Attempting to Master the Art of the Profile

Last year around this time, I was assigned one of my most challenging stories for The Washington Examiner: profiling a Virginia woman on her 100th birthday. I drove out to her house on a rainy morning the day before Thanksgiving, and spent two hours talking to her.

(My job was not made easier by the presence of the Examiner photographer who snapped away while she talked, making her visibly uncomfortable.)

When I got back to the office, I had pages and pages of notes about "Cornie" McGrath's life, and faced the difficult task of assembling them into a coherent narrative that didn't just go along the lines of she was born, she did this, she did that, she moved to Virginia, now she's 100.

With this in mind, I've been focusing on profile-writing in the first semester of journalism school. I have two in the works now, and recently finished one that I was able to use as a school assignment and a posting on Above The Law: Legal Profile: Nick 'Ultimate Fighting Lawyer' Thompson.

There seem to be a few tricks to writing profiles:

• Research. Get background material to inform the questions you ask. Has the person been interviewed before? Has he written articles/books? Does she have a blog?
  
• Extract an anecdote to provide color or insight into a person's character or story, and leading the piece with that.
• Triangulation. It's tempting to write the profile based on one interview with the subject, and your impressions of the person. But it's best if you track down friends, colleagues, and other "experts" to lend insight and quotes to the piece.
• Multiple interviews with your subject. Talk to him or her, then talk to others, then talk to him or her again. Try writing along the way to figure out what you've forgotten to ask about.
• The phone just ain't as good. Interview your subject in person. If you can, follow your subject around for a few hours, or a day, to get a sense of how he or she interacts with others and how he or she behaves when not in "interview mode."
• Creative narrative arc. Don't get stuck in a biographical/encyclopedic retelling of someone's life story, following the easy chronological path. (Write down everything, but figure out which details can be dropped. Most of the time, we probably don't need to know which high school he or she went to.)

Well, this was a form of procrastinating before tackling my current profile piece. Time to put the nose back to the grindstone.

Marathon Writing

Life feels like a marathon these days. Grad school is not the laid back, sleeping-in, leisurely reading, lots of down time, cafe-spending experience that one would expect. But journalism school is rewarding, especially when the reporting brings me into contact with people like Bob and Susan Hammond.

One of my class assignments was to profile someone from my hometown running the New York City Marathon. I went through the list of entrants and chose to contact Bob Hammond due to his affiliation with the Natural Living Club. I thought that could provide a good news hook. I interviewed him twice by phone in the month before the marathon, and then met him and his wife in New York the weekend of the marathon.

I accompanied them to the Expo, had lunch with them at a vegan restaurant, and stood with Susan at mile 23 to cheer Bob on as he ran past about three hours into the race. The Hammonds were wonderful, inspiring people, and it was a joy to meet them. My profile piece ran in The Pelican Press this week.

Twenty years ago, newly minted dentist Robert Hammond was an avowed junk food lover, indulging frequently in "Twinkies, double dogs and Ring Dings." On the car radio one day he heard health guru Gary Null talking about holistic living and healthy eating.

Read the full article.

I had tried to pitch the piece to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, but they totally snubbed me, not responding to phone calls or e-mails. Grrr.

Running changed his diet and brought him love [The Pelican Press]

Elections and Meltdowns

I am a bit late "filing" this blog post. I spent election day morning on the Staten Island ferry gathering quotes for this article, Political Families Go Head to Head in Staten Island, and spent a good portion of the evening at the Department of Journalism editing reporting done by undergrads on How Gen Y Voted. The reporting behind the political families story included coffee with Bob Straniere's spokeman, conversations with twenty Staten Islanders over a month period, a Congressional candidate's debate, four ferry rides, online research and phone conversations with political experts in New York and even Missouri. And now it's over.

Every time an article is "put to bed," written and published, it's like a little funeral. You hope that all of the reporting led to something informative, worthwhile, and maybe even thoughtful. Yet, at the same time, you know its life is likely to be incredibly short-lived. Just another small contribution to a vast sea of news and information being poured out into the Web. Sigh.

At this point, November 4 is a distant memory. Now all the talk is of January 20, and plans for the inauguration. There's definitely a part of me wishing I were still living in D.C. to witness history being made there this January. But in New York, at least I get to witness the financial meltdown firsthand. Woo hoo...

I spent this past weekend in Ohio. Friends and relatives talked about disappearing jobs and fear of the coming recession. Cities like New York and D.C. haven't truly been hit by the economic downturn yet. They chug along, mostly unscathed. Though the Wall Street Journal screams terrible economic news at me each morning, I feel the weight of the downturn most when I talk to family and friends in Cleveland, in Sarasota, and in Charlotte.

We can only hope that the new roster of political office holders does a better job with the economy than the last bunch.