“I am a human first. People have to see that journalists are not just a body behind a microphone. Even if you have five minutes, don’t rush, let them know you care.”
– Carolyn Mungo, VP, station manager at WFAA-TV Dallas
From Chapter 1, “33 Ways Not To Screw Up Your Journalism.” https://pic.twitter.com/fguAxOjGmW
Maria Carrillo is a consultant and coach after spending 36 years in seven newsrooms. She was an enterprise editor at the Tampa Bay Times and Houston Chronicle and, before that, managing editor at The Virginian-Pilot. She has edited dozens of award-winning projects, frequently lectures on narrative journalism, co-hosts a podcast (WriteLane) about craft and has been a Pulitzer Prize juror six times. She is a board member of the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism and the National Press Photographers Association. Carrillo was born in Washington, D.C., two years after her parents left Cuba in exile. She now lives in St. Petersburg, Fla., with her husband, and they have two grown children. Don’t miss Maria’s original 4 Questions interview.
Before your recent retirement, you edited narrative journalism for decades at several newspapers. What are the characteristics of an excellent narrative writer? What makes one stand out?
The best narrative writers I’ve worked with are amazing reporters. Some people think that it’s all about the quality of the writing, this incredible prose that narrative folks can deliver. But everything is driven by the reporting, by the heartbreaking and stark and emotional details that they come back with.
So they must be great interviewers, empathetic and patient. They must be observant and also willing to make the extra effort to figure out what kind of tree that is, what the weather was like that day, what bus route the homeless kid took. They must be genuinely curious and not settle for someone’s first response but peel back layers. They must be driven by a desire to understand – and explain – the world around us.
And yes, ultimately, the best ones know how to tell great stories. They know how to focus, to produce stories that go a mile deep and an inch wide. They know to be spare in the most dramatic moments. They know to deliver payoffs that make the journey worthwhile.
But here’s the thing, too – the best narrative writers I’ve known are people who learned to do the work by spending time on craft. Many didn’t get these lessons in j-school or early in their careers.
What advice would you give a journalist interested in writing narratives, but whose daily assignments keep them tied to breaking news? Can you do both?
You can, but you have to learn to look for narrative possibilities, and you have to have the courage and determination to pursue them. Those stories take more effort.
I teach people to report as they normally would during breaking news, taking in everything and interviewing everyone they can. But then they should consider whether they can tell a narrative off the news. Is there someone available at that moment, a stakeholder whose story you may be able to tell quickly. If you find that person, go deeper. Report for narrative.
For instance, at the scene of an accident, it might be a witness who is willing to share what they saw, and you weave the “news” into their account. Others involved may take months or years to tell their story. The same applies during event coverage. A festival story might be a bore, but maybe there’s someone there who has a compelling backstory and the moment means a great deal to them.
In every case, you can’t force it. There has to be something compelling that drives the story. That witness, are they sharing information that provides deeper meaning to what just unfolded? Is it a story that many people can relate to or could be moved by? If not, let it go, turn in a standard story and try again the next time.
And don’t forget – let your editor know what you’re doing. Don’t spring a daily narrative on her if she’s expecting something traditional.
What do you love about narratives? Why are they so important?
As a young journalist, I found myself quickly uninspired. I learned to put together basic stories, using the inverted pyramid, and occasionally veering off into something deeper. But I didn’t feel challenged or motivated.
I became a journalist to be a storyteller, but often, we didn’t tell stories. We conveyed information, nicely written, perhaps, and in clear form, but they didn’t often move people. I wanted to make people care – about another person or an issue that deserved attention. Once I discovered narratives, I came alive.
I remember a story where I spent time with an elderly couple, and the husband had Alzheimer’s. This was in the late 1980s or early 1990s, and it was a topic that was then generating lots of scary, generic headlines. But getting to know these folks personally, seeing what the wife was going through, sharing that pain, having readers react. Wow.
People often read narratives to the end. They come away inspired or sad or angry, but they come away with emotion. They learn, maybe something they didn’t even realize they needed to learn. They connect with the human experience, and that’s so important, especially in times like these, when we’re always taking sides.
As journalists, we have a responsibility to answer questions, and daily, we tackle the who, what, when and where. But narratives are often the best way to answer the why and how, which are more complex and revelatory.
What are the most glaring mistakes writers make when crafting narratives and how can they avoid them?
The story must dictate the form, and that’s where I see the biggest problems.
Reporters sometimes try to force narratives – write a chronology without meaning. There has to be a reason we’re going on this journey, and if that’s not clear, then don’t try to write a narrative.
A narrative has to have a singular purpose, a defining theme that can be summed up, ideally, in one word. If you can’t do that, again, you probably don’t have the right ingredients for this story.
It’s important to have accessible characters, people willing to open up. They can be imperfect but need to be cooperative. There should be opportunities for scene-setting, either something observed or retold. There must be tension, something that’s being overcome or tackled in the story. Imagine The Sound of Music without Nazis?
Other common mistakes: Trying to compress the reporting instead of being selective. Make the hard choices. Don’t include too many characters. Don’t share a scene that has nothing to do with your theme. Don’t fall in love with the first words you wrote (again, they may not be serving the greater purpose).
You remain an active coach and teacher. What’s the most important lesson you’re trying to impart about narratives to writers and editors?
Our industry believed for too long that readers would be drawn to our work just because it was important. But as we’ve learned, we need to earn those readers, to make them see value in what we do.
Narratives can help save us.
They inspire readers, to fix problems, to connect with neighbors, to care.
They drive loyalty to certain newsrooms and favorite writers.
They are worth the time and effort.
Maria Carrillo is a consultant and coach after spending 36 years in seven newsrooms. She was an enterprise editor at the Tampa Bay Times and Houston Chronicle and, before that, managing editor at The Virginian-Pilot. She has edited dozens of award-winning projects, frequently lectures on narrative journalism, co-hosts a podcast (WriteLane) about craft and has been a Pulitzer Prize juror six times. She is a board member of the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism and the National Press Photographers Association. Carrillo was born in Washington, D.C., two years after her parents left Cuba in exile. She now lives in St. Petersburg, Fla., with her husband, and they have two grown children.
Before your recent retirement, you edited narrative journalism for decades at several newspapers. What are the characteristics of an excellent narrative writer? What makes one stand out?
The best narrative writers I’ve worked with are amazing reporters. Some people think that it’s all about the quality of the writing, this incredible prose that narrative folks can deliver. But everything is driven by the reporting, by the heartbreaking and stark and emotional details that they come back with.
So they must be great interviewers, empathetic and patient. They must be observant and also willing to make the extra effort to figure out what kind of tree that is, what the weather was like that day, what bus route the homeless kid took. They must be genuinely curious and not settle for someone’s first response but peel back layers. They must be driven by a desire to understand – and explain – the world around us.
And yes, ultimately, the best ones know how to tell great stories. They know how to focus, to produce stories that go a mile deep and an inch wide. They know to be spare in the most dramatic moments. They know to deliver payoffs that make the journey worthwhile.
But here’s the thing, too – the best narrative writers I’ve known are people who learned to do the work by spending time on craft. Many didn’t get these lessons in j-school or early in their careers.
2. What advice would you give a journalist interested in writing narratives, but whose daily assignments keep them tied to breaking news? Can you do both?
You can, but you have to learn to look for narrative possibilities, and you have to have the courage and determination to pursue them. Those stories take more effort.
I teach people to report as they normally would during breaking news, taking in everything and interviewing everyone they can. But then they should consider whether they can tell a narrative off the news. Is there someone available at that moment, a stakeholder whose story you may be able to tell quickly. If you find that person, go deeper. Report for narrative.
For instance, at the scene of an accident, it might be a witness who is willing to share what they saw, and you weave the “news” into their account. Others involved may take months or years to tell their story. The same applies during event coverage. A festival story might be a bore, but maybe there’s someone there who has a compelling backstory and the moment means a great deal to them.
In every case, you can’t force it. There has to be something compelling that drives the story. That witness, are they sharing information that provides deeper meaning to what just unfolded? Is it a story that many people can relate to or could be moved by? If not, let it go, turn in a standard story and try again the next time.
And don’t forget – let your editor know what you’re doing. Don’t spring a daily narrative on her if she’s expecting something traditional.
3. What do you love about narratives? Why are they so important?
As a young journalist, I found myself quickly uninspired. I learned to put together basic stories, using the inverted pyramid, and occasionally veering off into something deeper. But I didn’t feel challenged or motivated.
I became a journalist to be a storyteller, but often, we didn’t tell stories. We conveyed information, nicely written, perhaps, and in clear form, but they didn’t often move people. I wanted to make people care – about another person or an issue that deserved attention. Once I discovered narratives, I came alive.
I remember a story where I spent time with an elderly couple, and the husband had Alzheimer’s. This was in the late 1980s or early 1990s, and it was a topic that was then generating lots of scary, generic headlines. But getting to know these folks personally, seeing what the wife was going through, sharing that pain, having readers react. Wow.
People often read narratives to the end. They come away inspired or sad or angry, but they come away with emotion. They learn, maybe something they didn’t even realize they needed to learn. They connect with the human experience, and that’s so important, especially in times like these, when we’re always taking sides.
As journalists, we have a responsibility to answer questions, and daily, we tackle the who, what, when and where. But narratives are often the best way to answer the why and how, which are more complex and revelatory.
4. What are the most glaring mistakes writers make when crafting narratives and how can they avoid them?
The story must dictate the form, and that’s where I see the biggest problems.
Reporters sometimes try to force narratives – write a chronology without meaning. There has to be a reason we’re going on this journey, and if that’s not clear, then don’t try to write a narrative.
A narrative has to have a singular purpose, a defining theme that can be summed up, ideally, in one word. If you can’t do that, again, you probably don’t have the right ingredients for this story.
It’s important to have accessible characters, people willing to open up. They can be imperfect but need to be cooperative. There should be opportunities for scene-setting, either something observed or retold. There must be tension, something that’s being overcome or tackled in the story. Imagine The Sound of Music without Nazis?
Other common mistakes: Trying to compress the reporting instead of being selective. Make the hard choices. Don’t include too many characters. Don’t share a scene that has nothing to do with your theme. Don’t fall in love with the first words you wrote (again, they may not be serving the greater purpose).
5. You remain an active coach and teacher. What’s the most important lesson you’re trying to impart about narratives to writers and editors?
Our industry believed for too long that readers would be drawn to our work just because it was important. But as we’ve learned, we need to earn those readers, to make them see value in what we do.
Narratives can help save us.
They inspire readers, to fix problems, to connect with neighbors, to care.
They drive loyalty to certain newsrooms and favorite writers.
They are worth the time and effort.
Over the years, I’ve met many writers with countless ideas for stories, magazine articles, novels and screenplays. Some have succeeded in finishing (and even publishing) their work, but many never survived the exhilarating flash of inspiration that launches a piece of writing.
Oh, they’d begin with great hope, with a single line, or a few paragraphs or pages. But stuck in a quicksand of doubt, they couldn’t go on. Doubt, that crushing emotion, overtook them. Writer’s block ensued.
Nevertheless, they resolved to go on. Tomorrow, they promised. Over the weekend when I had free time. During the vacation that was coming up. Time after time, they did what many people have done since the beginning of time. They put it off.
The Romans, an Empire that had its beginnings before the birth of Christ, had a word for this failing of the human spirit: procrastinatus. Pro meaning “forward” and “crastinus” signifying “of tomorrow,” a linguistic origin transformed over centuries into the English procrastinate, “the act of intentionally putting off something that should be done,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. It took an English poet, Edward Young to capture its essence. “Procrastination is the thief of time; Year after year it steals, till all are fled,” he wrote in Night Thoughts,” a series of poems composed between 1742 and 1745, during the dark hours of night, when the anguish over abandoned dreams is perhaps greatest.
“Many of us go through life with an array of undone tasks, large and small, nibbling at our conscience,” the writer James Surowiecki has observed. Of course, it’s not just writing that procrastination defeats. It’s the garage cleaning you’ve been meaning to put off, the mud-caked car that needs washing, the tax forms due in April, any number of tasks that nibble away, but still remain untouched. For writers, though, procrastination is the enemy of progress, the stomach-churning agony of being unable to move on and finish a story, no matter how exciting the idea, relentless the deadline, or disappointing the failure to act.
Over a career of five decades, I too became an expert at one of the most common of human failings, an ancient flaw that lies behind mountains of abandoned dreams, a towering torment of the half-finished, the half-done. Procrastination has been a companion at some point on nearly every writing journey I ever embarked on.
There are infinite ways to procrastinate: pace, video games, disappear into the black hole of social media, binge-watch, even tackle distasteful household chores. For me, one of the most successful approaches is to research. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, the topic I’ve spent a lot of time studying—the craft of writing—is the one that’s kept me from doing the writing–fiction–that I dreamed of as a boy.
Challenging as procrastination is, years of experience in my own work and helping other writers with theirs has taught me not to surrender to despair. Delay can be defeated.
The first step is to acknowledge that everyone procrastinates.
All of us face tasks we’d rather avoid, whether it’s conducting that first interview, writing that first line, responding to an email, or just doing the dishes. Recognizing this reality means you must be ever vigilant for the telltale signs of resistance. For me, it’s the simple act of hesitation, realizing that my fingers are hovering over the keyboard, paralyzed.
In this case, my solution, one reached after years of procrastination, is to lower, nay abandon, my standards and type as fast as I can, thinking with my fingers, and trying to drown out the voice of doubt that clamors to be heard with the clatter of keys. What I wrote was immaterial. “I want to write a short story about a man struggling with dementia but I have no idea how to start,” or “Damn, my post on procrastination is due tomorrow morning..”
This freewriting, I’ve discovered is more than just throat-clearing; very soon, miraculously, prose begins to emerge. I begin to describe a man in his 70s, as his memory problems progressed from losing his keys, misplacing his wallet, and forgetting names to the terror of getting lost while walking his dog in what had been his familiar neighborhood. Not great, I tell myself, but it’s a start and it kicks me into gear and over many sessions, I draft and revise “Jacaranda.” I’ve reached the point of submission to literary journals, although of course, I’m procrastinating about that.
But wait.
Besides, lowering your standards and freewriting , here are some other valuable techniques, their value bolstered by users’ comments.
1. Know tomorrow’s task today.
This is the technique that made my friend and mentor, Don Murray, one of the most productive writers I ever knew. Perhaps, he mused, the subconscious takes over when you assign yourself a task the night before.
“What surprised me is how much I feel better knowing that I know what I will be doing tomorrow. I’m the type of person who needs to write down everything or I’ll forget it. I find it reassuring and calming. It puts me in control and gives me a sense of order. I’m not as scatterbrained trying to remember everything at once.”
–Jane Kim
2. Follow productivity expert David Allen’s two-minute rule: If you think a task will take you two minutes or less, do it now.
“What surprised me was how much I could get done in tiny chunks–maybe it wasn’t so much the sheer amount of work as finding mental space to tackle it.”
–Ellen Sung
3. Eliminate piles. Instead of letting paper stack up on your desk, either put it in folders or toss it.
“I learned that it is a lot quicker to find things when you don’t have to shuffle through 50 pages of other unrelated issues. I learned that filing is a good thing to combat the urge to pile things up. I had to do something with the papers, and filing was a good physical way of keeping from falling back into the bad habit.”
–Preston Smith
So let’s not tarry any longer.
Don’t put it off.
Gulp and go.
Right now.
Esmé E. Deprez is a California-based senior reporter on the Investigations team at Bloomberg News, specializing in long-form deep-dives into government policy, politics, economics and social issues for Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. Previously, Esmé was a breaking news and features correspondent for Bloomberg’s National Desk and based in New York. Her reported essay on the life and medically assisted death of her father was a finalist for the 2022 National Magazine Awards, and she was a finalist for the 2013 Livingston Awards for her story about the legislative assault on the business of abortion. She joined Bloomberg in 2009 and has since reported from 35 U.S. states and four foreign countries. She has an MS in Journalism from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and a BA in English from Boston College and was born and raised in Maine.
1. What’s the greatest lesson you’ve learned as a writer?
How much you can touch people with just words. In the wake of writing about how I helped my dad hasten his death for Bloomberg Businessweek, I’ve been overwhelmed in the best way by the reaction: I’ve received more emails than I can count from people telling me how much the story moved them; from people spilling their guts to me, a complete stranger, about the awful way their uncle died or the way in which their mother clandestinely hastened death during a time when or in a place where it wasn’t legal; from people recounting how they’ve printed out the story to put in folders outlining their final wishes or how reading it prompted them to do end-of-life planning or have hard and uncomfortable but necessary conversations about death with their families that they wouldn’t have otherwise had an excuse to have. (One of my favorites was really short: it said simply something about the piece being the greatest love story they’d ever read. That one just about broke me.) I’ve written about a lot of controversial topics in my career so I’d tried to anticipate blowback prior to publishing. But to hear the helpful, positive impacts the story’s had on people has totally blown my mind, and I think it speaks to the value and power of sharing our stories and how universal a deeply intimate narrative can be and feel.
2. What has been the biggest surprise of your writing life?
Nearly every time I go to write, imposter syndrome invades my psyche: I panic and question everything, including my ability to write a single sentence, let alone a whole story. I’ve been surprised and reassured to learn that even the best writers in the business feel this way too! Remembering that, and enduring this process over and over again (and eventually coming out the other side), has drilled into me that there is just no getting around just sitting your butt in your seat and staying put until you grind it out.
3. If you had to choose a metaphor to describe yourself as a writer, what would it be?
I often feel, while reporting, like a person on a scavenger hunt trying to decipher clues and gather information. When I go to write and rewrite, I feel like someone trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle. I think that’s because I tend to focus a ton on structure — it’s hard for me to even begin writing without knowing where and how the pieces will fit together.
4. What is the single best piece of writing advice anyone ever gave you?
My former editor Steve Merelman used to tell me to write without my notes: “Next time you have to write a big takeout, do the reporting. Then, write the first draft without looking at your notes. You put in placeholders for quotes and facts you know exist. You’ll remember the important stuff. Then, after the first draft, you go back and fill in details and flesh out the skeleton. This is a trick that forces your writing brain out of the thicket of facts and makes it assemble a coherent narrative, the sort you’d tell on a bar stool. It works.” I surely rolled my eyes when he first said this and in the years since it’s saved me every time.
Kevin Sullivan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning senior correspondent and associate editor for The Washington Post. He was a Post foreign correspondent for 14 years, then served as chief foreign correspondent, deputy foreign editor, and Sunday and features editor. He has reported from more than 75 countries on six continents. Sullivan and his wife, Mary Jordan, were The Post’s co-bureau chiefs in Tokyo, Mexico City and London. They won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for their coverage of the Mexican criminal justice system. They, with four Post photographers, were finalists for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for stories about difficulties facing women around the world. Sullivan, reporting from Saudi Arabia, was part of a Washington Post team that was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Sullivan and Jordan also won the George Polk Award in 1998 for coverage of the Asian financial crisis, as well as awards from the Overseas Press Club and the Society of Professional Journalists. Sullivan and Jordan are co-authors of Trump on Trial in 2020 (updated and published in paperback as “Trump’s Trials” in 2021); “Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland,” a No. 1 New York Times bestseller in 2015; and “The Prison Angel” in 2005. Sullivan and Jordan contributed a chapter to “Nine Irish Lives” in 2018. Sullivan also contributed a chapter to “Trump Revealed,” The Post’s 2016 biography of Donald Trump.
Beware of finishing. I love to finish things, the satisfaction of accomplishment. That’s fine when you’re mowing the lawn, but it’s dangerous when you’re writing. I’m too quick to call something good. Good enough. Done. Mary Jordan, my wife and writing partner, doesn’t ever consider a piece of writing complete. She fixes and fixes, then fixes the fixes, then starts again. She’s taught me to beware of the cheap charm of the finish line.
The lifelong satisfaction of it. I stumbled into journalism because I loved to write and didn’t know what else to do with that fact. Writing has taken me and my family around the planet and into the lives of amazing people. And they still pay me to do it.
A card dealer. I love sitting down to write with a cup of coffee, notes, thoughts, a plan. Then I start flipping cards in my head, looking for the words. Sometimes I bust. Every so often I hit a royal flush. I love the serendipity.
Don Murray, my college journalism professor and friend, said you can always measure the quality of a piece of writing by the quality of what you cut. No matter how much you love a phrase or sentence you wrote, or how hard you worked to land some key fact, remember that the piece may be sharper and more powerful without it. Simple and true.
The very word strikes terror in the heart of every journalist.
Libel—publishing false statements that expose someone to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule in writing or pictures—can trigger a costly lawsuit or the possibility of a hefty payout to settle the case. Originally limited to newspapers, it now includes broadcast news on radio and television. Slander is another form of libel that involves oral communication.
In 2017, Disney, the parent company of ABC News, settled a $1.9 billion libel lawsuit by paying a South Dakota beef production company $177 million. At issue was a 2012 broadcast that described a type of meat filler used in ground beef as ammonia-treated “pink slime,” once used only in dog food, according to the broadcast story and news reports. Disney’s insurers, the beef company said, paid the remainder of the total undisclosed settlement. The company, which maintained the filler is 100% beef, said it lost millions in sales and had to lay off 700 workers.
While such cases get big headlines, the reality is that routine stories that are insufficiently checked are behind most libel actions.
The bar is higher for public officials, and public figures—those who hold no office but are widely known. They must prove that the news organization knew the statement was false and published it anyway, known as “actual malice.”
Failure to prove that led a federal judge to dismiss former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s 2022 lawsuit against The New York Times over an editorial linking her political rhetoric to a mass shooting. The editor in charge acknowledged he moved “too fast,” but insisted he didn’t act out of malice, just carelessness. The paper immediately put out a correction.
THE ELEMENTS OF LIBEL
To prove they have been libeled by a news organization, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a person must demonstrate six things:
1. Publication in a newspaper, broadcast, or website.
2. Identification. The person doesn’t have to be named if their identity—a local coach, say—is clear.
3. Defamation that exposes a person to hatred and ridicule or injures her business. (Libel suits are often called defamation actions.)
4. False. Were the allegations false? Even an altered or incorrect quote can be false.
5. Fault. Did the publication know the story was false and defamatory and publish it anyway?
6. Injury/ Harm. The heart of a libel action is that the person’s reputation suffered injury, stated in dollars.
WINNING CAN HURT, TOO
Even winning a libel suit can be costly.
In 2021, a federal court judge threw out a libel suit clearing Reveal, a nonprofit newsroom run by the Center for Investigative Reporting, from charges that it defamed Planet Aid, an international charity that received federal funds. Reveal’s reports linked the charity to an alleged cult and questioned its spending.
“While the judge’s decision is an unequivocal legal win for Reveal, it took more than four-and-a-half years and millions of dollars to get there,” wrote Reveal’s general counsel, D. Victoria Baranetsky, in an article about the case in Columbia Journalism Review.
Frank Greve, an investigative reporter for Knight Ridder Newspapers and a former colleague, beat back a libel suit, but he still called the experience “20 months of acute professional anxiety.” In his case, truth, as it is generally, was the best defense against a libel action.
But that doesn’t cover everything, as I discovered when Frank shared the lessons he learned with me:
Good writing is clear thinking. It’s jotting down what you have learned. Great writing is clear thoughts set to music – words and phrases and sentences with rhythm.
That some people actually enjoy writing. I find it hard, even after all these years. I do love having written. Writing to me is like exercising. I find doing sit-ups and going to hot yoga hellish but appreciate their importance and enjoy the feeling when class is over.
A surprise-maker. Because the last thing writing should be is boring.
If you are writing a book , don’t end the day when you hit a roadblock. Wrap up when you are excited about where you are going and see the path ahead. That way you start the next day with momentum.
Plagiarism, the theft of another writer’s words and ideas, is one of journalism’s cardinal sins. Ryan Broderick learned that the hard way.
In 2020, he lost his job as senior reporter at the news website BuzzFeed after an investigation determined 11 of his articles had been plagiarized or incorrectly attributed to other sources, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“It is BuzzFeed News’ policy that nothing may be copied, pasted, and passed off as one’s own work, and that all quotes should be attributed,” Buzzfeed’s Editor-in-Chief Mark Schoofs wrote readers. “We regret that in these instances those standards were not met.”
Journalists had been stealing words before, but the cut-and-paste functions on word processors that emerged in the 1970s have made it a snap to lift another’s prose.
At a time when so much research is conducted on the internet, some journalists find the allure of purloined words hard to resist.
You’re researching a story on the internet and come across a well-crafted sentence or paragraph that fits your piece perfectly. It’s better than anything you have.
IGNORE THE TEMPTATION
You’re tempted.
With a few keystrokes, you could easily lift the material and paste it into your story. You can change a few words around, thinking that the theft won’t be obvious. Or you come across a lively quote. This time, you pass it off as your own.
“Never plagiarize,” the Society of Professional Journalists’ Co of Ethics says flat out. Your news organization probably echoes the sentiment in its stylebook.
And remember, the same computer systems that embolden word theft can also be turned on the offender by searching databases f borrowed materials.
The common excuses plagiarists trot out—haste, sloppy no taking, deadline pressure—won’t always save you. Plagiarism can be the equivalent of a career death sentence.
The ethical choice, and one that will protect you from dire punishment: do your own original reporting. If you still want use another’s words directly, attribute them to the source, paraphrase them and include where the information came from.
There’s a simple solution, one that I lay out in my journalism textbook “Reporting and Writing: Basics for the 21st Century “If you think you should attribute it, then attribute it,” says Thomas Mallon, author of “Stolen Words,” an engaging history of plagiarism.
“Manage your time wisely,” my book continues. “Plagiarism is a desperate act. Writers behind on a deadline, exhausted, anxious, may delude themselves into believing that what they’re doing is nothing more than a shortcut. Be honest about where you got your information.”
If Ryan Broderick had followed the rule, he’d still have his job.
Go. See. Do. Be present. Participate. Observe. Make your writing more than a desk job. Make it a journey of exploration: Teddy Roosevelt up the Amazon, Ernest Shackleton on the frozen Weddell Sea, Jane Goodall in Gombe Stream, Tanzania. Don’t just imagine, don’t rely on the internet; go find the scenes you are writing about and talk to the people who can give you insight into your characters. Investigate the worlds you want to bring to light, whether it’s a corner barbershop or the flight deck of an aircraft carrier.
If you are writing a murder mystery, do you know how your villain’s firearm works? Have you loaded a pistol or a revolver and shot it on the range? If you are putting a sermon in the mouth of a preacher, have you listened to one lately, read the Bible or the Quran, played an audiobook version of Father Mapple’s stemwinder in Moby-Dick?
I tried to get at some of these thoughts in “Zola’s Horse,” a lecture I delivered at Vermont College of Fine Arts, later repackaged as an essay for Numero Cinq.
Man-on-the-street interviews are a genre that gets you out in the community. Yet working for a series of small and medium papers, I grew tired of gathering quotes on local issues from semi-informed everyday Joes. So I made a point of looking for people doing something that would be fun to describe. Get quotes about the city council’s new budget from the guy jackhammering the sidewalk or the panhandler tossing peanuts to the pet spider monkey he keeps on a leash.
Dave Barry revealed a mastery of this art in his Pulitzer Prize-winning piece for The Miami Herald, “Can New York save itself?”
“As Chuck and I walk along 42nd Street, we see a person wearing an enormous frankfurter costume, handing out coupons good for discounts at Nathan’s Famous hot dog stands. His name is Victor Leise, age 19, of Queens, and he has held the position of giant frankfurter for four months. He says he didn’t have any connections or anything; he just put in an application and, boom, the job was his. Sheer luck. He says it’s OK work, although people call him “Frank” and sometimes sneak up and whack him on the back. Also there is not a lot of room for advancement. They have no hamburger costume.
“Can New York save itself ?” I ask him.
“If there are more cops on the streets, there could be a possibility,” he says, through his breathing hole.”
Winning the Iowa Short Fiction Award in 1986, when I was twenty-six, the youngest winner of that prize. (The book came out a year later.) I was a reporter for a smalltown newspaper in Oregon, and although I was getting encouraging letters from The Atlantic and The New Yorker, I had never published a short story anywhere. When John Leggett, director of the Iowa Writers Workshop, phoned me with the good news, my heart was pounding so hard, I could barely gasp, “Really?”
He seemed to take this as a lack of enthusiasm, and said, “This is a very major award, you know.” I croaked, “I … I know.” He hung up, no doubt appalled at my ingratitude, unaware that I was now leaping about my apartment. Then immediately I told myself it couldn’t possibly be true. It was a prank! But who knew I had applied? Not my old college friends. Not my fellow reporters at the paper where I worked; I kept my fiction writing to myself, fearing they would consider it frivolous. My girlfriend had proofread the manuscript, but she wouldn’t be so cruel as to get somebody to punk me like this. The next morning I phoned the Iowa Writers Workshop, and the receptionist laughed at my doubts and assured me I really had won.
I told our managing editor that I had grabbed the award and would be having a book published. He said, “Type up a brief.” I had to admit I was lucky to get even this, there being far less interest in my little triumph than all those meth lab busts and forest fires and school tax base elections.
A knight errant in full armor on a bicycle (see Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court). Why? My wife sees me as a lonely warrior, battling dragons when I get up at 4 a.m. every day to write fiction. (It helps that I’m an insomniac.) But there’s a ridiculous aspect to the whole enterprise, both in the audacity of imagining the minds of very different people, and in the graphomania that keeps one toiling for years on end for a lower hourly pay than convicts earn stamping license plates.
I had just graduated from college as an English major when I somehow talked myself into a newspaper internship on the Longview (Washington) Daily Courier. After a week of repairing my hopelessly roundabout stories, my city editor, David Connelly, sat me down in the morgue and said he was going to teach me how to write a lede. He got out a copy of the Wall Street Journal and pointed to the feature in the center column on page one.
Do it like that, he said. Grab the reader’s attention with the opening line, then drop in a quote, then add a “nut graf” telling the reader why the story was important. Of course, this would be too formulaic for fiction, but something about it connected with me as a literary writer. Establish a conflict right away. Add dialogue. Tell us the stakes—why this matters, what’s at risk for the central characters, why we should read it. Starting out strong is all the more important in the age of smartphones and streaming video. We are at war for readers’ attention. Strike quickly.
This editor also influenced my thinking in my answer to your first question. When Washington state passed a law requiring mandatory jail sentences for drunken drivers, Connelly came to me and said, “How’d you like to go to jail?” He had concocted a scheme to slip me in undercover; only the warden would be aware who I was. Cowlitz County Jail wasn’t Rikers Island, but I was terrified. Nevertheless, I said, “Sure.” I would spend twenty-four hours in cells that included burglars, wife-beaters, meth addicts, and a murderer. I emerged unscathed, and no doubt in far less danger than I imagined, but it made for a thrilling immersion into a criminal world unknown to me as a young writer.
“Reporting— investigative or not—is often served by transparency. If you tell people what you’re working on, where you are, and what you’re stumped by, they’re much more likely to help you out.”
– John D. Sutter