I really enjoyed reading the introduction of "The New Kings of Journalism." One thing that excited me the most was that Ida Glass encouraged reporters in this aspect of journalism to break one of the most important general rules of the field of not interjecting your own voice into a story. He says that many well-respected journalists feel that expressing any trace of human personality will take away the credibility of a story (3). Which is the point of this book; to disprove that theory. Glass goes on to say, "I don't see anything wrong with a piece of journalism turning into a fable...Everything suddenly stands for something so much bigger, everything has more resonance, everything's more engaging" (3). One question I was left with is HOW, as a reporter, to put your own opinion into a story without losing your credibility? Glass says that it is "breathtaking" how some reporters can do this without coming across as being unfair (8).
I found Part I of "Telling True Stories" interesting as well. Jacqui Banaszynski started out in second-person perspective, which really grabbed my attention. She talked about the importance of story-telling, saying, "Events pass, people live and die, life changes. But stories endure" (4). I also really liked Gay Talese's section about how he would rather interview a loser than a winner. He said, "I wanted to spend more time with people who were not necessarily newsworthy" (7). I found this to be very true for myself as well, something that I had never thought of before. Any news source can give the big picture of the story; a natural disaster, who won the big game, etc. But the more fascinating part is the piece that isn't told; how the natural disaster affected a particular family or how the losers of the big game felt. One question I had, though, was how to discover these hidden stories? Once a reporter is inspired, how can that inspiration be made original?
After today's class, I was more positively inspired in my own ability to write narrative journalism. I really took to the idea that anything can be made into a story with the right "ingredients."
It's hard to think of a story idea off the top of my head, but I think something that would be interesting would be to follow up with exchange students. Or better yet, the T.A.s who come directly from abroad to help teach here. I think it would be really interesting to see how theses students come to leaving their entire lives to come here, to Duluth of all places. I guess that's all for now...