Good news, bad news: Learning from The Telegraph

The following is an excerpt from a presentation by writing coach Jim Stasiowski for the Executive and Managing Editors seminar in November 2001.

A frequent API discussion leader, Jim uses examples from participants' newspapers to highlight strengths and weaknesses in writing. Editor David Solomon from The Telegraph in Nashua, New Hampshire, sent Jim several stories on the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Here are Jim's comments:

I especially enjoyed the coverage in The Telegraph. Unfortunately, The Telegraph had an advantage, albeit a sad one: John Ogonowski, one of the pilots of a jet that hit one of the World Trade Center towers, lived in Dracut, Mass., and the pilot's three daughters went to a private, Catholic school in Nashua. Therefore, the paper had a built-in story.

Albert McKeon, a reporter for The Telegraph, handled the story very well. Albert went to a press conference by John's brother, Jim Ogonowski, and Albert wrote a powerful yet sensitive story that started:

Jim Ogonowski keeps waiting for his older brother, John, to come walking out of the family's cornfields.

That's a strong start to a well-told story. The reference to the cornfields isn't merely decoration; John, the story explains, was an aggressive battler for open land in Dracut, and the farm was "John's legacy," Jim Ogonowski said.

"When I saw him with his hands filthy, I saw him happy" Jim Ogonowski said.
Albert also got lots of other good moments. Early in the morning of Sept. 11, as John Ogonowski drove past his uncle Al's house, he tooted the car horn, a family tradition.

Jim Ogonowski, an Air National Guard pilot, said he wanted to volunteer for immediate combat action to avenge the "cowardly act (of) attacking citizens."

And, Jim recalled that John had...

?entered ROTC in the late 1960s -- "at a time when it was not cool to be in the military, " his brother said of the politically charged era when many young men burned their draft cards.
Albert's story was from a press conference, and the information he got was the same that other reporters had. But he used the information in a clear, cogent, understated way. He didn't try to dazzle readers with his writing skill; instead, he merely arranged the facts and quotations in a skillful way, and he let those facts and quotations carry the story.

Another effort by The Telegraph also impressed me.

David Brooks and Andrew Wolfe collaborated on a story that was less than 30 inches, but that summarized and highlighted the reaction of local people. What I particularly appreciated was the lack of redundancy. David and Andrew found regular folks and unusual folks, and each person added something new.

For instance:

They found Ron and Zelia Rosenfeld, who were flying in a single-engine plane from Eastport, Maine, to Nashua for a doctor's appointment. As they were flying, the flight radio ordered something called "a national ground stop."

Rosenfeld had never heard of such a thing and didn't know what it meant. As he passed Sanford, Maine, air traffic controllers told him: It meant an emergency had been declared and all planes were ordered to land at the nearest airport immediately.
Rosenfeld requested and got their permission to continue to Nashua, where he landed around 10:30 a.m.

At the Nashua Senior Center, they found a perspicacious Spanish student:

The news coverage of Tuesday's events was much more immediate compared to events such as Pearl Harbor, said Joseph McDonald, who teaches Spanish classes at the center.
"We didn't have the news coverage in open areas like we do today," McDonald said. "Now you see everything that goes on, immediately."

"Which might be why they (terrorists) are doing it," added one of McDonald's students, who declined to give her name.

And they started and ended the story with an interview with Barry Palmer, a retired U.S. Navy officer whom they found in the American Legion Post. Palmer had lots of strong comments, and the story ended this way:

"These things are too horrible even to reflect on," Palmer said. "Everywhere I've gone this morning... they have their radios on or TVs if they have a TV. It's like that movie 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' -- everything is stopped and all the focus is on this thing.
"A lot of people are scared."

What I want you to notice is that the story isn't just a helter-skelter jumble of what people in the streets are saying. David and Andrew went to specific, well-chosen spots: the local airport, the senior center, the place at which military people congregate. Instead of hearing merely, "Oh my God, it's awful," the readers of The Telegraph heard sharp anecdotes and well-thought-out opinions.