new york times

3 GREAT STORIES: Starring shutdowns, games, and iPhones

3 Great Stories, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Every week, I shine the spotlight on some of the best storytelling in the business and offer my comments. “3 Great Stories of the Week” will post every Monday at 8 AM.

In the future, in this space, I would like to focus more attention on storytelling through straight reporting.

Recently, while searching for stories for this column, I have found myself gravitating toward pieces of analysis, in-depth research, and opinion. To be frank, these are the pieces that (A) typically catch my eye, (B) get shared more on social media, and (C) truly increase my understanding of stories in the mainstream.

I often, as a result, overlook the value of straight-ahead reporting.

Readers and viewers rely on the media for a seemingly simple need: to be kept properly informed. During stories like this month’s government shutdown, journalists must struggle with trying to provide an appropriate amount of context with the story’s nuts and bolts. How do they do this objectively? How do they maintain the trust of both sides of a divided audience? How do they explain a complicated matter to a population often too attention-divided to listen?

I give major kudos to the reporters who toe these lines the best, and I want to make a stronger effort to use this space to support that.

But I also believe, with stories such as the shutdown, people can benefit most by developing a wider understanding. They should stay updated on day-to-day events, but they should also make an effort to learn why those events are occurring.

Perhaps this is why I most appreciate stories like the ones below, not just on the shutdown and debt ceiling fight but even on the launch of the new iPhone. After each piece, readers walk away with a greater perspective on what’s happening right in front of them.

Understanding the game being played in Washington (10/4/13, Harvard Business Review): Want a perfect example of that perspective?

Check out this article.

Justin Fox explains the current debt ceiling fight through classic game theory. He describes the actions of the President and Congress through the lens of a game — a lens that actually brings everything much more into focus.

Early on, Fox demurs that he wrote the piece out of “an attempt to find a way to think about the government shutdown and looming debt ceiling fight that didn’t make me want to bang my head against a wall.” But, he goes on, “My reading made the dynamics at work in Congress and at the White House a bit clearer — and thus slightly less maddening, if not less ominous.”

If you are looking for a crash course on how we got here and why our political leaders are making their current decisions, this is it. I also like how Fox, in addition to writing a thorough and easily digestible article, responds thoughtfully to the entry’s comments. Good journalists should relish the chance to defend and explain their work, as Fox does here.

(more…)

3 GREAT STORIES: Starring Mike Bloomberg, SNL, and Finland

3 Great Stories, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Every week, I shine the spotlight on some of the best storytelling in the business and offer my comments. “3 Great Stories of the Week” will post every Monday at 8 AM.

Some weeks, I have a hard time finding three great stories to profile in this segment.

Not this week.

Perhaps I just found myself reading a lot more, but I continually found absorbing work on the print side. Beyond that, I also found occasions where traditional media enhanced their content for an online audience.

In a week stacked with memorable content, here were the three pieces that stood out to me:

After Bloomberg (8/20/13, The New Yorker): He is routinely mocked for being bland and boring, but New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg is sneakily candid. He regularly weighs in on national topics and critiques the President, among other leaders, and yet he does not get the notoriety for outspokenness that a Chris Christie might receive.

In his final year of office, one would expect, his candidness will lead to numerous in-depth retrospectives — hopefully as memorable as this one.

Ken Auletta of the New Yorker produces this 8,000-word gem about Bloomberg, and it is special because it blends the mayor’s own words with the appropriate context and commentary. Auletta writes with an obvious point of view, but he generally uses it to color Bloomberg’s words, not overpower them. This paragraph is a perfect example:

I asked Bloomberg if he could imagine joining the President’s Cabinet. In theory, he said, “it would be fascinating to be Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, jobs like that. Secretary of the Treasury, you want someone who’s a real economist”—and someone “who is maybe less opinionated.” Bloomberg thinks of himself as a team player, as long as it’s his team.

(more…)

3 GREAT STORIES: Starring Mark Cuban, Nick Beef, and Phil & Harvey

3 Great Stories, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Every week, I will shine the spotlight on some of the best storytelling in the business and offer my comments. “3 Great Stories of the Week” will post every Monday at 8 AM.

I cannot remember the last time I traveled somewhere that had triple-digit weather.

But this past week, I took a two-day jaunt to Dallas for a story about the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. It was a powerful experience … and hot, definitely hot.

Perhaps I am in a Dallas state of mind, but I chose two Dallas-related stories — one of which indirectly relates to JFK’s assassination — to lead off this week’s “3 Great Stories”. The final story takes us to the Twin Cities for a landmark moment, covered in tremendous fashion by the video wing at the area’s biggest newspaper.

All three stories features wide, multi-dimensional windows into their main characters.

Mystery from the grave behind Oswald’s, solved (8/9/13, New York Times): Among the circles of relevance surrounding JFK’s assassination, Nick Beef probably lands as far from the center as possible.

For nearly half a century, “Nick Beef” has simply been known as the name on the gravestone immediately beside that of Lee Harvey Oswald. No one was sure whether “Nick Beef” was an actual person, let alone whether said person was still alive.

Now, we know.

Nick Beef is alive, and he is actually a self-described “non-performing performance artist” living in New York. He reveals himself to Dan Barry of the New York Times; through Barry’s paragraphs, he comes off as quite the morbid soul.

Something else happens in Barry’s article. Dealing with a subject — the assassination — that has been dissected so many times through the years, Barry examines a man whose own story is relatively unremarkable. The mystery of Nick Beef winds up more fascinating than his emergence.

But Barry does not try to oversell his subject. He simply recounts Mr. Beef’s story in a way that allows us to get to know the man in question, and he solves an age-old mystery in the process.

(more…)

3 GREAT STORIES: The printed, foreign affairs edition

3 Great Stories, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Every week, I will shine the spotlight on some of the best storytelling in the business and offer my comments. “3 Great Stories of the Week” will post every Monday at 8 AM.

After submitting three local TV news features for your approval last week, I wondered, “What would be the complete opposite of such stories in the media realm?”

My decision: print stories about international affairs.

(Granted, I did not spend too much time on this question. And that means one of you readers may correct me on whether these are indeed the “complete opposite”, a la George’s salmon-tuna situation on Seinfeld.)

As George would say, “Good for the tuna.”

In the meantime, check out the masterful storytelling — and, in one case, story-obtaining — in these three pieces from last week.

Bin Laden raid reveals ‘state failure’ (7/9/13, Al-Jazeera.com): Here is that example of story-obtaining, and it is a biggie.

The investigative unit at Al-Jazeera received a copy of a report, commissioned by the Pakistani government, to determine how Osama bin Laden could live in Pakistan for nearly nine years undetected.

Like any modern-day journalistic outfit, they take the correct first step and make the entire report available for viewing online. But beyond that, this piece by writer Asad Hashim — one of nearly a dozen that accompanied the release of the report — details the report’s blunt words about the government’s incompetence throughout bin Laden’s time in the country. The commission even coined a phrase for it: “Governance Implosion Syndrome.”

The commission’s report is scathing; give credit to Hashim and the Al-Jazeera crew for distilling it into manageable, yet quite shocking, terms.

(more…)

3 GREAT STORIES OF THE WEEK: On soccer, adversity, & elections

3 Great Stories, , , ,

Every week, I will shine the spotlight on some of the best storytelling in the business and offer my comments. “3 Great Stories of the Week” will post every Monday at 8 AM.

I have focused the first few weeks of “3 Great Stories” on TV pieces, both long-form journeys and well-edited triumphs.

This week, we branch out.

You will find three impeccably told stories here, but they come in different sizes and media. One is a nicely spun local TV yarn, but another is a print masterpiece accompanied by a horrifying photo. The third is all photos, by one of my favorite storytelling arms in the business.

Soccer reigns at King Chavez High School (3/1/13, KNSD-TV San Diego): Greg Bledsoe does what I do — he is a one-man TV band, which means he shoots and edits the videos for his on-air reports — and he does it very, very well. (He also does weather on the side, which is a whole ‘nother batch of awesomeness.) In this story, he captures dawn on the soccer field in San Diego, with a piece that reminded me of the movie Gridiron Gang with its uplifting inner-city athletic-success-story feel.

(more…)