Transcript Associated Press Reporting Handbook Re-creating Reality: About Narrative Reconstructions

Associated Press
Reporting Handbook
Re-creating Reality:
About Narrative Reconstructions
Chapter 16
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The stories DeSilva has in mind are … the
kinds of tales people tell each other in front
of a fire.
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These stories have central characters that
you can love or hate, but ______________.
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“… there has to be an emotional
investment.” The character has to be
someone in whom the reader will be
emotionally invested.

The central character has to have a ______.
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“real problem that readers will take
seriously. And the character must struggle to
solve that problem:”
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So, what happens if the character solves the
problem?
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If the character has a problem and he or she
solves it, you have a paragraph. “You don’t
have a story.”
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There are four things that make a narrative
work:
1. Character
 2. Problem
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3. Struggle
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4. Resolution or Closure
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This is the bad news. What’s the good news?
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The good news is an awful lot of things in
life happen that way.
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If you start thinking in terms of storytelling,
instead of reporting the news, you’ll see
stories everywhere.

Most of what we print in the newspaper
are ____________
“endings”
 We don’t tell the whole story.
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What we usually report are the resolutions
to a much longer and very interesting story.
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This longer story involves human beings
struggling with life.

Information given to people in the form of
real storytelling are more likely to be
understood, read thoroughly and
remembered.
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It’s entertaining, interesting and in most
cases, fascinating.
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In storytelling, you are dealing with the
texture of people’s lives and their struggles.
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This is “life’s” struggle, and it makes
everything interesting. It’s about
relationship.
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It’s like saying, “OK, you’re having trouble
understanding this. Well, let me tell you a
story.”
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The banking and real estate market collapse
told through the eyes of a hot-dog vendor.
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The reporter learns the character through
action and dialogue.
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Dialogue is not a quote or two, it is what
people are saying to each other in real life.
That’s what we want to reconstruct.
Quotes are for those things that could
reasonably be expected to be remembered.
 “Oh mercy me, I’ve been shot with a
handgun, illegally purchased on the street.”
The rest is just paraphrased.
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Just like in a movie, you must have a setting
for telling a story.
Nobody would think of making a movie set
in “Nowhere.”
 A sense of place means reporting what it’s
like there, what you see and hear and smell
and the taste that creates that sense of place
on the page.
 You have to report action, and you can only
write scenes through detail.
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What do you see, smell and hear and taste?
This is a small town: 440 people, filling station, bank, post office, tavern,
blacktop street, grain elevator. Beyond lie rolling meadows, ripening
corn, redwing blackbirds, fat cattle, windmills and silos – a scene off a
Sweet Lassy feed calendar.
People who write narrative have to relearn
how to report so they can help the reader
experience the world through the senses
instead of just telling them what happened.
 You just need to ask the right questions.
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You have to ask people what they saw and
heard and smelled. “What did it taste like?”
Associated Press
Reporting Handbook
Saving a Child
Chapter 17
The Making of a Rescue:
17 Minutes of Terror
By CHELSEA J. CARTER
This example gives us two stories, one by
Chelsea Carter and one by Tom Saladino.
What are the major differences in the two
accounts?
 Was there anything “wrong” with
Saladino’s story that moved on the wire?
 What had happened earlier that made
FitzHenry and Simpson think they should
do more?
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What were the two things FitzHenry gave
Carter as she left to go to Tipton, Ga.?
 Whose story was she to read in DeSilva’s
book?
 There were two instructions given her as
she left.
 “Remember to tell the story.”
 “Show me the story.”
 Are these different?
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In the story about Eva Suggs, there was
someone with O’Neill who helped Eva open
up.
 Who was the guy who helped Ryan open up
for Carter’s rescue story?
 Rick Feld - the photographer.
 What was the Prodis story about?
 There was another book Carter had read by
Edna Buchanan “The Corpse had a Familiar
Face.”
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How did that book help her?
 What other writer have we read about who
had this incredible way of seeing things?
 Was Carter able to interview everybody?
 Was it necessary?
 The story won the APME Association
Award for best young AP reporter of the
year.
 “Timing,” she says, “is everything.”
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Associated Press
Reporting Handbook
Chasing a Fire
Chapter 18
Charred Trees, Shattered Dreams:
Chronology of a Wildfire
By DAVID FOSTER
Foster begins his story by introducing us to
____________.
 Sam and Kathryn Minor.
 What are they doing?
 Watching the lightning from their cabin in
Coyote Gulch, Montana.
 What does the lightning set up in the story?
 The lightning started the fires in the
Bitteroot National Forest.
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Any comments about:
– “The West is burning as it hasn’t burned in 50
years.”
In an ecological sense, fire is a __________.
 Fire is a necessity. It cleans house, but it
also destroys homes.
 What was wrong with Sam?
 At age 57, he was disabled after 20 years as
a roofer.
 Where had he and Kathryn lived before?
 Las Vegas
 What had happened to his two teen-agers?
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This $92,000 piece of property represents
everything they own, complete with:
– Christmas decorations from Kathryn’s
grandmother, a china hutch, a futon, plastic
bags filled with clothes.
Any comments about the humanity in this
part of the story?
 They thought they had the rest of their lives
to _________.
 Unpack.
 Then the scene changes.
 Who does he bring into the story now?
 A camp of 500 firefighters six miles away.
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The sheriff comes while Sam is playing the
guitar. What is the message the sheriff
brings?
 Evacuate!
 Sam and Kathryn go to the home of friends
and spend two nights.
 They go back home.
 How near is the closest fire on Friday?
 Three miles (and two ridges) away.
 Chip Houde is in charge of 180 firefighters.
 They are fighting two fires - the Gilbert fire
of 500 acres and the Spade Fire of 1,700
acres.
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Things turn for the worse.
 The Minors evacuate again.
 You start getting the idea of the uncertainty
and the fact that there is really no rest for
either the firefighters or the local residents.
 “Dante’s Inferno”
 “Unreal, like a movie”
 Houde sees a cliché.
 “A wall of flame.”
 40 mph gusts and 150-foot flames.
 House is saved. Memories gone.
 Writer leaves his heroes “devastated,” but
helping neighbors and still fighting.
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Foster’s office was in Olympia, Wash.
 AP’s Northwest regional reporter knows
what they want.
 Real people, real drama, compelling
narrative that looks beyond the acres burned
and homes destroyed.
 National Forest headquarters at 11 p.m.
when he pulls in.
 He stays in a Super 8 that smells like
barbequed turkey.
 Three phases:
 The threat; the chaos and the aftermath
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Places Foster looks for leads
 Forest Information Center? Good idea.
 The Montana Café? A better idea.
 The spot-news monster.
 Heads to the firefighters camp, where he
gets what? Instead of what?
 Information instead of a story - 15-minute lesson on fire safety.
 Drives himself to the Minors’ home.
 He lets them tell their story, but he does
have questions. -- Takes photographs.
 People are essential to the story.
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Then, he speaks with the soldiers, the fire
officials.
 Struggles with the firefighter lingo when he
interviews Houde, the branch director.
 90 percent of his story is in his notebooks.
 Julie Dunlap, THE EDITOR: 200 words
 The phone rings: What next?
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