Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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On good writing
Distinguished Writing Award winners say that praise,
support and feedback from editors help them become better
Like "A" students, the two panels of fine writers — one group famed,
the other distinguished this year by an ASNE Writing Award — turned the
difficult question that was asked to one they were prepared to answer.
They were talking, as one moderator put it, about "making visible the process"
of writing.
So, for the already famed, "What makes good writing?" became "What can
people in corner offices do to encourage good writing in their newspapers
while on the way from one meeting to the next?" And for this year’s winners,
the conversation hinged on how they do what they do.
Honcho editors, said New York Times Atlanta correspondent Rick Bragg,
set the tone. That was key to his widely admired coverage of tornado destruction
in his native northern Alabama, he said. A top editor of his shop had walked
by the national desk and said, "Let’s write this."
Otherwise, Bragg said that as a Times reporter, he "would have been
beat over the head with blunt objects" until he wrote in inverted pyramid.
The atmosphere that’s created in a newspaper can affect good writing,
agreed Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman. Her most "simplistic bit of
advice to editors to make good writing: praise." Be specific: "I really
like the way you began that piece," for example. "It can be easy to forget
to tell someone that what they did is what you’re looking for."
Washington Post columnist Donna Britt said, "The most encouraging praise
has always been where the story wound up. You can be praised by an editor,
but if the story winds up on 18D," a contradictory message is received
by the writer.
Britt spoke to how individuals decide they want to be good writers and
who editors decide has the potential to become one of the newspaper’s stars.
She implied that role models with whom young reporters and would-be reporters
can identify easily can be useful. There was "no one black and female writing
for the Gary (Ind.) Post-Tribune when I was coming along," she said.
Britt cited as key to her own growth an editor at a newspaper who believed
that her writing talent was worth encouraging and developing. "The personal
voice part comes with encouragement," she said. And more people than ever,
she said, want to write in their own voice.
"There’re always people (on a newspaper staff) who could write better
than they’re allowed to," Bragg said.
Goodman said: "The key word is development. Columnists are thrown out
there, and they don’t get any word until they’re removed. People aren’t
directed or encouraged."
Then there are the obstacles of convention that newspapers can erect
between the writing that reporters do and the writing that readers see.
Said Dave Barry, whose Miami Herald column syndicated by many English-language
newspapers spawned a popular TV (television) sitcom (situation comedy),
"Are you always to write for the stupidest people in your audience?"
Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert, the moderator, complained
about a "dead zone" three to four paragraphs into most newspaper articles
"for people who’re assumed to be reading their first newspaper."
Goodman agreed. " ‘Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.’ — that’s a stopper," she
said.
Bragg groused about "the attention that newspapers pay to getting people
who don’t read to read newspapers ... We’re only going to sell newspapers
to people who read, and let’s keep ’em."
Compelling and revelatory detail made the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s
coverage of a Ku Klux Klan demonstration, to judge by the remarks of Bob
Dvorchak, lead writer on a package that won the 1998 Jesse Laventhol Prize
for deadline writing by a team.
The managing editor had organized eight reporters into a team. "The
instruction we gave to people before they went out was, ‘Pay attention
to all the detail ... and allow for the spontaneity of the moment,’ " he
said. "And I made sure I got out there." The central character in the story
became the city, where no one knew what might happen.
Delivering exceptional and ground-breaking stories quickly "takes a
lot of preparation, and you have to keep saving string on your subject,"
said The Wall Street Journal’s John J. Keller II, who won the individual
Laventhol Prize for deadline reporting. A good beat reporter, he said,
works every day. "You try not to let go of things" so as to know when there’s
news on your beat.
For Kenneth Fuson of The Sun, Baltimore, who won the Distinguished Writing
Award for non-deadline writing for a series that followed the production
of a high-school musical and the changes in the students who did it, the
underlying question as a writer is, "How can I make someone feel what I’m
feeling?"
Michael J. Jacobs, editor of the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald, who won
for editorial writing, said the experience of the devastating Red River
flood and subsequent fire in downtown Grand Forks, changed how editorials
are written to and about its city. "This is an old newspaper — 118 years
old — and we were transformed for the first time into a member of the community.
... We began to feel we could use the word ‘we’ in a way we never have
before. ... ‘We’ became ‘we who live together in this community.’ "
Jacobs recalled that by contrast to this year’s honor for his work,
an editor had remarked about the first editorial he ever wrote: "It’s ugly,
but it fills the hole."
Newsday music critic Justin Davidson, who won for criticism, doesn’t
find his work so different from what any other reporter does. "Music is
something that happens, and you cover it like anything else. ... You try
to describe something new and, hopefully, even a performance of a Beethoven
piano concerto can be something new."
By contrast, Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter, who also won
for criticism, finds that for himself "a review is fundamentally a piece
of writing." He said that arts criticism too often is "almost written in
Cyrillic. Most people go to the movies for the emotions they provide, and
I’m trying to trap that."
Commentary winner Patricia Smith, a Boston Globe columnist, is noted
for her powerful and sometimes unconventional ways of telling a story,
including poetry. But rather than writing poetry, she argued, it’s more
important for editors and writers "to learn to think like a poet. Experiment
with perspective. With a column, spend time thinking about an unexpected
entry point."
Inevitably, the talk turned to whether great writers are born or made.
Jacobs said he has no idea if it’s learned or instinctive. "Eating and
sex are instinctive," he said, but writing? Fuson expressed confidence
that writing can be taught in newspapers. Workshops, he said, can create
enthusiasm to write better. Hunter said he thinks writing can be learned,
but great writing can’t.
"There are no rules about writing," Barry said. "Look at the sentence:
Does it work?" He said that preconceived notions about how to write or
even what to write are too common among editors. "I like to think that
the process works, that the reporter brings back the story and writes it,
and the editor helps with that process."
Said Bragg, "We can’t stress strongly enough from where we sit how important
it is that you take an interest in good writing."
Thompson is editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Daily News.
