Story behind the story: Casey Parks’ storytelling originates from her porch
By Mia Chism
The Story…
…behind the story:
Casey Parks always knew she wanted to be a journalist. She worked on her high school’s newspaper, typing press releases into the computer that she received in the mail. She also worked for a circulation department, taking calls from people who complained they didn’t get their paper.
Being the first in her family to go to college, she attended Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, and then continued on to get her master’s degree in journalism at University of Missouri. At the same time, she applied and won a New York Times contest, Win a Trip with Nick Kristof, that allowed her to travel to Africa with Kristof on a reporting trip.
The trip only lasted a couple of months into the fall. When Parks returned, she applied for an internship at The Oregonian. She started that January. She never went back to graduate school because she said it wouldn’t have been a great time to get a master’s in journalism.
“It was a different time in 2005. No newspapers had websites then, so you could study newspaper websites, but everyone would have made fun of you. Plus, grad school is more theory-based anyway.”
What makes her a good journalist doesn’t come from a classroom; it stems from where she came from. She grew up in north Louisiana, where people are big storytellers. What she knows comes from her mom and grandma telling stories on the porch or just being nosey and always asking lots of questions. More than that though, Parks is able to connect with her sources — mostly minorities — because she understands certain lifestyles. She said her background is similar to those who have working-class jobs. Her dad is an exterminator, and her mom cleans houses. She connects on the level of a shared work ethic. In addition, she writes a lot about African-Americans in Portland, Oregon. Parks has found that many of her African-American sources have grandparents from the south or even from the same cities as her own grandparents, which connects her on a personal level.
In June, Parks wrote a story on a comedy show in Portland that specifically featured minority comedians telling jokes for other minorities. She had seen the New York Times do a series of videos on minority comedians, called Off Color Comedy, and she was looking to do something similar. Her piece on minority comedians turned out to be different though, because she’s not much of a feature writer. Parks prefers writing stories with context of issues and news. She didn’t want to write the story without it having a timely element.
Her main source, Jeremy Eli, had a comedy show, Minority Retort, that had been going for a year, but he was thinking of moving it to southeast Portland. Rather than just writing a story about a comedy show for people of color, she wrote an entertainment piece but also more of a social commentary.
Parks faced a couple of challenges in reporting the story: the first was getting in touch with Eli, who took a long time getting back to her. She also had other stories going on, and because this one wasn’t hard news, it kept getting pushed back. She noted that the longer amount of time spent waiting on a source means the story gets worse. The second challenge: her editor from The Oregonian changed, which made the writing aspect of the story even harder, especially since she doesn’t necessarily enjoy writing.
“It’s much more fun to go do the reporting than come back and do the writing. I like having written something. It feels good to have done it. But whenever you’re in the process of writing, I hate doing it. It’s hard to write.”
But the process of writing was only made more difficult for her last year when she lost the ability to write or hold a pen. She was diagnosed with a generative disease where she couldn’t use her right arm/hand, but she said it was starting to get better. Now she has gotten into the habit of taping/recording her interviews. She said she didn’t ever tape anything for the first eight or nine years of her career, but that now she uses it all the time.
Parks has a basic process for reporting and writing: research the topic, subject, area, etc.; make a running list of information; make an outline; work on the beginning of the story until it is exactly how she and the editor want it.
She said going on to write the rest of the story without the beginning being exactly how she wants it is like building a house with a bad foundation. Her advice when writing stories is to make a road map first and then follow it.
She also had a few pieces of advice for young journalists:
- Give yourself permission to mess up
- Always have a least one thing (or one story) going on that you are passionate about
- If you really want to be good, you must believe in yourself
