My Quest for My (Southern) Voice in Narrative Writing
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MY QUEST FOR MY (SOUTHERN) VOICE IN NARRATIVE WRITING A project that connects reporting with soul-searching and storytelling By WADE LIVINGSTON Master’s candidate, Missouri School of Journalism DECEMBER 2015 Jacqui Banaszynski, Chair Greg Bowers Scott Swafford DEDICATION To Melissa, for moving here with me. And for continuing to move me. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I called Jacqui Banaszynski three years ago and told her I was thinking about leaving a tenure-track faculty job to become a journalist. At the time, I had no formal journalism training or experience. She didn’t laugh at me. Instead, she recommended several schools I should consider. She set aside time to talk to me during her winter break. A year later I sat in her Intermediate Writing class and unlearned, relearned how to write. She continues to teach me, champion me and humble me. She’s my mentor. Thanks, Jacqui. Greg Bowers and I argued about Southern culture and college football from Day 1. He told me my writing sucked … but that it would get better. He hired me to work on his sports desk. He let me cover the most coveted sports beat at the paper. He pushed me to be creative and told me to never be boring. He taught me about the words I knew, those I thought I knew and those I didn’t know. I’ve learned to stick to the words I know. Greg kept me around so he could give me hell. Like friends do. Scott Swafford taught the very first class I took at Mizzou. He was patient with a couple dozen rookies who came into his Boot Camp from all sorts of backgrounds. He served as my initial advisor and was always accessible. He made sure I was on the right track. And he taught me the basics. Thanks for the foundation, Scott. Martha Pickens is an invaluable asset to the Missouri School of Journalism. She is the god and the glue: She knows all the quick fixes and makes sure her students don’t fall apart. She’s the one that got me here. Thanks, Martha. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Project Activities and Weekly Field Notes 5 Chapter 3 Evaluation 56 Chapter 4 Abundant Physical Evidence 66 Chapter 5 Professional Analysis Article 180 Appendix Project Proposal 196 Literature Review 208 Bibliography 220 Professional Project Site Approval Letter 223 Pitch Letter for Professional Analysis Article 224 Changes to the Original Proposal 226 iv INTRODUCTION When you mention the word “storytelling” around some journalists, they bristle. I don’t. I think storytelling is misunderstood: Some folks might view a storyteller as someone who just wants to be A Writer, and they might think storytelling gets in the way of the news. Well, those things can be true. But they don’t have to be. Storytelling — narrative nonfiction — is a powerful voice. Narrative nonfiction can help readers consume the news. A well-crafted news story that balances descriptive writing with exposition — and which incorporates character development and plot and tension and just the right structure — can make the news come alive. As a reader, you’re there in the courtroom with a victim’s family as the defendant is sentenced. You’re at the pride parade with a gay couple who had to leave their home state to get married. You’re standing in the mud with a family as they watch the creek jump its banks and flood their home. Narrative nonfiction puts you there and asks you to care. As a Southerner, narrative nonfiction resonates with me because I grew up around storytellers. Yes, that notion sounds cliché and stereotypical to me, too, but maybe there’s some truth to it. I’m at least inclined to believe it’s true for some Southerners, in their own minds: I spoke with several narrative nonfiction writers from the South during the summer of 2015, and all of them talked about growing up around storytellers. What’s more, some of them implied that growing up around storytellers is a Southern thing. But those same folks might say, No, there are storytellers everywhere, and they’d be right. But maybe there’s just a different kind of storyteller in the South … 1 Back when I was a tenure-track professor specializing in qualitative research, I would’ve told you that searching for a distinctive Southern storytelling voice would be a tall task, an impossible quest. And yet I found myself doing exactly that as I worked on this professional project during the summer of 2015, two years after I’d left academia to become a journalist. I left academia because I never felt like I belonged in the Ivory Tower. But let’s back up: I got into academia in the first place because I was a professor’s son and my mother had worked several jobs in the academy. My parents made pretty good money and had a lot of time to devote to raising their kids. It seemed like a pretty good life, and it was. Is — my dad’s still teaching. Academia was good to me, too, but while I loved the energy of college campuses, I never felt fulfilled in my work. Looking back now, I think it’s because I never felt like I had a voice, or the right (academic) voice. Sure, there were the politics that went along with being a junior tenure-track professor, but I never felt disenfranchised or anything. It was more about the subject matter: I wasn’t passionate about higher education administration, the discipline in which I earned my doctorate. And I certainly wasn’t passionate about writing about it, especially the way I felt forced to write about it. You’ve likely read 30-page academic journal articles that are full of jargon and theory. And hard to read. I’m not belittling academic writing: It serves a purpose within the academy, and some folks are really good at it. It never felt right to me, though — I was trying to be a scholar when I really wanted to be a storyteller. I realized this in 2013, when I reflected on the 200-plus-page dissertation I authored 2 in 2009. I interviewed 15 student veterans about their experiences coming back to college after deployments and quoted them heavily throughout the tome. Their voices are present in my dissertation, but their stories are not. For the average reader, there’s nothing in that dissertation that helps you make a personal connection with those student veterans. Their stories — which would give a reader context for their experiences and make them come alive as people — are missing. There wasn’t much in that dissertation that would make a wider audience care. If I’m honest, I’ve always wanted my voice to be heard by a wider audience, and I’ve wanted that audience to care about what I’m saying. For someone who writes better than he talks, writing has always been my preferred medium. But for me, that medium — when wrapped in academic-speak and rendered in 30-page journal articles — became tedious. I found myself trying to sound like all the other scholars. I saw in front of me the promise of tenure, a comfortable life. And I got scared that I’d lose myself — my voice — if I pursued it. So, I made a change. The past two years have been freeing for me. At 34 years old, I’m almost positive I now know what I want to do with my life. I discovered narrative nonfiction when I put down the academic journals and opened up the newspapers and magazines, and more fully when I took Jacqui Banaszynski’s Intermediate Writing class. She and others taught me the techniques I’m learning to harness, the skills that come together to give a journalist his voice. That’s where this professional project lives, at the intersection of craft and culture. I was lucky to find a newspaper — the Charleston Gazette, now the Gazette- 3 Mail — that let me write narrative nonfiction on day-turn, week-turn and long-term assignments. From a craft perspective, this was an opportunity to hone a writing voice. From a cultural perspective, I spoke with accomplished narrative nonfiction writers from the South and learned how they think and work, and how their Southern roots influence their reporting and writing. This was an attempt to find the (Southern) writing voice. Now, as I’m attempting to tie all these experiences together, I realize I’m ultimately searching for my voice. I haven’t found it yet. So, I’ll keep trying. And thinking. And reporting. And writing. And telling stories. 4 PROJECT ACTIVITIES AND WEEKLY FIELD NOTES I divided my time among four activities during the course of my project. General assignment reporting I specifically sought out an internship that would challenge me and help me grow as a reporter and writer. Keep in mind I had no general assignment reporting experience before I worked at the Charleston Gazette: My goal was to change that. I averaged three to four stories a week at the newspaper, and I covered the following things: festivals and events; cops and courts; local business; local government. I also wrote briefs and made cop calls, and I reported and wrote a couple of obituaries. I even took photos on a couple of occasions. During the summer the paper began to use me as more of a general assignment feature writer. I had a good mix of day-turn, week-turn and long-term stories to work on, and I learned to keep a personal story budget and manage multiple assignments from week to week.