Reading Response Week 5

 The readings for this week all interweave to provide a basic basis for how to report, write, and polish a narrative journalism profile. While I found some of the readings more helpful than others, I took a little bit from each of them in planning my own profile writing process. “Being There” by Anne Hull really fascinated me because she went in-depth in her suggestions for how to truly do deep and meaningful reporting. I had always figured that shadowing the interviewee in their daily life was key in addition to traditional reporting, but I never took into consideration the more abstract areas of reportage that she touches on. For example, she recommends that a reporter should read the local paper, go to the local church, and to use the language of the people that you are trying to capture. I think that in all of these areas she makes very good points, especially in small town America. If I were doing a story in New York City, perhaps these details would be irrelevant due to the great amount of diversity—the New York Times would not necessarily address the concerns of the people as a whole and no one church would have the majority of people as parishioners. However, here in Kalamazoo, these points are very pertinent to reporting and I may have passed them by before reading Hull's piece. Much of the energy happening in this town proceeds from the pulpit and the social movements are often linked to a religious organization. If something is going on that concerns the people of Kalamazoo, it is likely to be reflected here in the Gazette and in the church newsletters throughout town. As far as language goes, I think that Hull's point rings especially true in the profile that I am trying to piece together right now for this class. I am profiling Lillie Wolffe with Welcoming Michigan, a migrant outreach group here in Kalamazoo. The people who are most important to her and who she deals with on a daily basis use Spanish as their first language; if I want to interview them or become a part of her world for reporting purposes, using my Spanish-speaking abilities is key to my story. I really think that knowing Spanish provides me a level of access that would otherwise go untapped in a story like this. As I read “Being There,” I made a lot of connections that I plan to employ in my writing.

As Larissa MacFarquhar of The New Yorker says in her speech: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of themselves to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He's a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness.” I definitely have felt this way throughout the process—trying to balance not wanting to intrude and wanting to get the necessary material. I think that these writing guides are helping me to cope with this balance and I am excited to see what comes of this project. I am interested to know what others from class thought about this dilemma and I look forward to our discussion.