The Aleppo and Jane Doe Ponytail piece starts off similarly: in the midst of an active scene that sucks the reader into a moment of suspense. “If I’m thinking in terms of story, thinking cinematically and how to lure the reader, it was one of the very first things that struck me: this poor woman falling,” author Dan Barry said for the GIJN article. Barry succeeds: á lá true crime podcast episode, we are drawn into the climactic scene of the story before its context is even introduced. The story slowly unfolds, revealing not only the true nature of Song Yang’s downfall but the story of her life, family, and the thriving underground sex industry, primarily populated by Flushing’s low-income immigrant women.

The Aleppo story runs in the same vein of suspense in the introduction, but its effects are slightly different, and in my opinion, less effective. We begin with the story of Abu Sami, whose sedentary life has miraculously spared him from witnessing the changes the city went through. Only after being escorted out by rebel soldiers did he see the light of sun for the first time in four and a half years. The scene is effective and interesting, but remains a loose end for the majority of the piece. The article then delves into the sociopolitical complexities of the region and attempts to piece together life in Aleppo before and after its destruction. The piece felt less effective in that it was trying to accomplish too much, all at once. It tries to elaborate on every factor that led to Aleppo’s demise and traces far too many groups, events, and individuals. I enjoyed how the author included anecdotes of his own experiences. But he was asking the reader to follow a lot of information, and sometimes that information felt disjointed. For example, for a few grafs, the author sums up reasons that many Syrians’ abhorrence against rebel groups in spite of their dislike for the Assad regime — they looted many civillians and their homes. Then the author introduces us to Marrache and Marie-Michelle, whose house, once beautiful, was destroyed by conflict and looting. Then the author reminisces an Aleppo from before; then suddenly we are talking about the conflict between urban wealth and rural poverty. There were too many people, too many events, too many groups, to keep track of. I kept finding myself reading and rereading grafs because I would lose his train or thought or be unable to connect one graf from another.

Perhaps its unfair for me to expect that the a piece on the conflict-hidden history of one city will rival the structural clarity of a piece centered on the death of one woman, but I do think the Jane Doe Ponytail piece did what the Aleppo piece didn’t: it didn’t leave any loose ends. The information that the authors shared with us made sense in the grand scheme of the story. We don’t get back to the story of Abu Sami, the professor who “shut himself off from the war inside his home,” until the very final few grafs of the Aleppo story. The first and climactic scene of the Jane Doe Ponytail story is entirely explained by the end of the article. The death of this woman means so, so much more to the reader by the end of the story than it did in the beginning. I do think it’s very difficult to keep the reader interested in any longform piece, and I do think the scenes that the authors chose for their respective pieces sufficiently drew me in, at least in the beginning. But I think that crumbs that I give to my reader should lead to a trail that they can follow, not just more crumbs atop another. It’s easy to bombard the reader with information; it’s a bit harder to ensure they can make sense out of all of it.