This week’s readings provided additional examples of different structures that can be used in long-form reporting. From the terrifying prospect of AI warfare on a global scale to the story of the death of a Chinese migrant in Flushing, these stories range in topic and the mechanisms they use to convey their findings.
When first reading Dan Barry and Jeffrey E. Singer’s The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail, I was first struck by the almost cinematic structure employed by these journalists in conveying the story. The article starts with a scene that Barry and Singer did not personally see, nor is truly verifiable through any secondary materials or accounts: Song Yang falling (or jumping) from her fourth-story balcony. Journalists defy the natural order of the events, instead instructing readers to pause the vision of her fall halfway through to provide more context to her descent – where she was and why she was falling. Barry and Singer then provide details about Flushing’s commercial sex trade and details about Song Yang’s life before returning to this fall to her death and the subsequent struggles for her family. While I found this structure to be extremely interesting and effective in entrancing readers in the story (supplemented by Barry’s fascinating insights in the Global Investigative Journalism Network piece), the beginning of the story and several scenes throughout the piece felt almost contrived or like a piece of fiction rather than investigative journalism. As I touched upon above, the opening scene is not necessarily a true depiction of events but rather a reconstruction of pieced-together video footage that stops once Yang moves to her balcony. Barry and Singer acknowledge this lack of verification later in the piece, using it to add to the suspense that no one knows what really happened on the balcony, but, in my opinion, excluding this in the opening seems slightly deceptive to readers and a construction that ultimately serves to heighten the drama of the piece at the cost of accuracy.
Aleppo After the Fall by Robert F. Worth takes an extremely different approach to storytelling and structure. Instead of following a specific character or singular event, Worth details the crises that have torn Aleppo apart, centering his linear reporting and the different people he talked to within the process. I found this structure to not be nearly as enticing a read and noticed my attention waning at several points throughout, but the piece was much easier to track in terms of figuring out where each piece of information originated. Worth is also careful to describe the damage and fear incited by both Assad and rebel forces – contributing to the thoroughness and impressive nature of this article.
These extremely different pieces, therefore, showcase the wide-ranging potential of long-form investigative journalism, while also highlighting the benefits and potential downsides of these different ways of reporting.
