Associated Press Reporting Handbook

1. Associated Press Reporting Handbook Re-creating Reality: About Narrative Reconstructions Chapter 16

2. The stories DeSilva has in mind are … the kinds of tales people tell each other in front of a fire. • These stories have central characters that you can love or hate, but ______________. • “… there has to be an emotional investment.” The character has to be someone in whom the reader will be emotionally invested.

3. “real problem that readers will take seriously. And the character must struggle to solve that problem:” • The central character has to have a ______. • So, what happens if the character solves the problem? • If the character has a problem and he or she solves it, you have a paragraph. “You don’t have a story.”

4. There are four things that make a narrative work: • 1. Character • 2. Problem • 3. Struggle • 4. Resolution or Closure • This is the bad news. What’s the good news?

5. The good news is an awful lot of things in life happen that way. • If you start thinking in terms of storytelling, instead of reporting the news, you’ll see stories everywhere. • Most of what we print in the newspaper are ____________ • “endings” • We don’t tell the whole story.

6. What we usually report are the resolutions to a much longer and very interesting story. • This longer story involves human beings struggling with life. • Information given to people in the form of real storytelling are more likely to be understood, read thoroughly and remembered. • It’s entertaining, interesting and in most cases, fascinating.

7. In storytelling, you are dealing with the texture of people’s lives and their struggles. • This is “life’s” struggle, and it makes everything interesting. It’s about relationship. • It’s like saying, “OK, you’re having trouble understanding this. Well, let me tell you a story.” • The banking and real estate market collapse told through the eyes of a hot-dog vendor.

8. The reporter learns the character through action and dialogue. • Dialogue is not a quote or two, it is what people are saying to each other in real life. That’s what we want to reconstruct. • Quotes are for those things that could reasonably be expected to be remembered. • “Oh mercy me, I’ve been shot with a handgun, illegally purchased on the street.” The rest is just paraphrased.

9. Just like in a movie, you must have a setting for telling a story. • Nobody would think of making a movie set in “Nowhere.” • A sense of place means reporting what it’s like there, what you see and hear and smell and the taste that creates that sense of place on the page. • You have to report action, and you can only write scenes through detail.

10. What do you see, smell and hear and taste? This is a small town: 440 people, filling station, bank, post office, tavern, blacktop street, grain elevator. Beyond lie rolling meadows, ripening corn, redwing blackbirds, fat cattle, windmills and silos – a scene off a Sweet Lassy feed calendar. • People who write narrative have to relearn how to report so they can help the reader experience the world through the senses instead of just telling them what happened. • You just need to ask the right questions. • You have to ask people what they saw and heard and smelled. “What did it taste like?”

11. Associated Press Reporting Handbook Saving a Child Chapter 17

12. The Making of a Rescue:17 Minutes of TerrorBy CHELSEA J. CARTER • This example gives us two stories, one by Chelsea Carter and one by Tom Saladino. What are the major differences in the two accounts? • Was there anything “wrong” with Saladino’s story that moved on the wire? • What had happened earlier that made FitzHenry and Simpson think they should do more?

13. What were the two things FitzHenry gave Carter as she left to go to Tipton, Ga.? • Whose story was she to read in DeSilva’s book? • There were two instructions given her as she left. • “Remember to tell the story.” • “Show me the story.” • Are these different?

14. In the story about Eva Suggs, there was someone with O’Neill who helped Eva open up. • Who was the guy who helped Ryan open up for Carter’s rescue story? • Rick Feld - the photographer. • What was the Prodis story about? • There was another book Carter had read by Edna Buchanan “The Corpse had a Familiar Face.”

15. How did that book help her? • What other writer have we read about who had this incredible way of seeing things? • Was Carter able to interview everybody? • Was it necessary? • The story won the APME Association Award for best young AP reporter of the year. • “Timing,” she says, “is everything.”

16. Associated Press Reporting Handbook Chasing a Fire Chapter 18

17. Charred Trees, Shattered Dreams:Chronology of a WildfireBy DAVID FOSTER • Foster begins his story by introducing us to ____________. • Sam and Kathryn Minor. • What are they doing? • Watching the lightning from their cabin in Coyote Gulch, Montana. • What does the lightning set up in the story? • The lightning started the fires in the Bitteroot National Forest.

18. Any comments about: • “The West is burning as it hasn’t burned in 50 years.” • In an ecological sense, fire is a __________. • Fire is a necessity. It cleans house, but it also destroys homes. • What was wrong with Sam? • At age 57, he was disabled after 20 years as a roofer. • Where had he and Kathryn lived before? • Las Vegas • What had happened to his two teen-agers?

19. This $92,000 piece of property represents everything they own, complete with: • Christmas decorations from Kathryn’s grandmother, a china hutch, a futon, plastic bags filled with clothes. • Any comments about the humanity in this part of the story? • They thought they had the rest of their lives to _________. • Unpack. • Then the scene changes. • Who does he bring into the story now? • A camp of 500 firefighters six miles away.

20. The sheriff comes while Sam is playing the guitar. What is the message the sheriff brings? • Evacuate! • Sam and Kathryn go to the home of friends and spend two nights. • They go back home. • How near is the closest fire on Friday? • Three miles (and two ridges) away. • Chip Houde is in charge of 180 firefighters. • They are fighting two fires - the Gilbert fire of 500 acres and the Spade Fire of 1,700 acres.

21. Things turn for the worse. • The Minors evacuate again. • You start getting the idea of the uncertainty and the fact that there is really no rest for either the firefighters or the local residents. • “Dante’s Inferno” • “Unreal, like a movie” • Houde sees a cliché. • “A wall of flame.” • 40 mph gusts and 150-foot flames. • House is saved. Memories gone. • Writer leaves his heroes “devastated,” but helping neighbors and still fighting.

22. Foster’s office was in Olympia, Wash. • AP’s Northwest regional reporter knows what they want. • Real people, real drama, compelling narrative that looks beyond the acres burned and homes destroyed. • National Forest headquarters at 11 p.m. when he pulls in. • He stays in a Super 8 that smells like barbequed turkey. • Three phases: • The threat; the chaos and the aftermath

23. Places Foster looks for leads • Forest Information Center? Good idea. • The Montana Café? A better idea. • The spot-news monster. • Heads to the firefighters camp, where he gets what? Instead of what? • Information instead of a story -- • 15-minute lesson on fire safety. • Drives himself to the Minors’ home. • He lets them tell their story, but he does have questions. -- Takes photographs. • People are essential to the story.

24. Then, he speaks with the soldiers, the fire officials. • Struggles with the firefighter lingo when he interviews Houde, the branch director. • 90 percent of his story is in his notebooks. • Julie Dunlap, THE EDITOR: 200 words • The phone rings: What next?