Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

It’s official: The New York Times has decreed my Christmas list again.

Except: gasp! I actually already read one and own another one of the Top 10 Books of 2008! That never happens!

In fact, I thought I was still slogging my way through last year’s list. Out of ten selections, in the entire year since it came out, I have read Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris and Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. I do own Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson and The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño, who made this year’s list as well. Either I got them both for Christmas or I bought them with a gift card to Barnes & Noble, I can’t remember.

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I once applied for a job at Borders since talking about books is my favorite topic of conversation. I didn’t drink coffee at the time, so of course when I was hired, the Borders management put me in the café instead of on the book floor.

I’ve stayed away from discussing books on this blog (well except this one earlier time), mainly because I’ve been too busy to read them. But over the holiday weekend, I read two: Boomsday by Christopher Buckley and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

They could not be more wildly different, as Boomsday is a satire along the lines of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” while Persepolis is a graphic memoir about Satrapi’s life in Iran following the 1979 revolution. Guess which one was more fun?

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Dear Mr. Terkel,

In all the election hubbub, I haven’t had much time since your passing to reflect on how much your work means to me.

I hadn’t heard of you until a broadcaster friend from San Francisco came to stay with me, a tattered copy of Working in her suitcase. When I told her that I wanted to do a radio series about jobs in our town, she excitedly thrust the book into my hands.

You’d done it! And it was wonderful. The vivacity of the voices in that book hooked me forever. I discovered that our local library had a copy of The Good War and a few other of your books, and I tore through those, too.

For the first time, EVEN AFTER EARNING A DEGREE IN HISTORY, I understood that history is alive, alive, alive.

I’ve never been good at keeping track of dates and specific policies; like card games and jokes, I learn them and then they slip my mind. But I do remember stories and emotions. Those individual voices and characters in your books illuminated it all for me…my black and white sketch of our country’s contemporary history was suddenly, gloriously,  colored in.

It’s funny…the day before you died, I was at The Strand browsing through the Americana section. There were four or five hardcover copies of Hard Times on the floor, and I sat there for a while thumbing through the stories and thinking of our current economic crisis. Is someone documenting this the way you would have?

I have seen oral history bloom in popularity this past decade. Programs like Storycorps and This American Life rely on the strength of individual voices to give context to recent history. And when done well, without preciousness or preamble, these voices are most powerful tool we have as journalists. Thank you for teaching me this.

I’m going to go back and buy one of those copies of Hard Times. I wonder if the news of your death has inspired people to go buy your books this week. I hope that there are enough copies for all of us.

With great respect,
Valerie Lapinski

I’ve always wanted to be a New Yorker.  For years, I have lusted after their complete lack of emotional response to things that make normal people scream, cry or run away.  And with several years living as a wannabe Brooklynite, I thought I had mastered the act.  When that man flipped me off and screamed obscenities at me for asking for his reaction to the vice presidential debates, I laughed.  When a mentally disturbed man had a shouting match with himself on the subway, I kept reading my book.

But when I walked by the Sony store on 5th Avenue Saturday night and realized there was man IN the store window, lounging in a recliner reading an e-book, I stopped with my friends and took a picture.   (”Tourist,” a true New Yorker would scoff.)  And when I walked by again hours later heading home, I stopped and stared at the man in the window, asleep with his bare feet dangling out from his blanket.

Then I came home with a need to settle my curiosity.  Who was this man and why was he sleeping in a Midtown store window?

His name is Dave Farrow and he is a two-time world record holder.  He once memorized the order of 59 decks of playing cards shuffled together, and he’s a speed reader.  So Sony hired him to live in the display window for the month of October to promote the Reader Revolution, which is basically a pledge the company made to donate 100 e-books to a school for every page Dave turns.

It sounds like a win-win, right?  Sony sells a ton of digital book readers and gets great publicity while school kids get free digital books.

But what about Dave?  Is it really humane to make him live in a store front window, for all the world to gawk at, just to save Americans’ dwindling interest in books?

Yeah.  It probably is, especially in an overstimulated city like New York.  Nevertheless, I’m convinced that there are better ways to inspire young readers in New York City.   My main issue with the Sony experiment is that the scope of its influence is limited.  Sure, it’s great to donate educational things to school children, but most of the kids in NYC won’t see the man living in the store who overcame dyslexia and ADD and loves to read books.  I want to see a pro-literacy scheme that won’t just give kids books, but will also share with them a little piece of the enthusiasm we have for reading.

Any ideas?

Now that the gates have officially closed at Yankee Stadium, fans may be craving a little nostalgia from the good old days of baseball.  Julia Ruth Stevens, who threw the last “first” pitch at Yankee Stadium Sunday night in the house her father built, might just have the remedy.

Although she admits to being a Red Sox fan, Ruth Stevens published a book in 2008 filled with photographs and memories of the Babe, especially his time spent in pinstripes. The book titled Babe Ruth:  Remembering the Bambino in Stories, Photos & Memorabilia is a pricey $35.00, but captures why this one man from Baltimore became a worldwide legend.  Sure she mentions all of the records he set, broke and how he is still considered the greatest player ever to swing a bat, but she also writes about his humble beginnings and how he was simply a great dad.  

One chapter in the book, Ruth Stevens describes her father’s special breakfast we would fix, just for her.  She describes how the Babe would wake her up early in the morning before he would go hunting or fishing. He would butter bread and fry an egg in a whole, cut in the middle of the bread, and top it off with a slice bologna.           

Ruth Stevens really balances the legend of her father and showing how he was just an ordinary man who had a great passion.  Considering the state of baseball today, with the million dollar salaries, steroid use or human growth hormone, expensive ticket prices, and “misremembering” clubhouse conversations, it is refreshing to look back on why baseball is an American pastime. 

Although I am not a Yankee’s fan, I can remember the first time I went to a game at the Stadium.  My older brother and I had tickets in the bleachers.  We sat in the furthest row from home plate, and in the furthest section of right field.  We had the worst possible seats in Ruth’s house.  There was not one person behind us and we both just laughed about it and looked around and saw the perfect view of all the devoted fans in the entire stadium.  My brother gave me nudge and told me to shut up, so he could have a “moment” at Yankee Stadium.