Andrew Wolfe of the Nashua Telegraph goes wild on a car crash (thanks, Matt):
Dude, you are SO grounded!
Taking your mom’s ’95 Maxima after she went to bed, that was brazen.
It’s cool you could pick up your four friends, but, dude, you couldn’t find anyone old enough to drive?
A 13-year-old kid wracks up your mom’s ride on a PSNH pole, and you all bail. . . . What were you thinking?
Read the whole thing. Thoughts?
Since I sent it, I'll chime in. I've been this guy before. It's a nothing story. Another cop brief, another inside filler. You get desperate to write something -- anything -- different. Anything to keep from having to write another goddamned inverted pyramid cop story (I have numbering in the high hundreds of these littering my career). So you try something new, and it feels good to do it.
That said, this fails on so many levels. First, the kids it's aimed at, if they even read it, are going to think you're a tool for using dude in the lede, among othere look-at-me-I'm-hip-and-happening sins.
Second, parents and other old people (read: actual readers) are going to get all huffy about how you took something potentially serious -- underage drivers stealing a car and wrecking it -- and laughed it off. So you've pissed off a wide swath of readers, and for what?
But the worst offense? It's too long. The joke stopped being funny about a half dozen sentences in. Did we really need the blow by blow on which addresses had trees or mailboxes run into? Really?
I totally agree. It implies like the incident was so trivial, when it reality, those kids could have killed someone or been killed. I bet readers were upset, and for good reason. I give him a few points for trying, though.
Though, it would be nice to know for sure what actual feedback the reporter got. Anyone know?
OK. Totally dug it. Don't care about the logical reasons it shouldn't have worked. Don't care who you pissed off. Don't even care if the idiot kids laugh at you. This story was fun and I read the whole thing. It made me smile. Newspaper stories don't usually do that. So props to you. Dude.
Let's separate the issues, first:
Well written? The effort to seem cool, hip, and 13 is just embarrassing. Lame. It takes a novelist's ear to pull it off. Journalists should be allowed to write dialect only when quoting from native speakers.
Encourages juvenile assholery? Juveniles need no encouragement and nothing we write will discourage them. But, please, let's not scold each other every time we write about low crimes and misdemeanors with something less than Puritanical sobriety. That's even lamer than writing in dialect.
I think it worked. It's not something you read often in the paper, and for good reason. Yes, could these kids have gotten hurt but ultimately what it was about was a bunch of kids on a minor joyride so I think it's still safe to handle it lightly.
And with the casual language and slang the writer used, you occasionally get the sense you're on the ride with these kids. Like it or not, I think everyone who began the story probably finished it, and in the end that's something to be proud of.
There are many many MANY ways to get the reader to the end without doing THAT.
Bill,
"Assholery."
Wonderful word. Thanks.
I thought the story was funny. Sure, there are problems with the tone ("brazen" and "wise" sound wrong to me), but I read the whole piece and enjoyed it. I think the tone of some of the criticism here is what stifles creativity in newsrooms.
It didn't work, but I don't knock the dude for trying.
The main reason: This was written in the voice of an early 90's 13-year-old with some newspapery words and convention thrown in. While that may have been a semi-accurate portrayal of 13 year olds back several years ago, kids don't talk like that now. You might be surprised to hang out in a middle school hallway for a few hours. Yipes.
That said, you took a risk. Just because this one wasn't a homerun, don't be afraid to take the next one. I am so bored with newspapers -- and I LOVE newspapers -- that I desperately search every morning in my hometown paper for something to be excited about. I rarely succeed.
From Andrew:
I got several e-mails, all objecting to the story. That wasn't a great surprise. I'd like to think that some readers enjoyed the story, and didn't bother to write to say so. It's actually the second time this year I've tried a more creative approach to a routine story (see earlier example, below) . In both cases, the idea came to me, so I went with it. In both cases, it turned something that would have been just a brief, buried somewhere deep in the local pages, into a section-front story. Both took about 30 minutes to write.
Both stories involved conduct that ought not be condoned, but that can, IMO, be mocked. The outcome was short of tragic; no one was hurt in either case. I appreciate that the stories could be construed as making light of the matters, but I don't see it that way. Neither story suggests that reckless driving is OK; both make clear that the incidents had the potential to have turned out worse.
Why do we report on crime at all? Some cases are too big to ignore, and some carry deeper meaning, but in most cases, I think it's because it's cheap and easy for the media, and entertaining for readers. I told a story about our community, and I chose to try to do it in an amusing way. Lots of people read it; some were offended. I'm comfortable with all that.
That's my off the cuff take on it all, sorry I don't have time to be more thoughtful.
February 16, 2007
Section: Amherst
Man held in stormy pursuit
ANDREW WOLFE
Telegraph Staff
NASHUA - Oh, careless love . It'll cause you to weep, and cause you to moan. Sometimes, it'll make a woman leave her happy home.
A Newton, Mass., man drove through sleet and snow late on Valentine's Day in hope of mending a broken romance, police said. However, his persistent pursuit of a city woman's heart and car won him an overnight stay in a police holding cell.
Robert Keefe, 23, of 266 Nevada St., Newton, Mass., faces two counts of reckless conduct, police reported. Keefe is accused of trying to run his ex-girlfriend off the road while she sought to put some space between them, Detective Lt. Andrew Lavoie said Thursday.
Keefe drove to Nashua in the midst of a snowstorm Wednesday night to see the woman whom he'd been dating for about two years until a few weeks ago, Lavoie said.
"Apparently they had broken up, and he wanted to get back together, and she did not," Lavoie said.
The woman invited Keefe into her downtown apartment, but they began to quarrel at about 11 p.m., Lavoie said. As that midnight hour came chiming, the woman decided her best hope to end the debate was to leave home. "She realized that he wasn't going to leave, so she chose to leave," Lavoie said.
Keefe chose to follow, Lavoie said. On Cushing Avenue, Keefe allegedly rammed the back of the woman's car, and she decided to head for the city police station, he said. "She basically had driven up Main Street, up Amherst, circling around trying to lose the guy," Lavoie said.
Lavoie wasn't able to say whether the collision caused any damage, but the impact didn't disable either of their cars, or cause either to lose control, he said. "She obviously realized this wasn't going away," he said.
Heading south on the F.E. Everett Turnpike at speeds ranging from 50 to 60 mph, Keefe allegedly tried to force the woman to pull over, Lavoie said.
"He tried to force her to the right, he tried to cut in front of her and make her stop, and in doing so he spun himself out, and she continued to the police department," Lavoie said, adding later, "Certainly this would be a reckless act if the roads were fine, let alone with the weather conditions."
Keefe followed the woman to the police station, where she reported his overly optimistic pursuit, and he was arrested.
Keefe was arraigned on the charges Thursday in Nashua District Court. He could face more than just 30 days in jail if convicted; the charges are felonies, punishable by up to 3 1/2 to seven years in prison.
Thought it was hilarious. HOWEVER:
About halfway through I wondered about the actual kids. Wondered what the circumstances were that lead to them doing this. Was the young car thief just a bad-ass, as the style implied? Or was the mom on drugs, the dad recently gone, the child abused by a neighbor? Was there more to the story?
The reporter didn't know, couldn't know, didn't ask. Somewhere out there in the world of reality there is a real meaning attached to this act, but it's not in this story.
Dude, a three year supply of exclamation points in one story? What were you thinking!?!
There's a paradox at play here, I think.
It can be expressed in the form of a ranking system, 1 being the best and 4 being the worst.
1. A creative, risky approach to newswriting that's executed with brilliant precision.
2. A traditional approach to newswriting that's executed with moderate flair and a modicum of grace.
3. A traditional approach to newswriting that's executed with workmanlike competency.
4. A creative, risky approach to newswriting that's executed with anything but brilliant precision.
This, of course, is a radical oversimplification. But I hope you see the point. Creativity in newswriting is like Longfellow's girl with the curl:
When she was good she was very, very good
But when she was bad she was horrid.
(This is not meant to represent my feelings about the above story.)
Now. What does this mean for us?
It means reporters should keep trying fresh approaches. Hone them in non-published writing. Bounce them off colleagues to see if they work. Then, carefully, mix them into your journalism.
the thing is I think the valetine story worked really well, so its worth it to be creative but sometimes you have to be careful not to cross that very thin line
An explainer on the decision to run Andrew's piece, and the feedback.
Readers responded to the explanation the paper put up. I liked this one:
I asked my 17-year-old daughter what she thought of the article when it was printed, and she thought that, had she been the culprit, she would have been mortified and humiliated to see her actions printed in this way, not encouraged to do it again, and certainly not an egg-on to her peers to try the same thing.
Nice, Cris.
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