Newspapers Need Great Stories Told Well

Newspapers Need Great Stories Told Well

Much of what’s to be read online in the news revolves around loss of jobs and our ailing economy. I work as a freelance writer, which is a succinct way of saying my income depends on someone willing to pay me to write.

Cut to the cascade of failing newspapers and out-of-work reporters and editors, and I’m sorely aware that something has gone terribly wrong with the business of journalism. What happened to our newspapers?

I’m not what you’d call a real reporter. My experience as a journalist arose from an intense desire to work from home while I tended my children and an average ability to construct newsworthy features. My college degree is in biology, but my passion lies in telling stories.

When you work as a freelance writer, the opportunities to meet interesting people are endless, as are the opportunities to meet people who think they are interesting. Sometimes, you discover you are conversing with someone whose experiences would read like an Oscar-winning screenplay. I love those times. That’s when the writing is less for the buck and more for the sheer pleasure of catching a glimpse of a lovely life.

I came to know of such a life when a man named Norm wrote to me about one of my newspaper columns.

Norm loved puns. He told very silly jokes. I never met him in person, but coming to know him through his emails and posts to a humor writers’ group led me to believe that this man laughed long and loudly much of the time.

Several months into our correspondence, Norm shared that he had had a stroke years before that left him fairly limited in his ability to move. He adapted by using a motorized chair. He participated in university research in Florida that developed devices for survivors of stroke and other impairments. He was a fighter and a lover of life.

Norm’s emails were usually brief, devoid of capital letters, and always, always funny. But, one day I opened an email that was fairly lengthy. I imagine it took him hours to type it. It was a love story. I remember reading that email over and over, stunned by two things: there was not one stupid joke in it, and it was a hell of a story. A true story. The kind of story that, had he shared it with a real reporter, he might have seen it win a Pulitzer prize before he passed away.

When he fell gravely ill as a result of a second stroke, his daughter sent an email to those of us who had shared emails and online friendships with her dad. She warned us that it was unlikely Norm would recover. He died a few days later. The family established a memorial in his honor online where we could post our condolences and share our love of Norm. It was the first time I ever saw a photo of him. He was handsome, smiling like he’d won the lottery in every last frame.

I never wrote about Norm because I felt that his family might want to tell his story in their own way. His daughter is a writer, an obviously talented one from what I read in her correspondence with me. It’s not my story to tell, but it is my inspiration for believing that there are truly remarkable people with incredible stories that do make a powerful difference in the way the rest of us live our lives.

So, I wonder, how much of this mess that is the floundering newspaper industry can be tied to the fact that we have devalued the talent of intelligent, creative writing? Has our need for instantaneous news and bawdy tales of the sensational overtaken the potential for finely crafted stories to remind us that we humans actually have a lot to live for, regardless of the stock market and the current status of Britney Spears?

When I was a kid, I read the newspaper. I worked as much of the crossword as my limited skills allowed. I learned about government and how to cook, about local veterans and faraway places and that a columnist from Dayton, Ohio could make my South Mississippi mother laugh out loud on a weekly basis, in spite of us clinging kids and only three channels of network TV.

I'm not saying there are no talented reporters with bylines in newspapers. I'm saying that somewhere along the line, those who manage newspapers let go of the fundamental purpose of newspapers, that the bottom line shouldn't be about keeping advertisers happy. The bottom line should be about serving your readership, and that means hiring and supporting a staff of competent, hopefully imaginative writers who cover the news, sports and stories of human interest with perhaps a little fire in the belly.

Whatever the future holds for newspapers, I hope somebody remembers that whether it’s printed on paper or posted online, the written word remains one of our most treasured and effective tools in documenting the current state of human affairs. It’s a condition that could use some substantial encouragement in the form of great stories told well.