NIEMA N Nieman Reports REPO One Francis Avenue RT Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 S Nieman Reports THE NIEMAN FOUNDATION FOR JOURNALISM AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY VOL. 65 NO. 4 WINTER 2011 V OL. OL. 6 5 NO. NO. 4 W I NT E R 2011 Y L E • L E S T N G • T H C E • I A O U V • D I T E WR P N I C T E I N C E G T HE N • BOOK O P C L A T F O R M My aphorism for the way • THE NIEMA publishing operates these days is "Good books. Any S E way you want them. Now." L N F er Osnos OU – Pet F N - P DA T U IO N B A T L H I A S R VA H I R N D G G N UN I • T M E K A IV R E R SI T Y ‘to promote and elevate the standards of journalism’ Agnes Wahl Nieman the benefactor of the Nieman Foundation Vol. 65 No. 4 Winter 2011 Nieman Reports The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University Ann Marie Lipinski | Publisher Melissa Ludtke | Editor Jan Gardner | Assistant Editor Jonathan Seitz | Editorial Assistant Diane Novetsky | Design Editor Nieman Reports (USPS #430-650) is published Editorial in March, June, September and December Telephone: 617-496-6308 by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, E-mail Address: One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-2098. [email protected] Subscriptions/Business Internet Address: Telephone: 617-496-6299 www.niemanreports.org E-mail Address: [email protected] Copyright 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Subscription $25 a year, $40 for two years; add $10 per year for foreign airmail. 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Box 4951 ISSN Number 0028-9817 Manchester, NH 03108 Nieman Reports THE NIEMAN FOUNDATION FOR JOURNALISM AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY VOL. 65 NO. 4 WINTER 2011 Writing the Book Concept to Content 4 Compelling Story, Unflappable Belief, and Digital Teamwork | By Gayle Tzemach Lemmon 6 Feeling It’s a Book, Then Pausing to Wonder If It Is | By Mitchell Zuckoff 9 On the Road to Writing Books: Blazing New Trails | By William Wheeler 11 Brief Story, Book Proposal, a Longer Feature, Then a Book | By Amy Ellis Nutt 13 Writing a Life, Living a Writer’s Life | By Gaiutra Bahadur 14 A Year of Reinvention | By Alfredo Corchado 17 Starting as a Journalist, Ending as a Memoirist | By Lucette Lagnado 20 Journalists and Memoir: Reporting + Memory | By Michele Weldon 22 Tips for Journalists Writing Memoirs | By Michele Weldon 24 Newsroom to Classroom: Books as a Thread of Connection | By Brooke Kroeger 26 Narrative Writing: Craft to Ethics, Theme to Characters | By Beth Macy 28 A Literary Exploration of How Power Corrupts | By Thrity Umrigar 29 Novels Win Out Over Journalism | By William Dietrich 31 Will I Ever Write the Book? Why Not? | By Bret Schulte 33 Leapfrogging the Book: A Newspaper Story Jumps to Film | By Paul Lieberman 35 Dealing With Hollywood | By Paul Lieberman Platform to Audience 36 Journalism: Done The Atavist Way | By David Wolman 38 It’s a Long Article. It’s a Short Book. No, It’s a Byliner E-Book. | By John Tayman 39 The Writing Life: Examined in a Digital Minibook | E-Book Excerpt by Ann Patchett 41 Transformation in Publishing and Optimism About Books | Conversation with Peter Osnos 42 Sooner Sounds Better | By Philip Meyer 45 Telling Political Stories in Closer to Real-Time Books | By John F. Harris 46 E-Books as a Business Strategy | By Federica Cocco 48 Visual Intensity of Words | By Len Edgerly Cover Design: Diane Novetsky | Nova Design 50 Out of Print, a Book Reappears—And Earns Its Author Money | By Dan Kennedy 52 Journalist to Marketer—With a Book In-Between | By Rochelle Lefkowitz 54 Making a Book—Digital and Print—From Scratch | By Elizabeth Castro 55 Learning the Inner Workings of an E-Book File | By Elizabeth Castro Voice to Visual 56 Powerful People and a Book They Almost Stopped | By Marites Dañguilan Vitug 58 Books Take Over Where Daily Journalism Can’t Go | By Andrew Meldrum 61 Transit: An Assignment and an Idea—Now a Book, Exhibit and Website | An Essay in Words and Photographs by Espen Rasmussen 68 A Photography Book—Absorbed in Print and on the iPad | By Boris Muñoz 3 Editor’s Corner: Guided By a Simple Vision | By Melissa Ludtke 71 Nieman Notes | Compiled by Jan Gardner 71 Trying to Make a Difference | By Annmarie Timmins 73 Class Notes 82 End Note: A Way to Understand the World | An Essay in Words and Photographs by Eli Reed NiemanReports.org • Discover compelling stories. • Absorb ongoing work by fellows and contributors. • Get the latest Nieman Notes. • Explore past articles and see what still resonates. • Go to Professor’s Corner and use our content in the classroom. 2 Nieman Reports | Winter 2011 EDITOR’S CORNER Guided By a Simple Vision Not far from the Nieman Foundation’s Greek Revival house on Francis Avenue, the future dimensions of media are being explored in the modernistic glass-walled zones of the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. On a recent morning I visited it with Nieman Fellows, and our tour began with Hiroshi Ishii, its associate director and a Nieman affiliate (as the husband of 2012 fellow Akiko Sugaya), orienting us to what’s happening there. High-tech projects—Ping-Pong tables on which fish images swim, bottles that sing when their caps are removed—perplexed and dazzled. Still, what stuck with me is Hiroshi’s PowerPoint image of an inverted triangle. [See image, below.] Here’s why: Sparse with words and numbers, it conveyed a convincing message—one I transposed from his rumina- tions about media to mine about journalism. I was riveted by its clarity. While vision ripples for a century, how we apply tech- nology has the staying power of a decade, and technology’s tools come and go in a year or so. This image helped me to visualize ideas of endur- ance and transience, notions that until then I’d not seen so clearly. I realized then how these ideas informed the way Nieman Reports has tried to tell the stories of journalism in our digital times. During my 13 years as editor of Nieman Reports—a job I depart with this issue—waves of digital media have washed through journalism as disruptive forces and invigorating insti- gators of change. Newsrooms, too slow to adapt in the minds of many, are prodded now by the pioneering efforts of entrepreneurial entities. No certain business model has been found, though lessons in sustainability are emerging even from the failures of experimentation. As technology’s tools and gadgets, apps and platforms push us to reinvent how we do our work, Nieman Reports has kept its core focus on the journalism produced, as told by those who do it best. We ask “how” and describe “why,” as we wonder about “what” and think about “where.” All the while we adhere to the Nieman Foundation’s mission of elevating the standards of journalism. Technologically driven inventions like those being conceived at the Media Lab carve visionary paths that, in turn, will open up new possibilities for journalists; yet technology won’t determine our ethical framework or reinforce our standards, inform our judgment or strengthen our practices that set high-quality journalism apart from other sources of information. This we must do, and that belief has guided my work as the editor of Nieman Reports. —Melissa Ludtke Nieman Reports | Winter 2011 3 WRITING THE BOOK | Concept to Content Compelling Story, Unflappable Belief, and Digital Teamwork ‘What I knew was that everyone who said there was no audience for this story was wrong. Not because I saw the future, but because I understood the present.’ BY GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON hat do you do when the have lost power, then who are my book “The Dressmaker of gatekeepers tell you it the new ones? Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One can’t be done? The answer: You. Remarkable Family, and the WThe answer: Go around them. When I began pitching the Woman Who Risked Everything And if the old gatekeepers story of what would become to Keep Them Safe,” I met a slew Barred from teaching after the Taliban took over Kabul, Afghanistan, Kamila Sidiqi, right, found another way to support her sisters. She is the subject of Gayle Tzemach Lemmon’s “The Dressmaker of Khair Khana.” Photo courtesy of Mercy Corps. 4 Nieman Reports | Winter 2011 Concept to Content of unmoved listeners. One New York and to girls on college campuses and I got in touch with former newsroom literary agent luminary told me that if in high school, I saw their excitement colleagues and friends at ABC News, he had found “anything at all” in the at hearing the story—and it inspired who helped secure media bookings. story of an Afghan teenage woman— me to keep fighting. I kept every dis- Tina Brown and The Daily Beast, teacher-turned-entrepreneur—whose couraging e-mail as fuel. I knew that for whom I reported from Afghani- dressmaking business supported if I could just get the story to women, stan, scheduled an excerpt.