more.”

This also keeps the reader interested. Following that, the tension gradually falls to the resolution of the story.

Inserting relevant details into the story are needed to get the reader more involved in the story, to make him feel the story. Martha Gellhorn frequently employed various details to portray a human tragedy as vivid as possible. It was with a mind on this that she wrote the following: “A small piece of twisted steel, hot and very sharp, sprays off from the shell; it take the little boy in the throat.”

Another element that she used was the dialogue. Gellhorn would take notes or even try to write down the conversations she overheard and insert them into articles. By doing so her style became more authoritative and also added a personal touch and approach to the story.

Thus, the key ingredients for fine narrative journalism are writing passionately about a subject, using scene, characters, point of view, drama, relevant detail and, if possible, dialogue and adding a personal touch to the story while remaining loyal to the core responsibilities of journalism: truth and objectivity.

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[1] Panel Discussion, Sharing the Secrets of Fine Narrative Journalism, Nieman Reports, Vol. 56, No. 1, The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, 2002, p. 7 – 11

[2] Hamilton, Nancy, M., Creativity on command, in Asia Pacific Media Educator, no. 18, Dec. 2007, p. 144

[3] Hiestand, Emily, Writing in a Personal Voice, Nieman Reports, Vol. 56, No. 1, The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, 2002, p. 38

[4] Smith, Ron F., Goodwin, H. Eugene, Groping for Ethics in Journalism, Iowa State University Press, 1999, p. 37-38

[5] Ibidem, p. 38

[6] Conboy, Martin, Journalism – A critical history, SAGE Publications Ltd., London, 2004, p. 9

[7] Ibidem, p. 11

[8] Chalaby, John, The Invention of Journalism, MacMillan Press Ltd., London, 1998, p. 11

[9] Ibidem, p. 17

[10] Ibidem, p. 128

[11] McKay, Jenny, Defoe’s The Storm as a model for contemporary reporting, in Keeble, Richard, Wheeler, Sharon (ed.), The Journalistic Imagination, Routledge, New York, 2007, p. 17-20

[12] Ibidem, p. 22

[13] Ibidem, p. 21

[14] Ibidem, p. 24

[15] Plimpton, George, Truman Capote, Anchor Books, New York, 1997, p. 199

[16] Algeo, Ann, M., Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, in Harold Blood (ed), Truman Capote, Infobase Publishing, 2009, p. 102

[17] Nuttall, Nick, Cold-blooded journalism, in Richard Keeble, Sharon Wheeler, The Journalistic Imagination, Routledge, New York, 2006, p. 133

[18] Ibidem, p. 134

[19] Algeo, Ann, M., Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, in Harold Blood (ed), Truman Capote, Infobase Publishing, 2009, p. 99 – 100

[20] Wilson, Deborah, An unscathed tourist of wars, in Richard Keeble, Sharon Wheeler, The Journalistic Imagination, Routledge, New York, 2006, p.  117

[21] Ibidem, p. 118

[22] Foerstel, N., Herbert, Killing the Messenger, Praeger, London, 2006, p. 3

[23] Wilson, Ibidem, p. 119

[24] Ibidem, p. 125

[25] Ibidem, p. 125-128

[26] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/10/AR2006091001168.html

[27] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030901973.html

[28] Berner, Thomas, R., Writing Literary Features, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, London, 1988, p. 16

[29] http://www.iwpr.net/index.php?apc_state=hen&s=o&o=l=EN&p=zim&s=f&o=357596

[30] Berner, Ibidem, p. 15

[31] Ibidem, p. 22