The odd man of this scene I’ve just described—a character who later became the centerpiece of an X-files episode, and had an exhibition at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles devoted to his work–is, of course, “Weegee” (Arthur Fellig), the famous tabloid news photographer from the 1930s and 1940s. Fellig gave himself the
name “Weegee” to remind others of a “Ouija” board, and thus to speak to the desire I’ve mentioned above: the hope that, someday, he could be present not to the aftermath of a crime, but to the moment the crime originally happened. He dubbed this fantasy “psychic photography.”1
“The Story” as Reporters Will Usually Define It
As odd as it may seem, however, in fact Weegee’s dream is only an exaggerated vision of the desire often at the heart of modern journalism: to get “the story,” the catchphrase reporters use. Indeed, in many ways, photography itself came of age alongside modern journalism’s quest for public legitimacy. The authority of a news photograph, that is, lies in what we call testimonial authority. Documentary photographer Jacob Riis (whom I will discuss in Chapter 4) even identified the flash of flash photography with evangelical illumination and truth itself—a light brought into the darkness of poverty or crime. Indeed, it’s often said that a photographer seems to make the photographer, or the reporter, disappear: it’s as if we become the witness.
Young reporters are often told by their boss to “get the story,” and whether they do or not can often decide whether they keep their job. And by “the story,” journalists habitually refer to the element in an event that has the most news value, the element I have been calling the “news content.” Reporters talk about having a nose for news; in the 19th century, U.S. foreign correspondents were in fact sometimes called “news hunters” or “news gatherers,” as if a story was something to be tracked down like a lion. If you look at different images of American war correspondents over the decades that capture the identification of the reporter’s craft with exploration, adventure, or performing something like a soldier’s duty . . .
- For an overview of Weegee’s career, see Miles Orvell, “Weegee’s Voyeurism and the Mastery of Urban Disorder,”American Art, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Winter, 1992): 18-41.[2]. The Macdonald case, and Malcolm’s own treatment of it, is also the subject of Errol Morris, A Wilderness of Error (New York: Penguin, 2012), and Kathy Roberts Forde, Literary Journalism on Trial (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008). Part of this section appeared in my “The Journalist Who Was Always Late: Time and Temporality in Literary Journalism,” Literary Journalism Studies, vol. 10 no. 1 (Spring 2018): 113-138.