Do newspapers aspire to be dull?--con’t
{picking up from these lines, two posts down: "I had copy! Better than the Denver Post lady’s, I hoped.}:
That proved -- well, I’ll let you read it first (from page 1 of the D Post, June 6, 2002):
Barbie draws kith and Ken to convention
Thursday, June 06, 2002 - It takes a certain amount of sass to show one's breasts past the age of 40, but the featured attraction at this week's convention at the Adam's Mark Hotel didn't - couldn't - blink before baring.
We're talking, of course, about Barbie, who despite turning 43 this year is still prancing around in high heels as wasp-waisted, slim-hipped and wildly popular as ever.
A much lower hurdle than my imagination had been willing to conceive. She’s not responsible for the ghastly headline, but the opening was both lame and forced. Either adjective is bad in itself, but why would you ever stretch a point that hard (dolls are nude!) to arrive at something so uninspired? And that was more intriguing than the limb reattachment angle? Worst of all, that barfably cutesy "of course . . ." construction leading off the second paragraph was right out of a high school newspaper. (Very much like the embarrassing "after all . . ." construction of the lead that would eventually grace my story (Contestant #3).)
At least she was trying. Check out this Rocky Mountain News lead from the following day:
Barbie's body, career choices have evolved over time
They are youthful and middle-aged; gray-haired, bleached-blond and permed; with husbands, children and grandchildren; with wrinkles, toe-rings and comfortable sandals.
What on earth would inspire a person to read the second paragraph of that? (The very reaction I had to my own eventual lead, unfortunately.) In case you were to continue, it continued like this, in that one-line-per-paragraph style some journos have convinced themselves (adds zip to the copy? makes it read faster?):
A cross-section of American women gathered Thursday to celebrate feminine perfection in a Barbie doll.
Wow. Now it's really got me enthralled.
While the Post writer made an effort on her lead, she tossed away that golden material from the limb-reattachment class eight paragraphs later:
Among the workshops was a lunchtime class Wednesday on limb reattachment, where a seven-step program to Barbie wholeness began with: "Heat the limb by dipping in freshly boiled water."
Jeez. She sets it up poorly, gives away the punchline midway through, and ends on a flat note by quoting directly off the linguistically uninspired direction sheet. (Note to Post writer: the instructions were worded to make for effective instructions; you were in charge of the wording to make for effective imagery and/or presentation of your idea.)
I felt zero competitive pressure from those pieces. Which, unfortunately, has been the case nearly every time I’ve covered a story simultaneously with a gaggle of reporters, including the national press. (With a few noteworthy exceptions. When I covered Columbine, Tom Kenworthy --then of the Washington Post, now USA Today--always came through with a strong lead, which captured the essence of the event, along with a literary-caliber construction. Most of the rest: bleah!)
When I first read my my colleagues’ Barbie stories, I shrugged them off as bad writing, the same way I had with most other stories I covered. But once I read the eventual intro to my own Barbie piece--dulled down the way they wanted it--I started wondering: was this bad writing, or bad editing? Or bad edicting? Have today’s editors trained today’s journalists to turn in crap like that, or it will be rewritten until it conforms?
Of course two examples from small-town papers and one from the Times is hardly sufficient data to draw conclusions. But it would explain a lot about all the lifeless copy I come across in newspapers and magazines these days.
(And if you’re wondering: metro Denver’s explosive growth has pushed it past the "small-town" tag in terms of population the past 10 years, but it hasn’t yet managed to shake it’s small-town attitudes. And the two papers are still exceptionally small-town. Give it another ten years. Hopefully.)
This next comment might boot me forever from the eyes of anti-Salon bloggers, and/or tag me forever as a Salon kiss ass, but here goes. Outside my book editor and the local glossy that doesn't try to challenge my leads, it's been awhile since I wrote for a non-Salon editor. And yikes, what a wake-up that was. They didn't always swallow the leads I wanted there, but usually because they didn't work. At Salon they actually encouraged me to write with me own voice. (Most of the editors I worked with, at least. Joan Walsh is a genius, and should be writing books that will be on the shelves a hundred years from now. Most of the others were very good too, with one notable exception who enjoyed turning my leads into AP drivel.) Though he never line-edited my stories directly at Salon (I think he reviewed some of the bigger ones), I was relieved to see Scott Rosenberg chime in here with an enthusiastic vote for contestant #1, without any info on where the three came from.
I don't like many magazines or papers today. They bore the crap out of me. There is one other mag I like a great deal, though, and oddly enough, it comes wrapped inside a newspaper. The NYT Magazine. God, I'd love to write for them. Lots of big-name mags I'd kill to get published in to put on my resume and to help get my books sold. But that one I'd love to appear in because I'd love to write for it. (One of these days they’ll embrace one of my queries. But even now I’m supposed to be polishing one off, instead of spending most of the day composing for free on my blog. At least I'm writing.)
Great work. Nearly every story seems to open like a novel. I still love the opening to their Youssouf Malé story, even if it did humble them when Youssouf turned out to be a composite:
November 18, 2001
Is Youssouf Malé a Slave?
By MICHAEL FINKEL
The man came to the village on a moped. Youssouf Malé watched him. A man on a moped was unusual. When visitors did come to Nimbougou, deep in the hill country of southern Mali, they were almost always on foot, or on bicycle. The man on the moped had come to sell fabrics, the flower-patterned kind from which the women in Youssouf's village liked to sew dresses. Youssouf sat beneath a palm tree and watched.
Amazing. What control. Takes his time, just the right amount of time. Beautifully cinematic, it unfolds just the way the experience would unfold: The man pulls up on a moped. The boy watches him. Because the whir of the moped means so much.
He unfolds the scene for us, and sets the larger stage at the same time. And communicates what is going on and why it’s important. Can’t say enough about that opening graph. Of course you can take your time when you’ve got 7,000 words to work with. But that’s a big copout. Even if I only had 750, those 75 words up there work their butts off communicating information efficiently. And gloriously. You don’t always have to get right to the point right away.
I’d love to hear what other journos have to say about their experiences being dulled down.
4:24:20 PM 
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