Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference

Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference

Spring 2002: Introduction

By Melissa Ludtke• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

On a late fall weekend in 2001, the Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism convened its first conference. More than 800 journalists traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts to take part in three days of interactive seminars, lectures and readings with many of the nation’s leading practitioners. By the end of the conference, there had been 26 seminars, four plenary sessions, and three group readings, and it is from words spoken at these sessions that Nieman Reports compiled the report that follows. — Melissa Ludtke Read more

Spring 2002: Conference Introduction

By Mark Kramer• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference Cambridge, Massachusetts November 30 – December 2, 2001 Narrative journalism is in transition to a second phase. The first continues—the individual, dramatic phase in which lonely reporters get fascinated … Read more

Sharing the Secrets of Fine Narrative Journalism

Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Those who do it well explain what it is they do. Read more

Conference Participants Whose Words Appear in This Issue

Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Jacqui Banaszynski is the assistant managing editor/Sunday at The Seattle Times and holds the Knight chair in journalism at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Her series, “AIDS in the Heartland,” covering the life and death of a gay … Read more

Writing About Ordinary Lives

By Gay Talese• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

‘I wanted to move the realm of curiosity into the lives of people who had been ignored….’ Read more

Indulging Curiosity

By Gay Talese and Michael Marriott• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Talese and Michel Marriott New York Times reporter and 2002 Nieman Fellow Michel Marriott introduced Gay Talese at the Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference. Excerpts of their comments follow: Michel Marriott: As a young … Read more

Reporting Differently

By Mark Kramer• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

How to come back with a notebook full of narrative. Read more

Interviewing Sources

By Isabel Wilkerson• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

‘The center of the onion is what you want.’ Read more

Be a Reporter, Not a Guest

By Mark Kramer• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Interview time is not social time, and a mistake that younger narrative reporters frequently make is to be too nice and too obliging and to act too much like the guest and not enough like the reporter. I tell my … Read more

Finding Time to Write

By Stewart O’Nan• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Hold yourself accountable. Get your work on paper. Read more

Editors and Reporters

By Jacqui Banaszynski• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

‘Quite frankly, we need each other.’ Read more

‘Reporting is the key to good journalism.’

By Steven A. Holmes• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Steven A. HolmesIn daily journalism, you often don’t get a lot of time. But in trying to cover the lives of ordinary people and make it news, your best friend is time. Read more

‘Very few writers understand that a story has an arc, not just a beginning, a middle, and an end.’

By Jim Collins• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Jim CollinsThese are things I have learned from my best writers, and now I pass them on to you in 10 lessons. Voice is important, seductive, subversive and can be crucial. It … Read more

‘Writing is all about rewriting, which means you’ve got to get something down.’

By Chip Scanlan• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Steps for Managing Your Stories Lower your standards. Get something down. Swallow the bile that rises in your throat when you write a first draft. Print out early. Read aloud. Apply very critical standards. Read more

‘Don’t try to squeeze the dress of narrative over the wrong form.’

By Jacqui Banaszynski• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

David Fanning talks about finding the story in TV documentary. Learn the rules and the conventions of your craft so you can break them. That’s how you wing walk. That’s how you take … Read more

A Bunch of Tips for Reporters

Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

‘You can break the action at times and give us background.’ Say you’re writing about the Little League team winning the Little League World Series and you’re doing a narrative. That’s a dramatic story, but it’s … Read more

Tips for Editors

Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

‘Pick three things and just keep working on them, keep reinforcing them.’ Think of each of your reporter/writers as a one-year investment. Match the assignment to the writer, but stretch it each time. Give them things to work on. But … Read more

More Tips for Editors

By Jack Hart and Richard Read• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

A collaborative relationship at The Oregonian Read more

Reporters Read From Their Narrative Articles

By Isabel Wilkerson, Rick Bragg, Stan Grossfeld, Steven A. Holmes and Thomas French• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

During the conference, there would come a time each day when writers would share their narrative writings with participants who wanted to listen. And many did. The hundreds of chairs set up in the ballroom area, where these readings took … Read more

A Love Fest on Narrative Elements

By Bruce DeSilva, Chip Scanlan and Jon Franklin• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

It’s the voice, you fool. No, it’s the theme, dummy. No, it’s the story, you buttonhead. Read more

Writing in a Personal Voice

By Emily Hiestand• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

‘Your training as journalists is a tremendous platform on which to layer or from which to develop a personal voice.’ Read more

‘Learn how to see the world through an artist’s eyes.’

By Madeline Bodin• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Emily Hiestand is a poet and a visual artist as well as a magical essayist. A lot of what she talked about can be summarized as thinking like an artist while writing about true things. One of her suggestions was … Read more

‘The voice is you.’

By Nan Talese• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

“Whether it is fiction or nonfiction, the voice of the author is what keeps us going. If the voice does not capture the reader, the voice is silenced by the reader putting down the book. The authenticity of the voice … Read more

Why We Need Stories

By Jacqui Banaszynski• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

‘Without them, the stuff that happens would float around in some glob and none of it would mean anything.’ Read more

‘Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.’

By Jacqui Banaszynski• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Tim O’Brien had the bad fortune to be caught up in the Vietnam War, and he’s written about it several times, and he wrote a book called “The Things They Carried.” There’s a passage in his book where he’s talking … Read more

Structuring Stories for Meaning

By Jon Franklin• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

‘Your character gets to the point where something changes.’ Read more

‘The idea of meaning is central to storytelling.’

By Dan Mathers• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Jon Franklin got me to sit up right away as he talked about things like “character” and “plot”—words I’d associated with novels and short fiction, not journalism. These, he said, were important elements to any good story, fiction or nonfiction. Read more

Scenes, Suspense and Character

By Adam Hochschild• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

‘Everything really boils down to one or another of those three things.’ Read more

Pick compelling characters. Think in scenes. Create suspense.

By Ellen Sung• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Adam Hochschild focused on the basics of writing narratives. Pick compelling characters and breathe life into them. Think in scenes, as if you were a filmmaker. Create suspense by strategically withholding information or by setting up and then delaying conflicts. Read more

Deliberating Withholding Information to Create Suspense

By Adam Hochschild• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

McPhee’s New Yorker article, “Travels in Georgia,” is a joint profile of a man and a woman. McPhee is following them along through the state of Georgia, watching what they do. Doesn’t tell us much about them. We know they’re … Read more

Endings

By Bruce DeSilva• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

‘The inverted pyramid makes endings impossible.’ Read more

An Unexpected Ending

By Bruce DeSilva• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

“What Price the News” was written a couple of years ago but certainly resonates today because of the subject matter. The writer is a young man named Ian Stewart. And at the beginning of the story, Ian is drifting in … Read more

Serial Narratives

By Thomas French• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Their power comes from ‘that delicious sense of enforced waiting.’ Read more

What Happens Next?

By Mike Lenehan• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Tom French’s talk was an argument for the power of the slowly unfolding story—the wait, the suspense (though I don’t think he ever used the word cliffhanger). For him, the world in general, and the newsroom in particular, are like … Read more

Historical Writing and the Revival of Narrative

By Jill Lepore• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

‘…the line between scholarly and popular writing is now much more difficult to discern.’ Read more

The Immersion Experience In Historical Narrative

By Jill Lepore• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

In terms of the narrative style, as a reporter and as a writer, your job is to immerse yourself in this world and then immerse your reader in it through your narrative in this almost transparent way. I would urge … Read more

Journalists and historians can learn from each other.

By Adam Hochschild• Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Roughly the first 20 years of my working life I spent almost entirely as a reporter for newspapers and magazines. The last six or seven years of it I have spent almost entirely writing books of history. So, what do … Read more

Conference Diary

Journalist’s Trade• March 15, 2002

Ideas and insights, opinions and suggestions—all of these surfaced again and again in the swirl of presentations. What follows are snippets from these sessions that didn’t find a home on the previous pages but merit consideration. ‘So what is … Read more