Northwest Writers Workshop/Poynter conference
Posted by: Steve Dunkelberger
Since I'm freshly back from the
Northwest Writers Workshop/Poynter conference in Portland last weekend,
i should share a bit of that experience.
I have long complained
that many of these writers conferences have sessions for beginning
writers and some for reporters who have months to investigate stories
and unlimited space in which to tell their tales. Not many sessions
have been offered for middle-of-their-career reporters in the real
world deadline and space issues.
The Portland conference finally had something for us folks.
One
such session was by Julia Sulek of the San Jose Mercury News who talked
about narrative writing on a deadline and with limited space.
The
thrust of her talk was that since newspapers are less immediate than
radio, television and the Internet, print folks should write articles
that are engaging and not just information since they should assume the
readers have already a passing knowledge on the issue -- courtesy of
the faster media.
To do that, print people should pick a detail
that encapsulated the story or information. Get to the gut of the story
by showing the intestines. That will gain the reader from the start and
set up the tone for the rest of the article.
Faced with a
standard issue flood, for example, Julia wrote about the effort of a
few cowboys to save a herd of cattle. People get lost in the statistics
of disasters but are engaged by the tale of a bovine rescue.
Like
my old J-prof always said the fact that 6 million Jews died in the
Holocaust is a statistic. That one of them was a little girl who hid in
an attic is a story.
The next big journalism training session in the Pacific Northwest is in Eastern Washington next month. Visit: spj.wash.org.