Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

*All darlings have been sarcastically struck from this post

Yup, here I go being cynical again.

Maybe you’ve already heard me rant on the subject. Maybe not. Maybe I don’t care.

This is in response to the style of writing I feel is being taught to us here at the J School thus far. The basic, obvious, boring, tape recorder style writing.

I get it. Building blocks, fundamentals, work your way up, walk before you run.

That’s all great, unless you intend to fly.

I’m not necessarily criticizing my professors. Possibly it’s the way that they were taught. Possibly it’s the way they think is best to teach us. Possibly it’s the unwritten, unspoken, uncompromisable rule in journalism.

Or possibly it’s the reason they have had jobs in journalism and I probably never will.

But sometimes I feel suffocated by the rigid structure.

I showed my roomie my marathon piece a couple weeks ago. He is currently working at NBC’s newly launched website and is a good writer/editor.

He offered me some suggestions, and I was happy to hear them. One thing he said, and rightly so, (this is a paraphrase to the best of my recollection): “I think you like your writing. Did anyone ever tell you the phrase ‘kill your darlings?’”

To be honest, his observation was right. The piece he was looking at did contain some darlings. But there’s a reason: I aspire to great writing.

I want to write in a manner that leaves the reader with a tangible something after they finish the piece. Maybe they don’t figure it out then, maybe they don’t figure it out ever. But they read the story and carry the something with them because it moves them.

Do I like my writing? Do I think I write well? About six percent of the time.

The rest of the time I think it falls flat on its face, but some days I think I see progress toward something better–toward a form like stories in Esquire and New York Magazine.

They have good articles, long articles, articles that make me want to turn the page rather than skim the column for possible news quiz fodder.

And the sentences–they venture outside the realm of subject, verb, period. Some have an extra clause or two, an interesting combination of commas, and em dashes or (gasp) an adverb (yup, that’s in MLA style, I’ll keep that extra comma after the second item in my list thanks).

Many of those writers get away with darlings. In fact, the darlings are what make them so damn good. Take, for example, the newest issue of Esquire. In an article about Vince Vaughn, Chris Jones writes this:

The timing, the delivery, the sheer size of his performance, they make the words so much funnier than they are — he’s done what he has done so often before, taken mediocre material and given it a blast with cardiac paddles — and people in the restaurant are really laughing hard now, heads on their empty plates, tears in their eyes. Vaughn sits back, picks up his drink, surveys his audience, and he smiles that really nice smile of his. He’s loving this. He’s loving that we’ve fallen in love.

Stop what you’re doing for a second. Imagine that you just handed this in to your Craft professor. Be honest. I mean it, honest. When you got the edits back, would that last sentence have a strike through it? Would another darling have been offed?

That paragraph is brilliant. Fucking brilliant. And it’s one of 40 others in the story that are equally as solid, all with Jones’ style emanating from each phrase.

It’s the type of writing that, if I could produce, I don’t think I would be allowed to this semester.

The way I see it, there are two types of parents in this world, those that see their kids have tons of energy so they give them a ball, put them outside and deal with the inevitable grass stains and scrapes, and those that put their kids on a leash, strap on a helmet and time their exercise so they don’t “overdo it.”

Do you think Michael Jordan’s Dad put a helmet on him the first time baby MJ started running around the yard?

In spite of this, there are those in our class who have kept pushing boundaries. I came across this in the latest e-mail from Heath Merriweather. The excerpt is from one of Carla Murphy’s pieces (someone who, like me, strives to write longer pieces some day):

All rely on Lee’s storefront church, in which the Holy Spirit is invited to enter, wipe its feet, disrobe, chat, eat, drink, dance, jump and relax, for up to six hours at a time.

I don’t know what the reaction to the piece was, if the professor wanted edits, or what, but I love it.

Don’t kill your darlings, cultivate them. Practice using them in your pieces. Make them reflections of you, and then fight for them.

If someone tells you to kill your darlings, tell them to kill their own damn darlings. We’ve got great writing to do.