the story

Call me a retrograde, but I find something very romantic about the idea of traditional journalism. While the world is undoubtedly changing quickly; a friend who is a reporter for Dow Jones tells me that a colleague recently remarked to her that "we are all wire reporters now", alluding to the increasing pace of reporting and publication. Still, the image of a gritty reporter chasing down a story, studying the issues meticulously, and reporting with an active sense of professional pride has salience to me. I read something recently espousing the idea that there is a sort of heroism in the notion that reporters do not merely report facts. In being physically present where the stories happen, they testify to the experience. This grants their reporting a special sort of credibility. We used to demand that our journalists not just know about something, but that they know something. Do we still?

This afternoon, I met a journalist from Mexico City named Jose, and we spoke about the notion of journalism as a craft. While this may seem obvious, it occurs to me that we sometimes lose sight of the extent to which the quality of writing matters. Much of this, it seems, has been supplanted with breaking news alerts, tweets, and the like. While I don't mean to suggest that carefully written stories have disappeared (they haven't), I do think we're paying less attention to them. Publications like the New Yorker help to remind us that writing can, and should be taken seriously.

One story that shocked me with its power is Fatal Distraction, for which Gene Weingarten was awarded a Pulitzer Prize last week. In it, he writes about parents who have accidentally killed their children by forgetting them in locked cars. This is profoundly tragic when it happens, and Weingarten handles the narratives with a stunning amount of sensitivity and grace. The story really sheds new light, emotionally and factually, on this occurrence. Outrage is easy, but Weingarten upends that automatic response and challenges us to engage with the issue in ways that may be uncomfortable. Simply, this is beautiful and moving writing. I really urge everybody to read it.