Signs of longform life

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short-logo-3-21-12_biggerTo the naysayers who complain that long-form nonfiction narrative is dead, at least as a viable commercial form; who say young writers don’t care about it and won’t make a living doing it; who say digital platforms and consumers of digital text just don’t cotton to a long piece; to all of that I say check this out.

Kevin Morris’ story at The Daily Dot, an ambitious news site covering the Internet, spins a gripping tale of tragedy and intrigue about a young Chinese woman whose promising life is devastated by a poisoning. By focusing on the Internet community’s role in first trying to solve the medical mystery and then by trying to solve the evident criminal mystery, Morris pulls us through the story in classic true-crime fashion.

Please note:

  • Morris is a young writer, just a couple years out of journalism school (I met him in classes at Syracuse, but I wouldn’t flatter myself to say I taught him anything; he’s gifted, and came to us that way).
  • He’s on staff at The Daily Dot, so his ability to do this kind of work is both practical and a credit to his employer’s dedication to quality.
  • The story is long even by today’s print standards: just under 4,000 words, by my count.
  • And it’s incredibly timely, noting developments that occurred this month (but starting way back in 1995). More important, the story turned into a story to be told now just within the past couple of weeks, which means Morris moved quickly to produce something of this weight and quality.

Writers will write such work and publishers will publish it if people read it and respond to it. And how can they not, when it’s this riveting and heartbreaking and important?

Holes in victim services

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We are such hypocrites. For all our bluster about law and order and caring for victims, we turn our backs on fellow citizens when they most need us — when, through no fault of their own, their health and lives are turned inside out by crimes of violence.

What set me off (this time) is John Schwartz’s excellent story in today’s Times about Ken Feinberg, dubbed by Schwartz “the essential man” any time there’s money to be doled out to a large group of victims of a disaster, crime, or chemical screwup. In the case at hand, caring for the Boston Marathon bombing victims, Feinberg does his best to be fair and compassionate, but he’s limited by the amount of money at his disposal. In this case, the pool of money amounts to $30 million, all from private donors. Sounds like a lot, unless you have Feinberg’s unenviable task of doing the math and asking tough questions about the relative financial pain borne by a victim of, say, one lost foot versus two legs. There’s only so much money to go around to cover uninsured hospital bills and all the other costs associated with a severe disruption in a family’s life.

Compared to the vast sums of public money wasted on excessive rates of imprisonment and sentence lengths, what would it cost to make victims financially whole again? Compared to the incalculable burdens placed on our criminal justice system by the failed war on drugs, how much do we show we care about innocent victims? If the Boston victims get the shaft, then imagine how little we do for a victim of a run-of-the-mill shooting or burglary.

And yes, I’m talking about public money, not just donations in the rare cases like Boston where generous citizens feel moved to kick in a few bucks. I’ve written before about the concept of parallel justice, eloquently outlined and argued by victims advocate Susan Herman in her book and program by that name (see past posts on this topic here). In brief, she makes the case that if we truly cared about victims of all crime (not just crimes of violence), we would provide as much concrete assistance to them as we do to pursuing retribution from offenders. When people lose days (or months, or years) of work because of a crime against them or their property, shouldn’t we step in with assistance? We write a blank check to build more prisons and tack decades on to sentences, and to put armies in the skies and the fields to fight a losing battle against drugs. And yet if you lose your leg on the streets of Boson on a sunny day while waving to the runners, well good luck to you. We can do better than that.

E-singles and social media

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ThinReads, an ambitious site tracking the e-singles market (with a witty name), asked me to explain in a guest post how I used this blog to add material to my e-single God’s Nobodies. While writing about that, I tagged what I consider “bonus chapters” to make them easier to find in this large archive of posts on God’s Nobodies generally.

This is inside baseball to most readers, but it’s the stuff writers must do these days to attract an audience. After all, what is the point of writing if no one knows about it?

Ethics held hostage

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Given that there’s no point in expecting every branch of a competitive news media on an undeniably compelling story like the Cleveland kidnappings to show restraint, what can responsible journalists do in response to the frenzy just witnessed in the Cleveland kidnappings? On CNN’s Reliable Sources yesterday, Jim Warren of New York’s Daily News makes valid points about the story’s true importance, while Paul Farhi of The Washington Post explains realistically why the victims’ plea for privacy will go unheeded. It’s Cleveland-based columnist Connie Schultz who makes the most poignant statement about media excesses. Speaking to host Howard Kurtz about irresponsible “experts” who fill the information vacuum with speculation, she goes on to talk about news-crew stalkers:

SCHULTZ: We can do this better. When you see images like that and when you see tents and cable crews outside these homes what it telegraphs to viewers — what it does is it chips away at our credibility with a public that is already becoming less trustful of us.

KURTZ: Let me stay with that point because I understand that news organizations are there because the journalists have a job to do. You want to shout a question, but this is a heartbreaking case of women who were held in captivity under the noses of neighbors who say they didn’t know for ten years. And, now, in effect, the mass media presence there is forcing them to stay behind closed doors. Is that really what’s happening?

SCHULTZ: We had a helicopter. Do you remember that earlier this week? There was helicopter footage of the homes as they were waiting for them to come home. To me, I could not watch that and hear all these so-called former FBI who are experts on these women. The television judges and the speculation got wilder and wilder and all the things that they’re supposing these women have gone through.

You know, these young women are the ages of my daughters. So I can’t help but also come at this as a mother and I was feeling so angry during much of this coverage because it contributed nothing to the discussion of domestic violence and to sexual abuse. It contributed nothing to showing a community, helping a community show support for these women. I understand it’s not the media’s job to help the community do that, but it’s also not our job to be such a corrosive influence while we’re here.

This is not a new debate, nor is there an informed argument to be made that the problem has suddenly grown worse. But in a case where the victims are so grievously harmed, it does serve a purpose for people of conscience to decry the excesses of the helicopter-and-satellite-truck brigade. By reminding the public that the media are not one big blob, by differentiating caring and responsible coverage from the wild-eyed opposite, we can at least hope discerning readers and viewers will see the distinctions and move toward quality. We can hope.

This is not another Jodi Arias story

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I guess I live in a bubble. According to Arizona Republic‘s Laurie Roberts,

The [Jodi] Arias trial is a national obsession. It is 50 shades of shocking played out all day every day on TV screens and computer screens across the country – and interactive too, thanks to Twitter and Facebook.

Somehow, in my hours of daily crime-news consumption, I have managed to avoid this particular obsession. And do you know what? I couldn’t care less. In fact, I felt so unmoved by this and a few other such proclamations on the Arias trial that I’ve run across in recent weeks that I didn’t even bother to learn who she is and what she’s charged with. I guess it’s a contrarian streak in me that decides if it’s that popular, then I don’t want to know about it. (It’s also a function of not watching TV.)

But that’s not what moved me to fire up the old blog to grouse about the trial of whatshername. No, it was another part of Roberts’ column (which, I might add, is oddly timed, considering the testimony has concluded) that set me off. After Roberts laments how a case with no legal principles or lessons to impart became “everyone’s” obsession because of sex, she adds:

That’s entertainment, I suppose. But perhaps there is something more at play, too.

People crave justice, something they haven’t seen much in other trials that have evolved into national sensations. Person after person whom I talked to on Monday mentioned OJ Simpson and Casey Anthony. Those trials are their window into the criminal justice system.

And a dirty window it is, when guilty people appear to walk free.

So two other tabloid cases end in acquittal and the whole criminal justice system stinks? I guess that must mean that every guilty person walks free or gets a slap on the wrist, according to the wisdom of the Arias crowd.

Earth to Planet Nancy Grace: Quality journalism exists. You just have to care enough to find it and follow it. If you do, you’ll be blissfully unaware of the Jodi Ariases of the world. And you might know a little bit more about one of the pillars of our democracy, our criminal justice system.

Welcome, people of the Nook

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Good news for users of the Barnes & Noble Nook tablet: Now you’ll be able to download the free Kindle reading app to read Amazon-exclusive e-books like God’s Nobodies. Until now, Amazon provided its app for every platform, from PCs to phones and iPads — everything except the Nook. That was frustrating to authors like me, when asked about the Nook (similar to the frustration of learning that people, upon hearing the name “Kindle Singles,” assumed you can only read them if you own a Kindle device). So tell your Nook-using friends the Kindle Singles store will now be open for their business.

New and valuable resources on crime reporting

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Thanks to this panel discussion on news coverage of mass shootings and community trauma, part of this Columbia Journalism School symposium last week put on by the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, I ran across an intriguing crime-journalism project that I should have know of before now. #GunCrisis: Philadelphia reports on community violence, as an “open source” non-profit, to present alternatives to the usual: crime coverage focused on murder and mayhem, which fails often to reflect the realities of violent crime in a community. In some ways, I see a resemblance to Homicide Watch in Washington, which I blogged about here. Both the symposium and GunCrisis provide a wealth of material to anyone interested in pushing quality journalism toward smarter coverage of violence.

Turning away from injustice

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I’m on my way home from the excellent writers conference put on by the American Society of Journalists and Authors (side note to freelance journalists: the group, and its conference, are an essential investment, IMHO). While there, I picked up a copy of the April 22 issue of Publishers Weekly, which has a roundup on recent true-crime narratives about wrongful (or allegedly wrongful) convictions (here’s the link, for subscribers only). Reading it made me feel guilty all over again for a letter I mailed to a federal prison inmate last week.

Like all journalists who focus on crime, I hear now and then from inmates or their family members begging for a journalist’s attention. They want what select others have gotten: an article or book questioning or even decrying their conviction. And who can blame them, if they are indeed innocent (obviously the operative word is “if”)? Innocence projects are overwhelmed with caseloads. So are journalists who specialize in this work. To do the work with integrity takes huge amounts of time, skill, and commitment. I consider it one of the most noble and important forms of criminal justice journalism, when done right.

But here’s the thing: It’s not my top priority. I am, at least for now, most engaged by questions about the victim experience and about understanding the root causes of violent crime. I’m not sure why those questions pushed their way to the front of the line, in my mind, but they have. We all need to set priorities, especially when we’re self-employed in a line of work that poses, let us say, extreme challenges to the old bank account. Once I’ve set my sights, I want to learn as much as I can and build on my expertise with each project. I need to specialize. That’s the plan, at least. So anything that’s off-topic sidetracks me.

After the publication four months ago of God’s Nobodies, I received a poignant and intelligent email from the sister of an inmate serving a life sentence. I read what she sent me but ultimately told her I lacked the time and resources to investigate his case. Then I got an equally heartfelt letter from the inmate himself. I questioned myself, but the answer turned out the same. Telling him that in a letter didn’t feel good. Even without knowing much at all about his case, much less whether he was framed, I can’t help but imagine him facing endless days and years in a cell without hope. If I allowed those feelings to hijack my work priorities whenever such letters cross my desk, I’d never get traction. But that doesn’t make it any easier to say no.

E-singles resources

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Welcome, ASJAers! As an add-on to the panel discussion I’m moderating on April 25 in New York, at the annual conference of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, I’ve prepared this list of links to resources. The talk is titled “E-Singles: The Promising New Market for Long-Form Work.” I’m grateful to the panelists for bringing their expertise to a discussion about the next phase in the evolution of this publishing platform. The panelists are:

Deborah Blum, Pulitzer-winning science writer; author of several books, most recently The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (Penguin Press), and the e-single Angel Killer (Atavist).

Matt Dellinger, content director of Byliner and a digital-editorial pioneer at The New Yorker, where he was a staff editor for 10 years, and Vogue. He is the author of Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway (Scribner) and has written for The Atlantic and Smithsonian, among others.

Evan Ratliff, co-founder, CEO, and editor of Atavist. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Outside, and Wired, where he was a longtime contributing editor. His Atavist e-single Lifted was my (and many readers’) first experience with an e-single — an auspicious introduction to this new form.

Some of the stories linked below mention and link to a number of publishers and retailers in the e-singles space. In our discussion we’re focusing on the three pioneers and leaders, whose catalogs and FAQs are linked here:

Amazon Kindle Singles
Catalog
FAQ

Byliner Originals
Catalog
FAQ

Atavist
Catalog
FAQ

Laura Hazard Owen’s reporting on this business for paidContent.org and GigaOM stands out. Follow her on Twitter or via RSS. Here is an archive of stories at paidContent.org on e-singles. Here are a few of Owen’s important stories:

“Why 2012 was the year of the e-single” (12/24/12)

“How much do Kindle Singles authors make?” (3/12/12)

“Our guide to e-singles” (7/29/11)

And a bit of recent news: science/tech e-single publisher Matter gets acquired just five months after its launch (4/17/13)

Michael Meyer’s November 2012 Columbia Journalism Review story provides a comprehensive overview. A Q&A with Evan Ratliff by Folio in March and a profile of Amazon editor Dave Blum in the April 23 New York Times (with intriguing sales figures) provide good overviews of some of the topics we’ll touch on in our presentation. My own blog post in February for ASJA’s The Word serves as a short “author’s guide to the e-singles scene.” And ThinReads does a good job of tracking new releases and news.

Use the comments here to suggest other resources useful to writers seeking to break in to this market.

A victim’s grace under pressure

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Is it possible to sit next to a mother of a murder victim and talk about the need to understand criminals better? Should she fight back when she hears someone say we need smarter policies that don’t just bring the punishment hammer down, but instead deal intelligently with the facts that make each case different? I faced that uncomfortable moment today in a panel discussion. Luckily, the person whom I might have upset or insulted with my comments was instead a model of grace and wisdom as we both wrestled with the event’s central question: what communities need to restore justice after crimes of violence.

I was invited to join the panel to talk about my book God’s Nobodies. The event, hosted by the Rochester-area restorative-justice group, Partners in Restorative Initiatives, also featured another journalist, former Democrat & Chronicle columnist Mark Hare, and Lynette Alvarez, a crime victims advocate and mother of a murder victim. The discussion was moderated by Ed Minardo, director of the county jail in neighboring Genesee County, and former director of one of the pioneering restorative-justice programs in the country, Genesee Justice.

Alvarez tells the heart-wrenching story of feeling ignored and disrespected by police and prosecutors when her son was killed 11 years ago. The family, she says, learned too little from authorities about why her son was shot to death. When the offender got out of prison surprisingly early, after an appeals court voided the more serious charges he faced, Alvarez felt even more betrayed and forgotten. She is an eloquent spokesperson for the added pain endured by survivors of murder victims at the hands of a system that doesn’t provide them with all the forms of justice that they need to heal.

And there I sat, talking about the flip side: the need to understand why a crime was committed before we can fairly judge the criminal and the sentence he deserves. Based on the story I tell in God’s Nobodies, my argument boiled down to this: The harshest possible treatment, and ignoring the backstory, is not smart justice. It’s just retribution. Justice requires airing all the facts, in works of journalism if the courts don’t oblige. Only then will the public understand any leniency a court might have shown.

If Alvarez saw a contradiction, she didn’t let on. I’d like to think it’s because she recognizes that we can pursue multiple goals, all driving toward something called justice. Or maybe she’s just too kind and thoughtful to take offense. Either way, I knew I was in the presence of a good person who has suffered too much and yet finds it in her heart to give back to the community, sharing her experience and advice.