Making the effort to promote good writing

Writing competes with “Survivor” as water-cooler foder, thanks to local award

By Elliot Krieger

Not just sports, not just stocks, not just who will survive on “Survivor” — reporters also like to talk about writing. Why not?

It’s our craft, our trade, the source of our livelihood. When we talk about writing, admiring somebody’s anecdotal lead or someone else’s subtle use of dialogue, we’re also taking the measure of our own work and figuring ways we can make our next story better.

At The Providence (R.I.) Journal, we encourage writers and editors to talk to one another about our work. We carry on much of our talk in public, through a 15-year-long conversation that has been sustained and nurtured by the Journal’s writing committee.

The committee’s mission is to “develop and sustain a culture of writing and storytelling at the Journal.” We do this in several ways: We bring in outside speakers; we run an in-house seminar (we call it “First Friday”) every month; we’ve run special programs such as an evening at which staff members read selections from writing they do on their own time, and we offer weekly writing tips on our Web site, The Power of Words (www.projo.com/words).

Our most popular and enduring program, however, is our writing awards. For more than a dozen years, we’ve been giving out awards every two weeks recognizing the best writing that’s appeared during that period in the pages of the Journal.

They’re not exactly the Pulitzers in terms of prestige or the Oscars in terms of glamour. We have no celebrity MCs, stretch limos, post-ceremony galas. The award earns the winner $50 — more than a cup of coffee, but not much more than a coffee maker. But still, we’re proud of our writing awards, in large part because they get us to focus on, analyze, debate, and celebrate what we do best and the best of what we’ve done.

In part, the awards have worked so well for us because so many people have been involved. The key to that involvement is that the awards are bestowed by a committee made up of the previous month’s winners.

We’ve added (and dropped) various award categories over the years, and at present we offer awards in four categories: deadline, developed, single edition (recognizing great work from our suburban sections), and wild card (a catchall category that can include columns, editorials, brights, anything).

Every other Wednesday, the awards committee meets and mulls over the nominations. Anyone can nominate a story, and, of course, committee members may bring in nominations of their own. The discussions can be lively, pointed, even heated — though they should, and they almost always do, focus on the stories.

The awards are not meant to recognize great reporting per se; they are writing awards, so they are meant to recognize great writing. Often the committee will bypass a story that has taken months to report and give the nod to a gem that may have taken a day, a week, or an hour.

The committee has some obligations, and so do the winners. Committee members may not vote a tie. Otherwise, we feel, the temptation to recognize lots of good stories — and to avoid disappointing those passed by — would be too great. After making the awards, the committee members write brief statements explaining their choices.

Then, to collect an award, the winner must write a short essay explaining how he wrote the story. All of these essays are posted on the Journal’s internal electronic bulletin board. Some are also posted on our Power or Words Web site. Over the years, the Journal has collected some of the best stories and essays and published them in a book, “How I Wrote the Story,” which has gone through three editions.

Sure, the writing award serves as an incentive — though I’m sure every reporter tries to write the best story possible, and doesn’t think, “gee, if I could just use a stronger verb in my lead I might win the writing award.” I think writing awards work because they encourage everyone at the paper to be on the lookout for great writing, to learn how to judge and to recognize great writing, and to reflect on what makes for great writing in a daily newspaper.

When we gather around the mailboxes and the copy machine, when we get together in the cafeteria or the fitness center, when we’re all abuzz as we walk through the newsroom or huddle around one another’s desks — don’t worry, we’re working. We’re talking about writing.

Elliot Krieger, an assistant city editor at The Providence (R.I.) Journal, is the chairman of the Journal’s writing committee. He can be reached at 401-277-7349, or ekrieger@projo.com.