This week’s exploration in journalism took me to the New York Times’ package 1 in 8 Million. The series was created in 2009 but the elegant, simple style of storytelling is still engaging. In a city of 8 million people there is an endless mess of stories to be told. Natural sound stories tell the story without the use of a narrator. It takes plenty of work for journalists to take themselves completely out of the story and allow it to be told exclusively by the subject. Herbert Lowe told me that one of these stories reminded him of me, which of course had me worried. After digging through some of the stories there was a concern that he was referring to the story of the struggling stand-up. Maybe Professor Lowe sees me as someone who thinks themselves funnier than they are. This story gave enough detail in just a few sentences so that the listener knows the subject is a comedian. To start out an interview that produces the audio we hear the opening question probably read something like this: What is it like being a comedian and how does that change your interactions with people? It took some time to realize that this was not the story that reminded Professor Lowe of me. My next guess was based on the fact that Lynn True and I have quite a bit in common. True expressed that watching sports is her escape from reality. This story made me particularly curious because the author clearly did not start the interview with a question about sports. In searching for the nut graf the question asked was likely along these lines: What do you do for a living and do you enjoy it? This story in particular displayed the importance of the second part of the double-barreled question. If the journalist fails to ask whether or not she likes her job, she may never explain that even the biggest of projects cannot stop her from watching the New York Giants game. This opens up a whole new story that may never have been told. After scrolling through a few more stories it once again occurred to me that my guess was wrong. But now I surely had the right story. Professor Lowe will never get this out of his head: The story that Professor Lowe was talking about is John Keegan: The Ladies’ Man. “They call people pick up artists and I think that’s a derogatory term,” said Keegan. It turns out that Keegan happens to be a professional ladies' man. Well color me flattered.
Keegan's response to the first question was to question it, he really is a true conversationalist. To get this audio, the question undoubtedly began by asking: What do you do? The second part could have been anything from asking how he does it to asking if how he got into it. Luckily for the journalist working on this piece there was no problem making Keegan comfortable enough to talk. Natural sound stories are unique and interesting. Creating a good one is quite a task. It seems to me that will be a project of ours sooner rather than later. Check back for that soon.
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AboutOn this page you can find blog posts about my adventures in journalism, ponderings about projects, experiences with storytelling tools and updates on what I'm working on. Archives
February 2017
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