I was blown away by the degree of journalistic access that Matthew Longo had in The Picnic. Even without Longo\u2019s dramatic prose, the cast of interviewees was so strong that a more mediocre writer could have easily carried my interest. Longo was able to get ahold of the prime minister at the time, the guard who opened the gates, and the person who thought of the idea in the first place. I was personally impressed by Longo\u2019s thorough attention to details which, were I the one gathering information, would have struck me as irrelevant. For instance, I would not have thought to\u00a0 mention the man who was disgruntled with the amount of wire that had been cut, yet it ended up playing a perfect segue from the description of the celebratory crowds to the concluding statistical remarks. In class, I hope to ascertain the degree to which Longo embellished or filled in the gaps with details from his head. Certain details struck me as seeming somewhat strange to have been found in an interview (e.g. was it mentioned that Norbert left behind a scent at specific moments, or was that just part of the storytelling?). I personally always find myself taking extra caution with how I represent another person\u2019s experiences, and I think it would be a great help for me to learn how Longo approaches that tension.<\/p>\n
Jessica Goudeau\u2019s After the Last Border was incredibly readable for me, which came as a\u00a0 surprise since the majority of her evidence consisted of statistics and quotations from speeches. A lot of this excerpt was interesting because it was journalism about journalism. There\u2019s an interesting dynamic of internal complexity that arises from Goudeau\u2019s portrayal of the media\u2019s portrayal of European immigrants. I\u2019d like to give special mention to the way Goudeau initially used \u201cbetter to be safe than sorry\u201d ironically to indicate the USA\u2019s total disregard for the safety of foreigners, before switching to the offensive and tearing into the consequences of US policy with her paragraph on \u201cthe cost of sorry.\u201d After reading academic essay after academic essay, it was certainly refreshing to read a piece of writing that was capable of using forceful language without sacrificing too much of a fact-based foundation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reading John McPhee was encouraging, albeit somewhat painful. On the one hand, getting advice on how to write a lead and how to structure a story is hugely beneficial for me. On the other hand, I had really been hoping to take McPhee\u2019s class before he retired, and this reading served as a reminder of what I missed out on. When it came to the advice, I noted some amusing resonance with Stephen King\u2019s On Writing. These books that seek to offer aid in the nebulous craft of writing tend to give advice (e.g. bring notepad around) then immediately give noteworthy examples of people who didn\u2019t need the proverbial notepad or even openly despise notepads. This can, at times, obstruct my ability to find solid advice. I suppose the general framing of these books is \u201cif your strategy gets the job done, do it…if not, try these things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was blown away by the degree of journalistic access that Matthew Longo had in The Picnic. Even without Longo\u2019s dramatic prose, the cast of interviewees was so strong that a more mediocre writer could have easily carried my interest. Longo was able to get ahold of the prime minister at the time, the guard<\/p>\n