Why Making a Story “Look Like a Novel” Doesn’t Mean a Journalist is Making Things Up

Recently, there have been quite a few scandals in American journalism over instances when writers seem to have fabricated the events they were reporting.¹ As a result, beginning readers of narrative journalism might worry that when journalists start making their books “look like novels”–with scenes and story lines more common to works of fiction–that they’re on their way to committing the same sin. But as legitimate as that concern is, you shouldn’t mistake selection for invention. If they stick to their principles, journalists do select details and create effects that interpret a story they’re fashioning; that’s very different, however, from “making things up.” That’s because there’s a kind of implied contract that comes with reading narrative journalism: what we expect a reporter can and can’t be allowed to do.

A Boy in the Rain 

Take, for instance, an instance of novel-like description: a work of narrative journalism describes a boy walking in the rain.  If the reporter says it was raining, the implied contract we have means they are not inventing rain that wasn’t there in the first place. Even when the reporter makes a decision to describe how hard it was raining, that’s a judgment call we’re usually quite willing to leave up to the reporter.  (Nor does it follow that describing the rain that way is necessarily embellishing.)  And suppose, in attempting to create an effective description, the reporter does indeed turn even more fully to standard novelistic techniques to make us feel what we’re reading is more realistic.  Say, for instance, the journalist offers up a description of a cold cotton sweatshirt, soaked with rain, weighing down the shoulders of this young boy (a sweatshirt actually soaked by rain that existed in the original, and so on). In such selections, of course, one would include point of view, which characters are made main characters and which ones minor, how deep a background history is given, and so on. These details collaborate with explicit interpretations a reporter may make about the action of what they are reporting, along the way.

Again, however, none of the above necessarily constitutes invention or fabrication, and generally, we trust what is being described. However, there is an  important distinction at work here:  what the journalist is doing does begin to constitute selection.  There are a thousand possible details a writer might have chosen, in any given event or scene.  The ones that make it into print are those that were selected–and, quite often, selected to make a point, create a mood, and so on.Others are left out.  Perhaps we weren’t told, say, that the kid’s shoulders were straight, proud, indifferent to the rain; we weren’t told whether he was smiling.)

That is, as readers we are liable to start feeling an atmosphere, and perhaps even to draw inferences about the state of mind of the boy wearing that sweatshirt. The reporter may, for instance, be suggesting how they think the real world seems to this young boy.  Much like in a photograph or a painting, focus, focal depth, and cropping draw our eyes to particular details. We may start to knit such details together, or start to draw out implications for events that follow. Conversely, the reporter’s choice to leave out other details may enhance the effect of what we are shown. Even so, that doesn’t necessarily make the journalist’s interpretation untrue or made up.  (It might also have been that the detail was drawn from the boy’s memory, for instance, or from someone who saw him look that way.)

As I say throughout this site, selections like this often contribute significantly to the interpretation a journalist is crafting.(If the boy’s shoulders were high and proud–and the journalist chooses to say so–that can change how the boy is being seen.)

Comparing the Subject’s Story Helps

Now, as I try to explain in Chapter 2, of course it’s the case that the particular subject of such a scene-creation may object to it.  Their memory may be different, or it may be that there was more going on than the journalist had quite perceived. That’s why, again, I’ve suggested that it’s always useful to try to tease out or imagine the “subject’s story.” Discrepancies can prove interesting and help you understand what a given interpretation emphasizes or leaves out. But it doesn’t mean anyone is lying or inventing.   Indeed, friction  with the other dimensions of reportage is inherently part and parcel of narrative journalism from the get-go. Quite often these tensions are what makes this kind of writing so vital, so human, and important.

Rather than believing there is a singular reality everyone should be agreeing on, or that we could measure all journalists by, your goal as a reader, then, is often to sift out, coordinate, negotiate the tensions between the four meanings of “the story” I will outline in this site.   Indeed, if we aren’t sufficiently critically-minded about these effects—or, if we fall under the spell or realism I discuss in Chapter 3—we will miss out on the drama of this kind of work.

Chapter 3 focuses in particular on how selection, and the so-called reality-effects that they entail, contribute to the making of narrative journalism. They help show us that what looks real is often what is shaped by literary and/or novelistic conventions—and that shaping, in turn, affects how we are asked to interpret what is reported on.

Notes

[1] Jayson Blair invented stories and sources for The New York Times ; Stephen Glass for The New Republic. Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea (2006), and James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces(2003), were challenged around independent memoirs they had written.  

1. Jayson Blair invented stories and sources for The New York Times ; Stephen Glass for The New Republic. Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea (2006), and James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces(2003), were challenged around independent memoirs they had written.  ↩︎