What I’m Reading
January 29, 2020
What I’m Reading returns with three reading, viewing, and listening recommendations. We begin with a long-form story that untangles the mysterious tale of a sunken ship. A photo essay invites us to reflect on life in America. And finally, there’s a conversation where the importance of stories over jobs and thinking over acting is discussed amongst other insights into the reporting life.
Long-Form as a Guide to Structure, Understanding Narrative, and Reconstructing Events in the Tale of a Sunken Ship
The Sinking of the Bounty by Matthew Shaer is a superb long read that encapsulates both narrative and investigative qualities in the complex task it has set for itself: the reconstruction of a maritime tragedy in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
The story brings the sea giant back to life, guides us through the circumstances that brought it into the storm’s center, explores the different strands that all united to end in the ship’s destruction.
It’s vividly written and reconstructed. You’ll care about the people’s fates; even the ship’s. That’s achieved by using detail in reconstructing the last moments of the ship when its crew tried to hang on to dear life.
But it’s also achieved by casting a wide reporting and researching net that explores the earlier life of the ship and the condition it was in. The writer untangles the neglect in maintaining the ship, explores the potential motives in the fateful decisions by its captain to sail into the center of the storm.
This long read is a guide to understanding structure and weaving together a historic narrative. It’s a guide to using scarce sources to gather the facts. And it’s a guide to reconstructing action moments that bring us to the scene of a moment in history.
The story enables readers to understand and relive the sinking of the Bounty. The former through the expert investigation, the latter through the reconstruction of the event and the glimpses into the lives of survivors and those that were lost together with the ship. Both are woven into one coherent narrative that shows long-form journalism at its best.
Viewing America Through Pictures
Nothing Has Changed is a photo project about life in America by French photographer Larry Niehues. The Guardian excerpt of the project linked above offers an interesting introduction to the work.
The pictures show everyday America, the relaxed nature of rural and suburban life. Unguarded and unpretentious. The pictures reveal the timeless qualities of life beyond the big cities. It’s fascinating to me to discover culture and life through pictures. This project is an example of this process. It’s a very interesting project you might find worthwhile checking out also.
If the collection presented by The Guardian piques your interest, the photographer’s website offers more pictures and details about the book that has been made out of the project.
Follow the Stories
The final recommendation for this week brings us back to the Longform podcast. This time, it’s episode 375: a conversation with investigative journalist Katherine Eban that has sparked my interest.
The discussion explores her previous and current work as well as fascinating insights into freelancing. Before I leave you to explore the conversation yourself, I want to highlight three little nuggets here.
The first one is her advice to follow the stories and not the jobs when considering and developing assignments. I found that a wonderfully inspirational message that touches on the heart of what makes great journalism strong: stories and people, the truth, getting invested to the human side of an issue over monetary ones.
Related to this point is the second one. Eban talks about the importance of thinking in journalism and writing. She mentions how she sometimes spends several weeks “simply” pondering about her stories to get to the bottom of where she needs to go with them. Reminds me about another piece of advice I once heard: always have your thinking cap on when reporting and writing. The story, after all, is in our heads, not our notebooks.
Finally, I found her reporting practice of writing daily memos about her findings in the field a neat little insight into how she does what she does. It’s such nuggets that make me look forward to the Longform podcast again and again.
That’s a wrap for this week’s What I’m Reading post. Next week, I’ll send you more recommendations. No teasers, because last week’s common cold and fever break has me yet to find what I would like to send your way. Until then, happy reading.
