30
PAGE 1 T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S Literary jourNAlism VOL 7 NO 3 INTERNATIONALASSOCIATION FOR LITERARY JOURNALISM STUDIES SUMMER 2013 O ne of the pleasant notes I received after IALJS-8, from a first-time conference participant, reminded me of why this association’s annual conference is important and perhaps even essential to so many of us: “Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed being a part of the IALJS-8 this year,” it read. “It was a terrific experience for me—the panels, discussions, and the people.” Yes, the panels, the dis- cussions, the peo- ple—that would seem to be the con- ference’s three core nuggets. Or, well, since people make up the panels, and people do the discussing, maybe those three nouns can be boiled down to one: people. I am not entirely sure why this is so, but the literary journalism conference tends to bring out the most magnanimous of feelings. We tend to open our hearts and minds to other ideas. We tend to try to look at literary journal- ism from the other’s point of view, to try to see what they are seeing, as opposed to remaining inside what we ourselves are seeing the other fifty-one weeks of the year. I suppose this occurs because this is what happens when you put a whole lot of people (but not too many, so we can all still talk to each to each other) in the same room for a few days, and exactly the point of creating and fostering a worldwide lit- erary journalism organization—to better under- stand its history, its teaching, its influence on a world scale. I believe our conference does indeed get better every year. From the qual- ity of the pre- sentations, to the amount of new knowl- edge being presented, to the excellent discussions following the presentations, it seems to me that we, as an organization, are learn- ing every year how to speak the language of enquiry, and improve the vocabulary of the language of enquiry, and thus grow literary journalism as a discipline. I also want to formally acknowl- edge the excellent preparation and hard work of our colleague Maria Lassila- Merisalo, who as host brought off the proceedings so brilliantly (and calmly). Maria’s additional work over the years— building, editing, modifying and updat- ing our conference “bible”—has been invaluable, but the conference at University of Tampere must be consid- ered her finest achievement. Bravo, Maria. And I want to thank Dean Heikki Hellman of the School of Communication, Media and Theatre at University of Tampere for his generous assistance and support of the conference. I want also to thank Robert Boynton, director of the lit- erary reportage program at New York University,for his keynote address, “Notes Toward a Supreme Nonfiction,” and generously participating in all aspects of the conference. It was a delight to have the author of The New New Journalism on board. Finally I want to acknowledge the consistently amazing work our IALJS executive committee does all year long, from the Call for Papers to building the conference program, from panels to works-in-progress to research papers, your tireless efforts are much appreciated by everyone. All the best. FUTURE IALJS CONFERENCE SITES IALJS-9: American University of Paris, Paris, France,15-17 May 2014. IALJS-10: University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.A, 7-9 May 2015. IALJS-11: Northwestern University Qatar, Doha, Qatar, 19-21 May 2016 (pending). IALJS-12: University of Technology Sydney and Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, 11-13 May 2017 (pending). IALJS-13: University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia, 17-19 May 2018 (pending). MEMBERSHIP REPORT FOR 2013 We are happy to be able to report that our association’s membership, as of 31 May 2013, including all IALJS-8 atten- dees at the Tampere, Finland confer- ence, totals 125 paid-in-full members from 26 countries around the globe. INSIDE 2 IALJS-8 Annual Conference 5 IALJS-9 Call, May 2014 in Paris 8 The Next Wave 9 2013 Annual Business Meeting 10 Global Literary Journalism 11 IALJS/ACLA at University of Toronto 13 LJS Journal Call for Submissions 14 Video-streaming at IALJS-8 Meeting 15 Conference Note: WLA Journal 16 Research Essay: Immersion 24 2013 Awards Committee Resolution 26 Literary Journalism Across the Globe 27 2013 IALJS Membership Form 28 IALJS Officers and Chairs, 2012-14 30 Teaching Tips PRESIDENT’S LETTER IT WAS WONDERFUL TO SEE YOU Our annual conference in Finland set a standard of excellence. By Bill Reynolds, Ryerson University (Canada) WWW.IALJS.ORG

THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

  • Upload
    others

  • View
    1

  • Download
    0

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

PAGE 1

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

LLiitteerraarryy jjoouurrNNAAlliissmmVOL 7 NO 3 INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR LITERARY JOURNALISM STUDIES SUMMER 2013

One of the pleasant notes I received afterIALJS-8, from a first-time conferenceparticipant, reminded me of why this

association’s annual conference is importantand perhaps evenessential to somany of us: “Justwanted to let youknow how much Ienjoyed being apart of the IALJS-8this year,” it read.“It was a terrificexperience forme—the panels,discussions, andthe people.” Yes,the panels, the dis-cussions, the peo-ple—that wouldseem to be the con-

ference’s three core nuggets. Or, well, sincepeople make up the panels, and people do thediscussing, maybe those three nouns can beboiled down to one: people.

I am not entirely sure why this is so,but the literary journalism conference tends tobring out the most magnanimous of feelings.We tend to open our hearts and minds to otherideas. We tend to try to look at literary journal-ism from the other’s point of view, to try to seewhat they are seeing, as opposed to remaininginside what we ourselves are seeing the otherfifty-one weeks of the year. I suppose thisoccurs because this is what happens when youput a whole lot of people (but not too many, sowe can all still talk to each to each other) in thesame room for a few days, and exactly thepoint of creating and fostering a worldwide lit-erary journalism organization—to better under-stand its history, its teaching, its influence on aworld scale.

I believeour conferencedoes indeedget betterevery year.From the qual-ity of the pre-sentations, tothe amount ofnew knowl-edge beingpresented, tothe excellentdiscussionsfollowing the presentations, it seems tome that we, as an organization, are learn-ing every year how to speak the languageof enquiry, and improve the vocabularyof the language of enquiry, and thus growliterary journalism as a discipline.

I also want to formally acknowl-edge the excellent preparation and hardwork of our colleague Maria Lassila-Merisalo, who as host brought off theproceedings so brilliantly (and calmly).Maria’s additional work over the years—building, editing, modifying and updat-ing our conference “bible”—has beeninvaluable, but the conference atUniversity of Tampere must be consid-ered her finest achievement. Bravo,Maria. And I want to thank Dean HeikkiHellman of the School of Communication,Media and Theatre at University ofTampere for his generous assistance andsupport of the conference. I want also tothank Robert Boynton, director of the lit-erary reportage program at New YorkUniversity,for his keynote address,“Notes Toward a Supreme Nonfiction,”and generously participating in allaspects of the conference. It was a delightto have the author of The New NewJournalism on board.

Finally I want to acknowledgethe consistently amazing work our IALJSexecutive committee does all year long,from the Call for Papers to building theconference program, from panels toworks-in-progress to research papers,your tireless efforts are much appreciatedby everyone. All the best. ©

FUTURE IALJS CONFERENCE SITES

IIAALLJJSS--99:: American University ofParis, Paris, France,15-17 May 2014.

IIAALLJJSS--1100:: University of St.Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.A, 7-9May 2015.

IIAALLJJSS--1111:: Northwestern UniversityQatar, Doha, Qatar, 19-21 May 2016(pending).

IIAALLJJSS--1122:: University of TechnologySydney and Macquarie University,Sydney, Australia, 11-13 May 2017(pending).

IIAALLJJSS--1133:: University of NovaGorica, Slovenia, 17-19 May 2018(pending).

MEMBERSHIPREPORT FOR 2013We are happy to be able to report thatour association’s membership, as of 31May 2013, including all IALJS-8 atten-dees at the Tampere, Finland confer-ence, totals 125 paid-in-full membersfrom 26 countries around the globe.

INSIDE22 IIAALLJJSS--88 AAnnnnuuaall CCoonnffeerreennccee

55 IIAALLJJSS--99 CCaallll,, MMaayy 22001144 iinn PPaarriiss

88 TThhee NNeexxtt WWaavvee

99 22001133 AAnnnnuuaall BBuussiinneessss MMeeeettiinngg

1100 GGlloobbaall LLiitteerraarryy JJoouurrnnaalliissmm

1111 IIAALLJJSS//AACCLLAA aatt UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff TToorroonnttoo

1133 LLJJSS JJoouurrnnaall CCaallll ffoorr SSuubbmmiissssiioonnss

1144 VViiddeeoo--ssttrreeaammiinngg aatt IIAALLJJSS--88 MMeeeettiinngg

1155 CCoonnffeerreennccee NNoottee:: WWLLAA JJoouurrnnaall

1166 RReesseeaarrcchh EEssssaayy:: IImmmmeerrssiioonn

2244 22001133 AAwwaarrddss CCoommmmiitttteeee RReessoolluuttiioonn

2266 LLiitteerraarryy JJoouurrnnaalliissmm AAccrroossss tthhee GGlloobbee

2277 22001133 IIAALLJJSS MMeemmbbeerrsshhiipp FFoorrmm

2288 IIAALLJJSS OOffffiicceerrss aanndd CChhaaiirrss,, 22001122--1144

3300 TTeeaacchhiinngg TTiippss

PRESIDENT’SLETTER

IT WAS WONDERFULTO SEE YOUOur annual conference in Finlandset a standard of excellence.

By Bill Reynolds,Ryerson University (Canada)

WWW.IALJS.ORG

Page 2: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

ABOVE, THE FOOD AND WINE AT THE THURSDAY RECEPTION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TAMPERE WAS MARVELOUS.IN THE CENTER, FACING THE CAMERA IS JOHN BAKOF THE UNIVERSITÉ DE LORRAINE, THE FOUNDING PRESIDENT

OF IALJS. HE IS FLANKED BY RESAEARCH CHAIR ISABELLE MEURET OF THE UNIVESRITÉ LIBRE DE BRUXELLES AND PROGRAM CHAIR ROB ALEXANDER OF CANADA’S BROCK UNIVERSITY, BOTH OF WHOM WERE ESSENTIAL TO MAKING IALJS-8 SUCH A SUCCESS.

BELOW, PANELISTS MILES AND ROBERTAMAGUIRE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-

OSHKOSH AND NEW YORK UNIVERSITY’S ROB BOYNTON LISTEN TO A QUESTION FROM

THE AUDIENCE. THE CONFERENCE VENUE WAS ONE OF THE MORE RECENT

BUILDING’S OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TAMPERE CAMPUS..

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 2 LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013

The eighth edition of our annual con-ference organized at the Universityof Tampere from 16-18 May was an

immense success. The diversity of topicsaddressed, and the range of experts gath-ered on the occasion are evidence that theassociation is thriving, both qualitatively

and quantitative-ly. It was a greatprivilege for meto take up theResearch Chairposition, whichIsabel Soares hadbeen so elegantlyholding for fourproductive years.May she bethanked in theselines for her

sound advice andprecious assis-tance throughoutthe preparation of

the IALJS-8 annual conference.Getting back to Europe, after

Canada, meant that the number of sub-missions slightly decreased, which isessentially attributable to the economicdownturn and the constant limitation oftravel costs for delegates. Still, we weredelighted to keep our concurrent pro-gramming, by organizing five parallel ses-sions, exactly like last year. We received47 proposals (38 works-in-progress andnine research paper proposals) andaccepted 30—as were the additional sevenpanel proposals which covered a varietyof subjects, from war reportage to profilesand sources.

Also, we were enthralled torepeat our Toronto experience by singlingout a Host Panel’s session, chaired this

2013 IALJS ANNUAL CONVENTION IN FINLANDThe University of Tampere hosts our eighth international conference.

By Isabelle Meuret, Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)

Literary JournalismSummer 2013 Vol 7 No 3Editors: Bill Reynolds and David AbrahamsonISSN 1941-1030 (print)ISSN 1941-1049 (online)© 2013 The Newsletter of the International Associationfor Literary Journalism Studies. All rights reserved.

IALJS-8CONFERENCE

Continued on next page

Text continues on Page 4

Page 3: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013 PAGE 3

ONE OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CON-FERENCE FOR MANY WAS THE FRIDAY“BREAKFAST FOR YOUR THOUGHTS.” HOSTEDBY NORMAN SIMS AND TOBIAS EBERWEIN,LEFT, IT WAS AN INFORMAL OPPORTUNITYFOR GRADUATE STUDENTS SUCH AS SARAPRIETO OF SPAIN’S UNIVERSIDAD DE ALICANTE-TO PRESENT THEIR WORK AND TO ASK FORADVICE FROM THE MORE THAN ALMOSTTWO DOZEN FACULTY SCHOLARS INATTENDANCE. THE CONVERSATION WAS LIVELY, INTERESTING AND EXPLICITLY AND WARMLY SUPPORTIVE..

ABOVE LEFT, THE KEYNOTE SPEECH OF THE CONFERENCE WAS DELIVERED BYROBERT BOYNTON OF NEW YORK UNIVERSITY. ITS TITLE WAS “NOTES TOWARD A SUPREME NONFICTION: TEACHING LITERARY REPORTAGE IN THE 21ST CENTURY.” ABOVE RIGHT, A SMILING PRESIDENT BILL REYNOLDS OF RYERSON UNIVERSITY WELCOMES ALL OF THE IALS -8 ATTENDEES. FAR LEFT, MATEUSZ ZIMNOCH OF POLAND’S JAGIELLONIAN UNIVERSITY AND , NEAR LEFT, BILL CAREY OF ROEHAMPTON UNIVERSITY PRESENTED THEIR RESEARCH IDEAS AT THE FRIDAY BREAKFAST.

Continued on next page

IALJS-8 CONFERENCE Continued from previous page

Page 4: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 4 LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013

IALJS-8 CONFERENCE Text continued from Page 2

time by Maria Lassila-Merisalo:“Generation Textual: Rock & Roll, PopMusic, Literary Journalism andContemporary Culture,” a panel puttogether by Melissa Nurczynksi, as wellas the President’s Panel, “Women’sReportage and Public Memory: From thelate 19th century to the 1940s,” moderatedby Leonora Flis. These panels fascinating-ly brought together researchers from vari-ous backgrounds and traditions. The“international” dimension of IALJS issurely one of its strengths. In Tampere, wealso welcomed new participants fromPoland and Sweden.

From the diversity of our panels,some interesting directions can be traced.First of all, the question of subjectivityemerged as a staple in research on literaryjournalism. The opening session wasdevoted to the question of agency, and theprofile panel discussed the interviewer’sposition and commitment to the story. Wewere also blessed to attend veteranRoberto Herrscher’s personal account ofthe Falklands war (The Voyages of thePenelope, Südpol 2007), which brought afew tears in the audience. We were equal-ly intrigued by David Abrahamson’s evo-cation of the journal, War, Literature, andthe Arts, which is definitely a platform forliterary journalism and firsthand accountsof wars, a topic to which John Bak devot-ed two panels. War narratives, withoutany doubt, are instrumental in the devel-opment of the discipline.

It would be remiss of me not tomention the subject of race, which under-pinned the panel chaired by RobertaMaguire, undoubtedly one of the keymoments in our conference. Tackling theissue of adversity in African-Americanjournalism, or the fate of natives inAmerica, the heritage of South Americansand the question of blacks in SouthAfrica, is a unique characteristic of IALJS.

IALJS now has four awards(including cash honoraria) for research inliterary journalism studies. The prizeswere granted in Tampere: The Greenbergprize went to Antero Pietila and StacySpaulding, for best research article; theBest Paper by a Graduate Student prizewent to Holly Schreiber; the Best Articlein Literary Journalism Studies in 2012 wasawarded to Orlando Pérez González, andthe Best Article in the Literary Journalismnewsletter was granted to William Dow.

Congratulations to all of them.But before bringing this report to

a conclusion, I would like to hail ourmemorable “Breakfast for Your Thoughts”as a particularly successful moment.Graduate students Bill Carey(Roehampton University, U.K.), GillianRennie (Rhodes University andStellenbosch University, South Africa),Mateusz Zimnoch (JagiellonianUniversity, Poland) and Sara Prieto(Universidad de Alicante, Spain) gener-ously shared their research projects withus.

DURING THE 2013ANNUAL MEETING,

AWARDS CHAIRISABEL SOARES OF

THE TECHNICALUNIVERSITY LISBON

PRESENTED ONE OF TWO NEW AWARDS

FOR EXCELLENCE IN RESEARCH. SOON

AFTER, THE ONEREMAINING ORDER

OF BUSINESS WAS FOR PRESIDENT

BILL REYNOLDS TO EXPRESS

EVERYONE’S THANKSTO MARIA

LASSILA-MERISALOFOR HER TERRIFIC

JOB AS THE HOST OF IALJS-8.

WILLIAM DOWOF THE

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF

PARIS ANDUNIVERSITÉ PARIS

EST MARNE-LA-VALLÉE,

PRESENTED A FASCINATING

PAPER ON“RICHARDWRIGHT’S LITERARY

JOURNALISM.” BILL AND THE

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY INPARIS WILL BETHE HOST OFNEXT YEAR’S

ANNUALCONFERENCE.

PLEASE SEE THEMEETING’S CALL

FOR PAPERS ON THE

FOLLOWINGPAGE.

Last but not least: Robert S.Boynton (New York University, U.S.A.)presented his keynote speech, “NotesToward a Supreme Nonfiction: TeachingLiterary Reportage in the 21st Century.”His illuminating talk beautifully echoedand stimulated IALJS’s mission of dissem-ination of literary journalism knowledgeacross the globe, through our practices asscholars and practitioners.

So we will see you next year inParis, which promises to be anotherexceptional conference. ©

Page 5: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013 PAGE 5

1

CALL FOR PAPERSInternational Association for Literary Journalism Studies

“Literary Journalism: Local, Regional, National, Global”The Ninth International Conference for Literary Journalism Studies (IALJS-9)

The American University of ParisDepartment of Comparative Literature and English / Department of Global Communications

Paris, France

15-17 May 2014

The International Association for Literary Journalism Studies invites submissions of originalresearch papers, abstracts for research in progress and proposals for panels on Literary Journalism for the IALJS annual convention on 15-17 May 2014. The conference will be held atthe American University of Paris in Paris, France.

The conference hopes to be a forum for scholarly work of both breadth and depth in the field ofliterary journalism, and all research methodologies are welcome, as are research on all aspects ofliterary journalism and/or literary reportage. For the purpose of scholarly delineation, our definition of literary journalism is "journalism as literature" rather than "journalism aboutliterature." The association especially hopes to receive papers related to the general conferencetheme, “Literary Journalism: Local, Regional, National, Global." All submissions must be in English.

The International Association for Literary Journalism Studies is a multi-disciplinary learned society whose essential purpose is the encouragement and improvement of scholarly research and education in Literary Journalism. As an association in a relatively recently defined field ofacademic study, it is our agreed intent to be both explicitly inclusive and warmly supportive of avariety of scholarly approaches.

Details of the programs of previous annual meetings can be found at:http://www.ialjs.org/?page_id=33

Continued on next page

Page 6: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 6 LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013

I. GUIDELINES FOR RESEARCH PAPERS

Submitted research papers should not exceed 7,500 words, or about 25 double-spaced pages, plusendnotes. Please regard this as an upper limit; shorter papers are certainly welcome. Endnotesand bibliographic citations should follow the Chicago Manual of Style. Papers may not besimultaneously submitted to any other conferences. Papers previously published, presented, accepted or under review are ineligible. Only one paper per author will be accepted for presentation in the conference’s research sessions, and at least one author for each paper must beat the convention in order to present the paper. If accepted, each paper presenter at a conferenceResearch Session may be allotted no more than 15 minutes. To be considered, please observe thefollowing guidelines:

(a) Submission by e-mail attachment in MS Word is required. No other format or faxesor postal mail submissions will be accepted.

(b) Include one separate title page containing title, author/s, affiliation/s, and the address, phone, fax, and e-mail of the lead author.

(c) Also include a second title page containing only the paper’s title and the paper’s abstract. The abstract should be approximately 250 words in length.

(d) Your name and affiliation should not appear anywhere in the paper [this information willonly appear on the first title page; see (b) above].

II. GUIDELINES FOR WORK-IN-PROGRESS PRESENTATIONS (ABSTRACTS)

Submitted abstracts for Work-in-Progress Sessions should not exceed 250 words. If accepted, each presenter at a conference Work-in-Progress session may be allotted no more than 10 minutes. To be considered, please observe the following guidelines:

(a) Submission by e-mail attachment using MS Word is required. No other format or faxes or postal mail submissions will be accepted.

(b) Include one separate title page containing title, author/s, affiliation/s, and the address, phone, fax and e-mail of the lead author.

(c) Also include a second page containing only the work’s title and the actual abstract of thework-in-progress. The abstract should be approximately 250 words in length.

III. GUIDELINES FOR PROPOSALS FOR PANELS

(a) Submission by e-mail attachment in MS Word is required. No other format or faxesor postal mail submissions will be accepted.

(b) Panel proposals should contain the panel title, possible participants and their affiliation and e-mail addresses, and a description of the panel’s subject. The description should beapproximately 250 words in length.

(c) Panels are encouraged on any topic related to the study, teaching or practice of literary journalism. See http://www.ialjs.org/?page_id=21.

Continued on next page

CALL FOR PAPERS Continued from previous page

Page 7: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013 PAGE 7

IV. EVALUATION CRITERIA, DEADLINES AND CONTACT INFORMATION

All research paper submissions will be evaluated on originality and importance of topic;literature review; clarity of research purpose; focus; use of original and primary sources and howthey support the paper’s purpose and conclusions; writing quality and organization; and thedegree to which the paper contributes to the study of literary journalism. Similarly, abstracts ofworks-in-progress and panel proposals will be evaluated on the degree to which they contributeto the study of literary journalism. All submissions will be blind-juried, and submissions fromstudents as well as faculty are encouraged.

Please submit research papers or abstracts of works-in-progress presentations to:

Prof. Isabel Meuret, Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)Research Chair; e-mail: <[email protected]>

Please submit proposals for panels to:

Prof. Rob Alexander, Brock University (Canada)Program Co-Chair; e-mail: <[email protected]>

Deadline for all submissions: No later than 1 December 2013

For more information regarding the conference or the association, please go to http://www.ialjs.org or contact:

Prof. Bill Reynolds, Ryerson University (Canada)IALJS President; e-mail: <[email protected]>

Prof,. Norman Sims, University of Massachusetts – Amherst (U.S.A.)IALJS First Vice President; e-mail: <[email protected]>

Prof. Isabel Soares, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (Portugal)IALJS Second Vice President; e-mail: <[email protected]>

Prof. David Abrahamson, Northwestern University (U.S.A.)IALJS Secretary; e-mail: <[email protected]>

Prof. Alice Trindade, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (Portugal)IALJS Immediate Past President President; e-mail: <[email protected]>

Prof. John S. Bak, Nancy-Université (France)Founding IALJS President; e-mail: [email protected]>

CALL FOR PAPERS Continued from previous page

Page 8: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 8 LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013

Page 9: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2012 PAGE 9

President Bill Reynolds called the 2013annual business meeting of theInternational Association for LiteraryJournalism Studies to order at 4:40 p.m.Secretary-Treasurer David Abrahamsondistributed the minutes of the 2012 IALJSannual meeting at Ryerson University inToronto. It was moved and seconded toapprove the minutes, and the motion toapprove carried unanimously. Bill thenthanked Maria Lassila-Merisalo of theUniversity of Tampere for her extraordi-narily successful efforts as the host ofIALJS-8. Also in his introductory remarksBill spoke movingly of our gratitude.

David gave the annual treasur-er’s report. The current bank balance is$45,672.55, which includes $21,012.12 ininterest-bearing savings accounts and $15,105.75 in certificates of deposit; pendingaccounts payable include the printing andmailing of the journal and expenses forIALJS-8. The association currently has 124members (down from 133 last year) from26 countries. Forty-two percent are fromthe United States, and 58 percent fromnations other than the U.S.

Research Chair Isabelle Meuretreported that 30 acceptances from 47 sub-missions for IALJS-7, an acceptance rateof 63 percent. Isabelle thanked the 2013jury members for their work, as well asthe members of the Greenberg Prize jury,which awarded the 2013 honor to StacySpaulding of Towson University andAntero Pietila of the Baltimore Sun.Isabelle also presented Holly Schreiber ofIndiana University with the 2013 Prize forthe Best Research Paper by a GraduateStudent, a new IALJS award. In addition,she noted that the IALJS-9 submissiondeadline is 1 December 2013. ProgramChair Rob Alexander reported that sevenpanels (from eight proposed) were pro-grammed this year. He also noted thatorganizing the panels into concurrent ses-sions, some paired with works-in-progress sessions, seemed to work well.In addition, he suggested that we contin-ue to include at least one panel on peda-gogy, and the possibility was raised ofprogramming one panel in French at next

year’s conference in Paris.Awards Chair Isabel Soares explained thework of her committee and thanked itsmembers for their work. She then present-ed two new IALJS awards: the 2013 Prizefor the Best Article in Literary JournalismStudies, the association’s journal, to JuanOrlando Perez Gonzalez of the Universityof Roehampton, and the 2013 Prize for theBest Article in Literary Journalism, theassociation’s newsletter, to Bill Dow of theAmerican University in Paris. She alsoreported that altogether the four awards,including their honoraria and stipends,will cost the association $1,000 each year.The new Publicity Chair Lindsay Mortonof Avondale College (Australia) spokeabout social media possibilities.

Literary Journalism Studies edi-tor John Hartsock reported that the jour-nal’s ninth issue (Vol. 5, No. 1) had beenmailed prior to the conference and thatthe journal’s acceptance rate is a credible33 percent. Associate editors Roberta andMiles Maguire reported they are workingon a new searching interface for the bibli-ography and that they have succeeded inhaving the journal included in the PLoS(formerly ISI) database. In addition,Roberta noted the special Fall 2013 issue(Vol. 5, No. 2) of the journal will focus onAfrican-American literary journalism.Nancy L. Roberts, the LJS book revieweditor, sent word that she is very open tosuggestions for books to review. Davidreported that, with Bill Reynolds’s invalu-able assistance as co-editor, the quarterlynewsletter, Literary Journalism, continuesto prosper. Bill reported that ourIALJS.ORG, webmaster, Nick Jackson, isdoing a superb job.

Graduate Committee ChairTobias Eberwein reported that the break-fast for graduate student members was asuccess. Bill Dow reported that, as IALJS-9 Host Committee Chair, he and theAmerican University in Paris are lookingforward to welcoming the association toFrance next year on 15-17 May 2014. Itwas also reported that Tom Connery hasconfirmed that the University of St.Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota will host

IALJS-10 on 7-9 May 2015.Joint programming was the next

item on the agenda. Rob Alexanderreported the successful IALJS panel at theAmerican Comparative LiteratureAssociation (ACLA) meeting at theUniversity of Toronto in late March enti-tled “Positioning Global LiteraryJournalism” and mentioned there will bea call soon for an IALJS session at nextyear’s ACLA conference in April 2014 atNew York University. It was also reportedthat there will be an all-day IALJS sessionin August 2013 at the Association forEducation in Journalism and MassCommunication (AEJMC) convention inWashington, D.C. organized by JoshRoiland; the theme is “Literary Journa-lism and the Politics of Transparency.”John Bak noted that there will be an IALJSsession at the biennial conference of theEuropean Society for the Study of English(ESSE) in September 2014 in Kosice,Slovakia; its theme will be “LiteraryJournalism: Explaining Second Cities toThemselves.” This is in keeping with theIALJS policy of alternating participationwith ESSE and AEJMC.

Under old business, PublicationsChair Alice Trindade reported that start-ing with the Spring 2014 issue BillReynolds will assume the role of editor ofLJS. Alice also led a round of applausethanking John Hartsock for his superbservice as the founding editor of the jour-nal. There being no new business to bebrought before the annual business meet-ing, Maria Lassila-Merisalo was given onemore warm and enthusiastic ovation forher wonderful work in hosting IALJS-8,and at 5:25 p.m., Bill offered a reminderthat we hope to see everyone in Paris inMay 2014 and then called for a motion ofadjournment, which was moved, second-ed and unanimously approved. ©

Respectfully Submitted,

David Abrahamson, SecretaryInternational Association for Literary Journalism Studies

IALJS ANNUAL BUSINESS MEETINGMinutes from meeting held at IALJS-8 in Tampere, Finland on 17 May 2013.

By David Abrahamson, Northwestern University (U.S.A.)

Page 10: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 10 LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 8 LITERARY JOURNALISM / FALL 2012

Peter Lang Publishing Broadway, New York, NY 10006(800) 770-5264, [email protected]

$46.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-4331-1867-8

Page 11: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013 PAGE 11

This past April, members of IALJSconvened in Toronto for the secondtime in less than a year to hold ses-

sions devoted to literary journalism. Onthe heels of last year’s successful confer-ence at Ryerson University in May 2012,the IALJS sponsored two sessions at the

2013 AmericanComparativeLiteratureAssociation con-ference held at theUniversity ofToronto. Thetheme of thisyear’s ACLA con-ference was“Global Position-ing Systems.”What initiallyappeared to be achallenging rubricfor paper topics,

revealed itself to be a wonderful forumfor the discussion of global literary jour-nalism.

Eight scholars from four differentcountries came together for the two-daymeeting. The paper topics were as diverseas the panelists’ personal geographies.The first day of the conference featuredconference organizer Rob Alexander’s

(Brock University,Canada) paper "De-Mapping theJournalist/SourceRelationship in LiteraryJournalism” examinedSusan Orlean’s connec-tion with The OrchidThief protagonist JohnLaroche through aLacanian lens. FellowCanadian, and IALJSPresident Bill Reynolds(Ryerson University,Canada) discussedToronto-based maga-zines in his paper “View from the Centreof the Universe: Is it NecessarilyNarrow?” His presentation interrogatedthe notion that Toronto-based literaryjournalism is too preoccupied with thecentre and does not represent the wholeof the country. Miki Tanikawa (WasedaUniversity, Japan) presented a longitudi-nal analysis entitled “Growing FeatureContent in Leading U.S. Papers” whichargues that newspapers in the U.S. areincreasingly running longform narrativesover hard news. The session was roundedout with Ignacio Corona’s (Ohio St.University, U.S.A.) paper, “GlobalPositioning Among the Modernista

IALJSOUTREACH

IALJS/ACLA AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTOA successful joint session at the American comparative Literature Association annual meeting.

By Joshua Roiland, Notre Dame University (U.S.A.)

Chroniclers” examined the representationof the Orient in the chronicles of mod-ernistas, such as Gómez Carrillo, Tablada,and Rebolledo.

Day Two of the conference sawPascal Gin (Carleton University, Canada)discuss the selected works of AlbertLondres, Blaise Cendrars, EmmanuelCarrère and François Bon via the poly-semic figure of positioning, which evokespractices of spatialization, rhetoricalstances and a sense of engagement withglobal transformations in his talk “OnLocation: (Global) Positioning and thePerformance of Presence in LiteraryJournalism.” Mileta Roe’s (Bard College atSimon’s Rock, U.S.A.) presented herpaper “Writing What They Know” whichexamined the phenomenon of expert jour-nalism, especially in science writing. Sheexamined the medical school diaries andNew Yorker articles of surgeon AtulGawande. Priscila Gimenez

FOUNDED IN 1827, THE UNIVERSITYOF TORONTO IS CANADA’S PREMIER RESEARCHUNIVERSITY. ABOVE, A CEREMONIALGATE LEADS TO A PLEASANT TREE-LINEDDRIVE, WITH 19TH-CENTURY STREET LIGHTS LENDING A DISTINCTLY EUROPEAN FEEL. THE UNIVERSITY HAS MORE THAN 65,000 UNDERGRADUATESAND 15,000 GRAD STUDENTS. LEFT, WITH ITS PROMINENT TURRETS ANDTOWERS, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE IS PROUD OF THE FACT THAT IT IS THE “FOUNDING COLLEGE” OF THE UNIVERSITY.

Continued on next page

Page 12: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 12 LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013

(Universidade do Estado de São Paulo,Brazil) explored the cultural exchangebetween the Brazilian and French pressesin the 19th century history and the socialcontexts that contributed to creation of aweekly serial Semana Lírica in theBrazilian newspaper Jornal do Commercioin her paper “The Cultural TransferBetween France and Brazil in the Rubricof the Theater Serials.” And Josh Roiland

(University of Notre Dame,U.S.A.) talked about the signifi-cance of California as a touch-stone for Joan Didion’s moralphilosophy in his paper “Morethan a Spot on the Map: TheCultural Geography of JoanDidion’s California.” He arguedthat the golden state instilled andefinable and structured ethicalcode in Didion that remainedconstant even as her personalpolitics and geography haveshifted.

Roiland also introduceda new technology at the confer-

ence, UStream, which is a live broadcast-ing application that will allow IALJS tostream conference proceedings across theworld for those who cannot attend partic-ular conferences. Unfortunately,UStream’s IALJS debut was a bit unsuc-cessful due to the fact that the sessionswere housed in a basement conferenceroom where the wireless signal was tooweak to transmit live video. However,

plans were put in place to use this tech-nology to broadcast IALJS-8 fromTampere, Finland in mid-May. While theconference is in session, viewers can go to<http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ialjs>to watch panel presentations.

Finally, as is the case at all IALJSevents, the highlight of the conferencewas a dinner party that Bill Reynolds andhis wife Laura Lind held for the group intheir Toronto home. Longtime IALJSmembers and new associates spent aleisurely evening getting acquainted overdrinks Reynold’s grilled Korean beefskewers—not a native Torontonian dish,but quite appropriate for a conferencededicated to GPS. ©

ABOVE, U OF T’S FAMOUS THOMAS FISHER RARE BOOK LIBRARY. BELOW, FROM

LEFT: PRISCILA GIMENEZ (UNIVERSIDADE DOESTADO DE SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL),

BILL REYNOLDS (RYERSON UNIVERSITY, CANADA), PASCAL GIN (CARLETON

UNIVERSITY, CANADA), JOSH ROILAND (UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME,

U.S.A.), MILETA ROE (BARD COLLEGE AT SIMON’SROCK, U.S.A.), MIKI TANIKAWA (WASEDA

UNIVERSITY, JAPAN), IGNACIO CORONA’S (OHIOSTATE UNIVERSITY, U.S.A.), AND ROB

ALEXANDER’S (BROCK UNIVERSITY, CANADA).

IALJS/ACLA Continued from previous page

Page 13: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013 PAGE 13

Call for Submissions

Literary Journalism StudiesPublished by the International Association for Literary Journalism Studies

Literary Journalism Studies, a peer-reviewed journal sponsored by the International Association forLiterary Journalism Studies (IALJS), invites submissions of scholarly articles on literary journalism, which isalso known as narrative journalism, narrative nonfiction, literary reportage, reportage literature, NewJournalism and the nonfiction novel, as well as literary nonfiction that emphasizes cultural revelation. The jour-nal is international in scope and seeks submissions on the theory, history and pedagogy of literary journalismthroughout the world. All disciplinary approaches are welcome.

To encourage an international dialogue, the journal is also willing to consider publishing short examples orexcerpts of literary journalism accompanied by a scholarly gloss about a writer not widely known outside his orher country. The example or excerpt must be translated into English. The scholarly gloss must be between 1,500and 2,500 words long and indicate why the example is important in the context of its national culture. Together,both the text and the gloss must not exceed 8,000 words in length. The contributor is responsible for obtainingall copyright permissions, including from the publisher, author and translator as necessary.

E-mail submission (as an MS Word attachment) is mandatory, and submissions should be between 4,000 and8,000 words in length, including notes. A cover page indicating the title of the paper, the author’s name andinstitutional affiliation, and contact information must accompany all submissions. The author’s name shouldnot appear on the required 250-word abstract or on the paper itself, as all submissions will be blind reviewed.All submissions must be in English and follow the Chicago Manual of Style (Humanities). Submissions will beaccepted on an ongoing basis. Contributors of articles selected for publication will receive one copy of the jour-nal. Copyright reverts to the contributor after publication with the provision that should the submission be sub-sequently republished reference is made to initial publication in Literary Journalism Studies. Please e-mailall submissions and/or related queries to:

Bill ReynoldsLiterary Journalism Studies

152 Macdonell Ave.Toronto, Ontario M6R 2A6CANADA<[email protected]>

BOOK REVIEWS: The journal will include a book review section and invites short reviews of 1,000-2,000words on both the scholarship of literary journalism and recent original works of literary journalism that deservegreater recognition among scholars. Book reviews are not blind reviewed but selected by the book review editorbased on merit. Reviewers may suggest book review prospects or write the book review editors for suggestions.Usually reviewers will be responsible for obtaining their respective books. Book reviews and/or related queriesshould be e-mailed to Nancy L. Roberts at <[email protected]>.

Page 14: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 14 LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013

LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013 PAGE 14

The eighth annualconference of theInternationalAssociation forLiterary Journa-lism Studieswrapped up inlate May, and wewere able, aftersome experimen-tation, to ensurethat all of therecorded panelsfrom this confer-ence are nowarchived on our

IALJS UStream page. You can watch themall at the following web address: <http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ialjs>.

You will see the panel title listedabove the video, and, if you click on thevideo, you'll get more information includ-ing the moderator and the panelists.

The IALJS-8 conference was thefirst time we streamed the sessions liveonline, and it was a great success. More

than 450 people worldwide have logged onto watch videos live or view archived pan-els—and the number will surely increase fur-ther.

Hopefully, this will become a staplein our IALJS community and bring morescholars around the world into the associa-tion and our ongoing conversation aboutglobal literary journalism.

Our next conference stream willoccur this August when IALJS sponsors aworkshop made of three consecutive panels.The them will be “Literary Journalism andthe Politics of Transparency,” and the sessionwill be co-sponsored by the Association forEducation in Journalism and MassCommunication (AEJMC) at its annual con-ference in Washington, D.C. We'll send a notewith more information on those sessionswhen the date nears.

Again, for those of you who helpedus test out and finally master the intricaciesof the relatively new “UStream” streamingsoftware, as well as those who were patient

CONFERENCENOTES

A PAIR OF DISCOVERIES AT IALJS-8: VIDEO-STREAMING THE CONFERENCE AND AN UNUSUAL LEARNED JOURNALYou’ll be able to watch the sessions in real time or at your leisure.

By Joshua Roiland, Notre Dame University (U.S.A.)

PICARD TO KEYNOTE CARDIFF CONFERENCEA conference on “The Future ofJournalism: In an Age of Digital Media andEconomic Uncertainty” will be held on 12-13 September 2013 at the Cardiff Schoolof Journalism, Media and Cultural Studiesat Cardiff University in the U.K. The fourthin a series of biennial research-based con-ferences, of special note is the fact thatthe plenary speaker will be Robert Picard,a leading specialist on media economicsand Director of Research at The ReutersInstitute for the Study of Journalism,University of Oxford, UK. In addition, he isthe author and editor of more than 20books including Media Clusters: SpatialAgglomeration and Content Capabilities(2011) and Value Creation and the Futureof News Organizations: Why and HowJournalism Must Change to RemainRelevant in the Twenty–First Century(2010). He also is the editor of the Journalof Media Business Studies and the found-ing editor of the Journal of MediaEconomics. The subject of his plenary lec-ture will be “Funding the Future ofJournalism.” For more information, pleasesee <http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/con-ference/futureofjournalism/>.

MEETING ON MEDIAVALUE IN SPAIN The 7th International Conference onCommunication and Reality will be held inBarcelona on 13-14 June 2013 at theBlanquerna School of CommunicationStudies at Ramon Llull University. Thetheme of the conference will be “Breakingthe Media Value Chain.” The title refers tothe need to explore new directions to bet-ter understand and identify the new inter-dependencies, dynamics and radicalchanges taking place in the publicsphere—a sphere which after all is tanta-mount to the media, the cinema, broad-casting, television, public relations andadvertising. This paradigm is based on thenumbers of readers, viewers and userswhich the mass media can "sell" inexchange for advertising revenue. Due tothe advent of the social media, it can beargued that this value chain has nowentered a critical phase. For more informa-tion, please see http://cicr.blanquerna.url.edu/.

Continued on next page

THIS SCREENSHOTSHOWSWHAT THEUSER INTER-FACE LOOKSLIKE. NOTETHAT ITINCLUDESNOT ONLYTHE SELECT-ED SESSIONBUT ALSO ARIGHT“RAIL” OFOTHER SESSIONSAVAILABLE.AN ADITIONALSCREENSHOT CANBE FOUNDON THE FOLLOWINGPAGE.

Page 15: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013 PAGE 15

SHARP CONFERENCE INU. OF PENNSYLVANIAThe 21st Annual Conference of the Societyfor the History of Authorship, Reading, andPublishing will be held on 18-21 July 2013and the University of Pennsylvania inPhiladelphia. The title of the meeting is“Geographies of the Book,” and the confer-ence will emphasize digital projects relatedto book history and bibliography. These mayinclude research tools, apps and software,bibliographies or databases, corpora ofmedia or texts, digitization initiatives andinteractive interfaces. For more information,please contact the SHARP ProgramCommittee at <[email protected]> or see <http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/lectures/SHARP2013/index.html>.

JOURNALISM HISTORY MEETING IN JULYA conference entitled “RedefiningJournalism in the Era of the Mass Press”will be hosted by the Department ofJournalism and the Centre for the Study ofJournalism and History at the University ofSheffield on 5 July 2013. The focus of themeeting will be two key trajectories arisingfrom the change or stasis in the role per-ceptions of journalism that occurredbetween 1880 and 1920 with the rise of themass press. Specifically, the conferenceaims to discuss how we now define journal-ism at the end of the 19th century from ourcontemporary and comparative perspective.For more information, please see <http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/journalismhistory>.

‘EUROPE AND ITSWORLDS’CONFERENCEIN THE NETHERLANDSThe Faculty of Arts and the Faculty ofPhilosophy,Theology and Religious Studiesat Radboud University Nijmegen in theNetherlands will jointly host an internationalconference on 16-18 October 2013. Thetheme of the meeting is “Europe and itsWorlds: Cultural Mobility in, to and fromEurope.” At the core of this theme is thequestion of how Europe has always con-sisted of different worlds, how it differsfrom the rest of the world, and how itinteracts with other worlds. For more infor-mation, please write to<[email protected].>

WAR, LITER-ATURE ANDTHE ARTS ,A LEARNEDJOURNALPRODUCEDBY THE U.S.AIR FORCEACADEMY,HAS BEENPUBLISHEDFOR MORETHAN TWODECADES;ITS MISSION,TO EXP-LORE THETHE INTER-SECTION OFWAR ANDBOTH FIC-TION ANDNONFIC-TION PROSEAND POETRY.

DISCOVERIES Continued from previous page

with our early efforts, many thanks for yourinterest and support of literary journalismacross the globe.

WLA JOURNALAnother noteworthy item of information thatemerged from the IALJS-8 conference in Maywas a presentation on the existence of aunique learned journal entitled War,Literature and the Arts: An International Journalof the Humanities. Edited and published bythe Department of English and Fine Arts at

the United States Air Force Academy inColorado Sptrings, CO, its raison d’etre isto try to understand the language of warthrough the lens of the humanities. As aresult, it has been a venue for some extra-ordinary literary journalism.

For more information, the semi-annual journal has an on-line edition; theurl is <http://www.wlajournal.com>.For a free print copy, please write to theeditor, <[email protected]>. ©

Page 16: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 16 LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013

NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF EXTENDED ETHNOGRAPHIC IMMERSION Literary journalism pay a heavy price for their art.

By By Mark Massé, Ball State University (U.S.A.)

Literary journalists rely on saturation reporting, extendedethnographic immersion and narrative writing tech-niques, such as characterization, description and drama-

tization to tell true stories that enhance readers’ worldviews.1

Of all the techniques that distinguish a literary journalist froma conventional reporter, extended ethnographic immersion isarguably the most critical for providing opportunities to

secure long-term access, to establishpersonal connections with sources,to conduct in-depth informationgathering and to observe thedescriptive details and personalitytraits necessary to craft a dramaticnarrative. To produce successful lit-erary journalism (also known as lit-erary nonfiction or creative nonfic-tion), it can be argued that thewriter mustachieve twogoals—journal-istic credibilityand artisticmerit. A fact-based narrativeshould both

inform and enlighten the reader.Literary journalists may spend

weeks, months, even years immersed intheir ethnographic study of individuals,groups, communities and institutions. In his book The NewJournalism, Wolfe recalls authors such as Jimmy Breslin andGay Talese who “developed the habit of staying with the peo-ple they were writing about for days at a time, weeks in somecases. They had to gather all the material the conventionaljournalist was after—and then keep going. It seemed all-important to be there when dramatic scenes took place to getthe dialogue, the gestures, the facial expressions, the details ofthe environment. The idea was to give the full objectivedescription, plus something that readers had always had to goto novels and short stories for: namely, the subjective or emo-tional life of the characters.”2

Given the requirement for in-depth reportage, whatis the impact on the literary journalist of such long-termimmersion with stressful, hazardous stories? Physical harm,including death, is a genuine risk facing war correspondents,as reflected in the recent high-profile fatalities of Western jour-nalists covering hostilities in the Middle East. But what aboutthe often-unexplored emotional consequences of spending sig-nificant periods of time exposed to tragedy and trauma? Thenegative (physical and psychological) effects of extendedimmersion on literary journalists working in harm’s way werethe focus of this qualitative research study.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Trauma Journalism: On Deadline in Harm’s Way (Massé,2011) examined the impact of stress, trauma and inter-vention on U.S. and international journalists covering

conflict, crime, disaster, terrorism, war and other tragedies. Thebook included primary research and anecdotal evidence onjournalists affected by their frontline reporting. In- depth pro-files were featured on print and broadcast journalists,researchers and reform advocates in the U.S., Canada, Europe,Australia and Africa. Central to his discussion was an analysisof the two predominant perspectives regarding the role of jour-nalists in covering tragedy and trauma. Traditionalists empha-sized craft attitudes and a responsibility to distance themselvesfrom their stories. News media reformers, educators and otherinnovators represented a second distinctive “school of thought”in the profession, acknowledging a valid role for empathy and

emotional engagement in trauma journal-ism coverage.3

The 2011 text acknowledged thecontributions of former journalists andacademics Simpson and Coté, who in2006 wrote a book for working mediaprofessionals that combined research ontrauma, post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD) and secondary traumatic stresswith recommendations for enhancednewsgathering and writing. The bookincluded detailed first-hand accounts

from journalists who had covered large-scale tragedies such as9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing. The text featured sever-al chapters on journalistic practices (e.g., interviewing, writingprint and broadcast stories) and sections on violence, rape andcovering children. It concluded with guidelines for journalistsand resources on trauma journalism.4

The emotions and experiences of war correspondentswas the focus of a 2006 book by Feinstein, a Canadian psychia-trist. The text described the physical and psychological hazardsfacing these front-line journalists, the damage to their personaland professional lives and how this negative impact is oftenoverlooked or minimized by supervisors, peers and colleagues,or assumed to be an integral part of journalism’s norms, atti-tudes and values (e.g., bravado and denial). Subjects coveredincluded what motivates risk-taking behavior, the stresses fac-ing reporters in the field and the inadequate support systemstypically in place for those who encounter trauma on the job.5

Award-winning CBS and ABC News foreign corre-spondent Laurence reviewed the impact of his years reportingon the Vietnam War in a detailed 2002 autobiography that doc-umented his enduring personal struggles resulting from cover-

Continued on next page

The textconcluded with guidelines

for journalistsand resources for trauma

journalism

REFLECTIVEESSAY

Page 17: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013 PAGE 17

age of tragedy and trauma.6 In his 2002autobiography, Stewart described areporter’s experiences in “hot spots” suchas Kashmir and Kabul, including detailson how he survived a near-fatal shootingand how his life and perspective on warcoverage changed.7 Another vivid first-person account was published by Spinnerin 2006. The female war correspondentand Washington Post staff writer discussedher nine months of reporting fromBaghdad, Fallujah, Kurdistan and AbuGhraib. Spinner noted the daily chal-lenges of life in a war zone, including dis-cussion of the impact of living with vio-lence over an extended time period. Sheaddressed the emotional toll that affectedher, her colleagues and family.8

The narratives of young journal-ists who covered the tragedy of the 9/11attacks in New York City were containedin a 2002 anthology edited by Bull andErman. It featured emotional stories ofcontributors, many of whom were at thescene of the collapse of the World TradeCenter towers, describing the anger,excitement, terror and depression thataccompanied their reporting.9

Although not all trauma journal-ists would be classified as literary journal-ists, their work typically meets the defini-tion of dramatic narrative nonfiction,including complication and conflict (bothexternal, such as crime, disaster and warand internal, such as resultant psychologi-cal issues), compelling characterization(ordinary individuals facing extraordi-nary circumstances) and a narrative arc(how the journalists are affected andchanged as a result of their coverage).

Reporting on tragedy and trau-ma has been integral to the history of lit-erary journalism. Narrative nonfictionauthors have been subjected to physicalharm or injury and have often enduredsignificant emotional consequences, evendisabling psychological effects in theircoverage of disturbing and dangerousstories.

ROLE OF EXTENDED IMMERSION

The literary journalists studied in thispaper (Capote, Didion, Herr andConover) maintained extended

ethnographic immersion in their givensubjects over the course of weeks, monthsand years. In True Stories: A Century ofLiterary Journalism, author Norman Simsdescribes the advantages and the risks ofsuch research by highlighting the meth-ods of literary journalist Ted Conover:

Conover uses techniques fromanthropology, particularly participant obser-vation, to create his portraits of cultural com-munities. … In Newjack, he trained as aNew York State prison guard and worked atSing Sing prison. … Conover’s use of partici-pant observation techniques puts him in a

special category among literary journalists.”10

By living, working and travelingwith the subjects of his journalism, Conovercreates a surface tension between himself andhis subject. He also gains a knowledge that isnot available either to the participant or to theobserver. In Conover’s case, not only has heridden the rails with hobos, migrated across adangerous border with Mexican workers andbeen a guard at Sing Sing, he also followedthe AIDS highway in Africa with truck dri-vers who were the mechanism by which thedisease moved from central Africa to thecoast— not to mention being in Rwanda dur-ing a bloody civil war. ‘I think a degree ofrisk- taking both makes the material richer—you find out things other writers won’tlearn—and it adds excitement to the narra-tive. If we are, after all, writing narrativenonfiction, there will be an interest in thingsgoing wrong. That’s always been my compen-sation when disaster strikes. … But I’m notinsane. I don’t seek out the overloaded ferry

that’s going to sink on its next crossing. Butat the same time I’m not traveling for myamusement as much as to see things thatinterest me and to bear witness to them insome way.’11

Michael Herr, author of the best-selling book (Dispatches) on the VietnamWar, comments on how immersive jour-nalism produces insightful, truthful andempathetic narratives: “Conventionaljournalism could no more reveal this warthan conventional firepower could win it,all it could do was take the most pro-found event of the American decade andturn it into a communications pudding,taking its most obvious, undeniable histo-ry and making it into a secret history. Andthe very best correspondents knew evenmore than that.” He writes that the “bestand the bravest correspondents were alsousually the most compassionate, the oneswho were most in touch with what theywere doing.”12

In his book, Herr describes hisintimate connection to the troops heaccompanied in battle:

All right, yes, it had been a groovebeing a war correspondent, hanging out withthe grunts and getting close to the war, touch-ing it, losing yourself in it and trying yourselfagainst it. I had always wanted that, nevermind why, it had just been a thing of mineand I’d done it; I was in many ways brother tothese poor, tired grunts, I knew what theyknew now, I’d done it and it was really some-thing. … They didn’t always know what tothink about you or what to say to you, they’dsometimes call you ‘Sir’ until you had to begthem to stop, they’d sense the insanity of yourposition as terrified volunteer-reporter and itwould seize them with the giggles and evenrespect.13

They only hated me, hated me theway you’d hate any hopeless fool who wouldput himself through this thing when he hadchoices, any fool who had not more need of hislife than to play with it in this way.”14

A literary journalist’s immersionin his or her story relies on long-termaccess and trust and credibility with

IMMERSION Continued from previous page

Continued on next page

In his book, Herr describes

his intimateconnection to ther troops he

accompanied in battle

Page 18: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 18 LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013

Continued on next page

IMMERSION Continued from previous page

sources. Ted Conover’s intensive partici-pant observation differentiates hismethodology from a more distanced (“flyon the wall”) type of ethnography. Notethe description of Conover’s complexrelationship with his work environmentas a corrections officer in Sing SingPrison, in these excerpts from his bookNewjack:

But I wanted to like it, becausegallery work was the essential job of jailing.Forget running a gate or being an escort ordoing construction supervision or transporta-tion or manning a wall tower—a good robotmight almost do those. The real action was onthe gallery looking after inmates. To do thisjob well you had to be fearless, know how totalk to people, have thick skin and a high tol-erance for stress. Nigro had told us that when-ever prison administrators wanted to knowwhat was really going on in a prison, whatthe mood of the inmates was, they asked thegallery officers. We were like cops on a beat,the guys who knew the local players, the oneswho saw it all.15 But I was also caughtbetween two warring impulses: the incuriositythat made the job easier and an anthropologistor social worker’s fascination with the twistsof life that created a criminal and led him tosuch a place.16

As Sims cites in True Stories,writers such as Michael Herr and JoanDidion were “sending back reports fromthe front lines; they ended up on the psy-chological barricades whether they werein Vietnam [as Herr was] or not, and theirbreakdowns tended to happen on thepages of their journalism.”17

Gerald Clarke, who wrote the1988 biography of Truman Capote,includes similar comments on the psycho-logical impact of the extended (six-year)immersion on Capote: “If he had knownhow long In Cold Blood would take—andwhat it would take out of him—he wouldnever have stopped in Kansas, Trumanlater wrote. He would instead have dri-ven straight through—like a bat out of hell.”18

In the 1980s, Didion chronicledher struggles reporting on the tragic civilwar in El Salvador. Sims describes the

impact on Didion of reporting from a“land of prolonged violent revolution andrepression in the eighties where thou-sands had died and even more had sim-ply ‘disappeared.’” Didion recountedhow after a visit to a morgue where vic-tims’ bodies ended up, threatening uni-formed agents of the military trapped herin her car:

I did not forget the sensation of hav-ing been in a single instant demoralized,undone, humiliated by fear, which is what Imeant when I said that I came to understandEl Salvador the mechanism of terror.19

About fifteen years earlier,Didion had admitted to having been eval-uated at a psychiatric clinic as a person

who “feels deeply that all human effort isforedoomed to failure, a conviction whichseems to push her further into a depen-dent, passive withdrawal.”20

Michael Herr’s self-revelatorywriting in Dispatches, his chronicle of theVietnam War, provides intriguing insightinto the impact of trauma on the immer-sion journalist. In True Stories, Sims quotesHerr: “I was pretty crazy when I cameback. For a long time I was, in fact, verycrazy.”21 Sims explains that Herr returnedfrom Vietnam in 1969 with plans to writehis book. Then he ran into several prob-lems, “not the least of which was thefamous post-Vietnam syndrome.”22

Although he had completedabout two-thirds of his book when hereturned, it took him until 1977 to com-plete the work of literary journalism.During this time, Herr endured “paraly-sis, a ‘massive collapse’ and depression.”He required psychoanalysis to deal with

his post- traumatic stress disorder(PTSD).23 Herr was somewhat unique inpursuing therapy to deal with his PTSD.As author Eric James Schroeder (Vietnam,We’ve All Been There: Interviews withAmerican Writers), has noted: Few peopletalked about war correspondents (such asHerr) suffering from the psychologicaldisability known as PTSD.24

Perhaps the most famous literaryjournalist to suffer long-term disablingeffects of covering tragedy and traumawas Truman Capote, author of the best-selling book In Cold Blood. For six years,Capote was intimately connected to andimmersed in the lives of convicted mur-derers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. Inhis 1988 biography of Capote, GeraldClarke writes:

After In Cold Blood he was nolonger able to summon the energy to performthat magic act (i.e., using his imagination tomanufacture his happiness). Nostalgiadescended into sorrow, and to those who knewhim well he seemed to be in perpetual mourn-ing, overwhelmed by a sense of loss that wasno less keen because he could not say preciselywhat it was that had been taken from him.

Capote’s friend Phyllis Cerf toldbiographer Clarke quite simply: “Henever really recovered from that book.”25

In True Stories, Sims concludes that liter-ary journalists such as:

Capote, Herr and Didion all suffereddifficult personal and psychological reactionsas a result of such intense involvement withthe people and the cultures they were report-ing on. As they researched their stories, theywere not separate from the worlds they wereresearching: they were participants.26

Although it is not possible to bedefinitive about whether literary journal-ists, such as Capote, Didion, Herr orConover suffered psychological setbacksbecause of their empathy, emotionalinvolvement, psychological transference,or any combination of these factors, theiraccounts serve as a cautionary tales forother journalists covering tragedy andtrauma in- depth over extended periods

Perhaps themost famous literary journalist

to suffer long-termdisabling effects of covering tragedy

was Truman Capote

Page 19: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

Continued on next page

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013 PAGE 19

IMMERSION Continued from previous page

of time.METHOD

Statements for analysis were gatheredvia book excerpts from four literaryjournalists (Capote, Didion, Herr and

Conover). These authors were selectedbased on the researcher’s familiarity withtheir work, given his experience as a prac-titioner of literary journalism, a professorof the genre for 15 years and a longtimemember of the International Associationfor Literary Journalism Studies (IALJS). Inaddition, these four authors were dis-cussed by literary journalism historianNorman Sims in his 2007 text, TrueStories.27 All of these literary journalists arenotable for their documented, extendedethnographic immersion.

Capote died in 1984. Two of theauthors (Didion and Herr) are now intheir seventies, although when they werewriting their books (Salvador andDispatches), they were in their forties andtwenties, respectively. Capote was 41when In Cold Blood was published. TedConover, 54, belongs to a generation ofcontemporary literary journalists whocame into prominence decades after the“New Journalists” of the 1960s and 1970s.

Using purposive (non-probabili-ty) sampling, the researcher selectedexcerpts intended to reflect the damagingimpact of extended immersion on the fourauthors. The negative effects were listedin nine categories: Addiction, Anger,Anxiety/Stress, Depression, Family/Inter-personal Problems, Fear of Death/Injury,Illness/Injury, PTSD and Violence.

The study of literary journalistimmersion effects utilized elements of theresearcher’s methodological approachemployed in an exploratory 2009 qualita-tive study that analyzed statements fromin-depth interviews and publishedaccounts of 36 U.S. and international jour-nalists who had covered tragedy and trau-ma. A purposive (non-probability) sampleexamined the motivation for their cover-age, the effects of such coverage on jour-nalists and the coping techniquesemployed by affected journalists, as well

as the lessons for other journalists, theirmedia audiences and communities ofaffected news consumers.28

NEGATIVE EFFECTS

Following the order of the nine cate-gories of negative effects presentedabove, the first such unpleasant out-

come to be considered will be:

1. ADDICTION• Capote: “But Truman did not want tolive without alcohol and drugs [sedatives,cocaine]. Life with them was intolerable,but life without them was unthinkable.”29

“In the hours and days before his death

[on 25 August 1984] he had consumedgreat quantities of drugs: Valium,Dilantin, codeine, Tylenol and two orthree different barbiturates.”30

2. ANGER• Conover: “Something in me sort ofsnapped. All day long I was disrespectedby criminals; I felt that home should bedifferent. I ran up the stairs and pickedhim up by his pajama tops outside herdoor. ‘When I say no, you will listen!’ Iwhispered angrily, giving him a spank,surprising myself. I had never done thatbefore, and it surprised him, too. He burstinto tears. This woke his sister. I was furi-ous, and I ordered her to go back to sleep.She didn’t obey, either. The house wasfilled with sobs. ‘Into your room,’ Iordered my son, and carried him bodilywhen ‘he refused to comply.’ A use-of-force on my own son, I realized themoment after it happened. There were

better ways to handle the situation, Iknew, but none that I seemed capable ofat that time. I asked him to lie down withme in his bed so I could read him anotherbook, and eventually he did. Then heheld on to my arm, kind of tight. I felt likecrying into his shirt, breaking down, sob-bing for a good hour. I turned my headand read the story.”31

“It was an excuse, an evasion, away not to examine the fact that I’d neverbeen meaner or more vulnerable.”32

“There were so many unresolvedangry exchanges in Sing Sing, so muchthat never got settled. How many timeshad I heard an inmate or an officer say,semi-facetiously, ‘I’m gonna set it off!’Light a fuse! Start a little chaos! In somewarped and exaggerated form, it seemedlike the same kind of impulse as gettingwild on a Saturday night, letting off steamafter a week of tension or boredom.”33

“ ‘Conover!’ called Larson,laughing, as I walked madly by. ‘Calmdown! You’re gonna have a heart attack!’If it had been anyone else, he would onlyhave succeeded in pissing me off. But inthat moment, I finally got it. Fuck gettingthe porters out. Fuck writing up one lastMisbehavior Report. Fuck the executiveteam. Given my lame-duck status, none ofit really mattered. I stopped, turnedaround. I took a deep breath and wentback to Larson’s cell, leaned against thebars. A problem I’d had from day one, Iknew, was taking it all too seriously.Perfectionism was unattainable on agallery in B-block. Getting yelled at nowand then—whether by sergeants, otherofficers, or inmates—was just life, espe-cially in Sing Sing.”34

“I thought about my anger andfrustration after I’d been slugged in A-block, my fantasy of the building and itscontents going up in flames.”35

3. ANXIETY/STRESS• Capote: His friend Phyllis Cerf toldbiographer Clarke: “Eventually it [In ColdBlood] began to own him. Emotionally, itbecame something bigger than he could

Working in a prisonchanged Conover’s home life.

He realized that hewas about to deploy use-of-force

on his own son

Page 20: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 20 LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013

handle.”36

“He never really recovered fromthat book. Until then he had been able tocope with all of his problems extremelywell. But it was very destructive for him,especially when those boys wanted himto witness their hanging. I don’t knowwhy he put himself through that, but hedid. He thought that he was tougher thanhe was and that he could take it. But hecouldn’t. That book started the unsettlingof his life. He began to live—I don’tknow— recklessly.”37

“Returning to Long Island inOctober [1978], Truman once again wasparalyzed by anxiety. ‘I’m followed byfear and terror, which hits my chest andthen goes up to my throat,’ he said. ‘Ithink a lot—not just a little, but a lot—about killing myself. I’m obsessed withthe idea of dying, and I wake up hopingthat I will die.”38

• Didion: “These are the details—themodels and colors of armored vehicles,the makes and calibers of weapons, theparticular methods of dismembermentand decapitation used in particularinstances—on which the visitor toSalvador learns immediately to concen-trate, to the exclusion of past or futureconcerns, as in a prolonged amnesiacfugue.”39

• Conover: “I disclosed what I was doingto only a handful of people. Most of myfriends had no idea. I’d never done thatbefore, and I hope I don’t have to do itagain. Newjack helped me understandwhy so many undercover narcotics agentsget divorced, go to jail, and seem to havetheir lives fall apart: Secrecy is destruc-tive. Only a critically important story canjustify it. (Of course, reporters rarely dis-close everything. If reporters always saidexactly why they were calling, theywould rarely get the information theyneed.)”40

“When the recruit arrives he isplunged into an alien environment, and isenveloped in the situation 24 hours a daywithout relief. He is stunned, dazed andfrightened. The severity of shock isreflected in 17-hydroxycortico-steroid lev-

els comparable to those in schizophrenicpatients in inpatient psychosis, whichexceed levels in other stressful situations.The recruit receives little, or erroneousinformation about what to expect, whichtends to maintain his anxiety.”41

“That was the first of the thou-sand dodges and sorry-I-can’t-talk-about-its I’d have to make over the next thirtyor so months as my life split into twoparts, neither of which could know aboutthe other.”42

“Prison got into your skin, orunder it. If you stayed long enough, someof it probably seeped into your soul. … Ihad thought that being only a visitor tothe world of corrections, I would be

immune to this syndrome. My whole pro-ject, after all, was to keep one foot in andthe other out, to be self-consciously awarethat what I was doing was an experience,not my life. It’s called participant observa-tion, this research method of anthropolo-gy. Every afternoon upon arriving home, Isneaked in the back door so that my twoyoung kids wouldn’t hear me and plant-ed myself in front of the computer for anhour or so, taking notes and settling intomy real skin. I breathed in the smell of thebooks on my shelves and counted thedays until I had a weekend off, countedthe weeks until I could take a vacation,counted the months until the year wasover.”43

4. DEPRESSION• Capote: Biographer Gerald Clarkewrites: “After In Cold Blood he was nolonger able to summon the energy to per-form that magic act (i.e., using his imagi-

nation to manufacture his happiness).Nostalgia descended into sorrow, and tothose who knew him well he seemed tobe in perpetual mourning, overwhelmedby a sense of loss that was no less keenbecause he could not say precisely what itwas that had been taken from him.”44

• Didion: “In 1979, Didion provided thebest example of the conundrum faced bywriters whose personal histories informtheir journalism. In the introduction toher book The White Album, named afterthe famous Beatles album, she recountedhow she felt, beginning in about 1966during the early years of the NewJournalism era and running through 1968,a time when she kept house, wrote arti-cles and was named ‘a woman of theyear.’ Then she suffered ‘an attack of ver-tigo, nausea and a feeling that she wasgoing to pass out’ and was evaluated at apsychiatric clinic as a person who ‘feelsdeeply that all human effort is fore-doomed to failure, a conviction whichseems to push her further into a depen-dent, passive withdrawal.’ It was a worldof protests, race riots, police riots, culturalupheaval, Black Panthers dying in policeraids, war, assassinations, missing people,body counts and political controversy, aworld where the center could not hold.‘By way of comment,’ Didion said, ‘I offeronly that an attack of vertigo and nauseadoes not now seem to me an inappropri-ate response to the summer of 1968.’ ”45

• Herr: “Back in the World now, and a lotof us aren’t making it. … We came to fearsomething more complicated than death,annihilation less final but more complete,and we got out. We got out and becamelike everyone else who has been througha war: changed, enlarged and (somethings are expensive to say) incomplete.… I think that Vietnam was what we hadinstead of happy childhood.”46

“They were always telling youthat you mustn’t forget the dead, andthey were always telling you that youshouldn’t let yourself think about themtoo much. You couldn’t remain effective

IMMERSION Continued from previous page

Continued on next page

Didion sufferedan attack of vertigo, nausea

and the feelingshe was going to pass out.

Pscyhiatry responded.

Page 21: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013 PAGE 21

as a soldier or reporter if you got all hungup on the dead, fell into patterns of mor-bid sensitivity, entered perpetual mourn-ing. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ people wouldsay, but I never did, actually it got person-al and went the other way.”47

5. FAMILY/INTERPERSONAL PROBLEMS• Conover: “But inside is a bad place forstress. This is very obvious in retrospect,but it wasn’t obvious on those nights afterwe got the kids to bed. I wouldn’t volun-teer details of my day, and when she[wife, Margot] tried to update me on herlife, often I would just tune her out. Ifound myself impatient in a way I could-n’t explain. I didn’t want to hear aboutthe minutiae of her day. There wasn’troom in my brain for what seemed trivial-ities. Black moods would come out ofnowhere and envelop me. I tried to hidethem by acting civil, but ‘civil’ came off aschilly and robotic. One day we were dri-ving back to the city from a visit withfriends upstate. I’d had the weekend offfor a change—a chance to relax, be withMargot and the kids. But in the middle ofthe Saw Mill River Parkway, with all ofthem asleep, I was seized with the closestthing I’ve ever had to a panic attack.What if I got assigned to R-and-W tomor-row? I thought. The feeling of dread wasa dense cloud that blocked my view ofeverything around me. I slowed down,tried to repress it. I’d been away from R-and-W for a couple of weeks now. Therewas no reason Holmes would stick meover there again. The odds were ten toone, twenty to one. I turned on the radio,tried listening to the news.”48

“I had no time or patience any-more for any of them, her or the kids, shecharged. I had never been in a harder sit-uation in my life, I responded. Couldn’tshe see? There was no room in my headfor it! You’re not just oblivious, sheresponded, you’re ridiculously rigid andprickly. And with that, I got hostile. Youhave no idea, I answered, no idea whatthis is like. And I thought, how dare shecomplain when I’m working so hard tohold myself together, to maintain a calm

exterior? Maybe that’s because you don’ttell me what it’s like! She shot back. Fourmore months, I answered wearily. Can wejust hang on four more months and thenit will be over. Can you deal with it forthat long?”49

6. FEAR OF DEATH/INJURY• Didion: “In her reports from ElSalvador, a land of prolonged violent rev-olution and repression in the eightieswhere thousands had died and even morehad simply ‘disappeared,’ she talkedabout how it felt to be her in this placeand time. She visited a notorious bodydump, where she watched a womanlearning how to drive a Toyota pickup

truck—the kind of vehicle often used tosecretly drop bodies off a cliff. After avisit to the morgue, where such bodiesended up, threatening uniformed agentsof the military trapped her in a car. Sittingwith her husband on the porch of aMexican restaurant one night, she wasunnerved by the sight of armed men onthe street and the realization that the can-dle on the table cast the only pool of lighton the street, making them an easy target.They resisted blowing it out. ‘Nothingcame of this,’ she said, ‘but I did not for-get the sensation of having been in a sin-gle instant demoralized, undone, humili-ated by fear, which is what I meant whenI said that I came to understand in ElSalvador the mechanism of terror.’”50

“Terror is the given of the place.Black-and-white police cars cruise inpairs, each with the barrel of a rifleextending from an open window. …Every morning El Diario de Hoy and La

Prensa Grafica carry cautionary stories. Amother and her two sons hacked to deathin their beds by eight desconocidos,unknown men. The same morning’spaper: the unidentified body of a youngman, strangled, found on the shoulder ofthe road. Same morning, different story:the unidentified bodies of three youngmen, found on another road, their facespartially destroyed by bayonets, one facecarved to represent a cross.”51

“During the week before I flewdown to El Salvador a Salvadoran womanwho works for my husband and me inLos Angeles gave me repeated instruc-tions about what we must and must notdo. We must not go out at night. We muststay off the street whenever possible. Wemust never ride in buses or taxis, neverleave the capital, never imagine that ourpassports would protect us. We must noteven consider the hotel a safe place: peo-ple were killed in hotels. She spoke withconsiderable vehemence, because two ofher brothers had been killed in Salvadorin August of 1981, in their beds. Thethroats of both brothers had beenslashed.”52

“Any situation can turn to terror.The most ordinary errand can go bad.Among Americans in El Salvador there isan endemic apprehension of danger in theapparently benign.”53

• Herr: “ ‘This spring will be the worst ofthe war, the most savage, the bloodiesttime of all, but no one here will admit it,’” he said on January 7, 1968. His next let-ter to [Esquire editor Harold] Hayes camea month later from the formerly beautifulcity of Hué about a week after the start ofthe Tet Offensive, when the Viet Cong andNorth Vietnamese attacked major citiesand captured the American embassy inSaigon. Herr asked Hayes to hold the arti-cles he had sent for publication; every-thing had changed. The most experiencedcorrespondents were ‘shattered by theoffensive,’ and Herr had not expected itdespite his prediction of a bloody spring.‘I lost my non-combatant status in the

IMMERSION Continued from previous page

She visiteda notorious body dump,

where shewatched a woman learning how

to drive a pickup truck

Continued on next page

Page 22: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 22 LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013

white-shirts and you would get in trou-ble; make a mistake around the inmatesand you might get hurt.”58

7. ILLNESS/INJURY• Capote: In Sims’s True Stories, literaryjournalist Madeleine Blais notes: “Capotesaid somewhere that he felt writing thebook, or more precisely, living with thedetails of that story so intimately for solong, catapulted him into ill health andled to the insomnia and substance abusethat dogged him during his final years. …In the end, the author (Capote) may havedriven himself nearly insane with thequestion: what purpose is served by mak-ing art out of something so vile?”59

8. PTSD• Capote: His friend Phyllis Cerf toldbiographer Clarke: “Eventually it [In ColdBlood] began to own him. Emotionally, itbecame something bigger than he couldhandle.”60

“He never really recovered fromthat book. Until then he had been able tocope with all of his problems extremelywell. But it was very destructive for him,especially when those boys wanted himto witness their hanging. I don’t knowwhy he put himself through that, but hedid. He thought that he was tougher thanhe was and that he could take it. But hecouldn’t. That book started the unsettlingof his life. He began to live—I don’tknow— recklessly.”61

• Herr: “The way Herr described himselfin the beginning of Dispatches—‘Day one,if anything could have penetrated thatfirst innocence I might have taken thenext plane out. Out absolutely.’—was not

Delta on the first day of the offensive,during an ambush, and I have passedthrough so many decimated towns andcities that they get all mixed up in mymind,’ he wrote.”54

“You could be in the most pro-tected space in Vietnam and still knowthat your safety was provisional, thatearly death, blindness, loss of legs, armsor balls, major and lasting disfigure-ment—the whole rotten deal—couldcome in on the freaky-fluky as easily as inthe so-called expected ways, you heard somany of those stories it was a wonderanyone was left alive to die in firefightsand mortar-rocket attacks.”55

“You could die in a suddenblood-burning crunch as your chopper hitthe ground like dead weight, you couldfly apart so that your pieces would neverbe gathered, you could take one neatround in the lung and go out hearingonly the bubble of the last few breaths,you could die in the last stage of malariawith that faint tapping in your ears, andthat could happen to you after months offirefights and rockets and machine guns.… You could be shot, mined, grenaded,rocketed, mortared, sniped at, blown upand away so that your leavings had to bedropped into a sagging poncho and car-ried to Graves Registration, that’s all shewrote. It was almost marvelous.”56

• Conover: Writing about his fellowprison gudards, “In the culture of COs[corrections officers], when someone actsdishonorably, he or she ‘meets you in theparking lot.’ That’s shorthand for an after-work beating. Almost every day I feared Iwould be found out and met in the park-ing lot. I didn’t have a book contractwhile I worked in the prison, nor did Iwant one. If I ended up in the parking lot,I didn’t want to be responsible for a bookthat I couldn’t produce.”57

“Sing Sing was a world of adren-aline and aggression to us new officers. Itwas an experience of living with fear—fear of inmates, as individuals and as amob, and fear of our own capacity to fuckup. We were sandwiched between twogroups: Make a mistake around the

an overly dramatized fictionalization, buta realistic portrait of a guy going crazy. …‘I was pretty crazy when I came back,’Herr told an interviewer. “For a long timeI was, in fact, very crazy.’ Herr returnedfrom Vietnam in 1969 with plans to writehis book. Then he ran into several prob-lems, ‘not the least of which was thefamous post-Vietnam syndrome,’ Herrlater said. He had two-thirds of the bookdone when he returned, and yet it tookhim until 1977—a time in which heendured paralysis, ‘massive collapse,’depression and psychoanalysis—to finishit. Posttraumatic stress disorder amongVietnam veterans was not well treated,although many suffered from it and asmany as 20 percent of Iraq War veteransdo as well. Few talked about war corre-spondents suffering from the same psy-chological disability.”62

9. VIOLENCE• Conover: “Deadly physical force wasokay to use in three instances: to preventan escape; in self- defense; or to preventarson. Arson? ‘Arson is serious becausean inmate could burn a whole buildingdown, maybe one with people in it,’ saidKirkley. Well, yes. But it was hard toimagine the scenario. An inmate, perhapssurrounded by empty gas cans stoppingto light a match. ‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’ wecould yell. And if he didn’t stop, we couldkill him.”63

“In other words, between a quar-ter and a third of the inmates had killedsomebody. Other violent felons had com-mitted rape (93) or sodomy (38) or a vari-ety of crimes including robbery, assault,kidnapping, burglary and arson.”64

“You feel it along the wallsinside, hard like a blow to the head; see iton the walls outside, thick, blank andodorless; smell it in the air that assaultsyour face in certain tunnels, a stale andacrid taste of male anger, resentment andboredom.”65

“My take on it, working in aplace where physical confrontation wasalways possible, was that most men,

I waspretty crazy when I came

back. For a long time I was, in fact,

very crazy

Continued on next page

IMMERSION Continued from previous page

Page 23: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013 PAGE 23

meeting other men, instantly asked them-selves: Could I beat him in a fight.”66

“Violence and the potential forviolence were a stress on inmates and offi-cers, but not on all of them and not all thetime. There were moments when, due tothe constant tension of prison life and thegeneral lack of catharsis, violence and thepotential for violence became a thrill. Ithad been a long, hot summer in B-block—a long, low wave of attacks and reprisalsand then lockdown to let everything cooloff. Following almost every series of inci-dents, officers would search the yard, thegym and other places inmates congregat-ed and prepared for battle, looking forweapons. Usually, we would find scoresof them—in trash cans, under rocks, onledges, or just beneath the dirt. Sometimesour efforts seemed to forestall the nextmove, sometimes not.”67

DISCUSSION

The negative effects of extendedimmersion on the four literary jour-nalists studied depended on a vari-

ety of factors, including the duration,proximity and level of participation inregard to conditions threatening one’shealth, safety and welfare. Demographicissues, such as age (as noted in Method)and gender, did not appear to affect theintensity of feelings nor the documentedphysical or psychological impact of long-term coverage. Joan Didion, Michael Herand Ted Conover were at greatest risk ofphysical/psychological harm (primarytrauma effects) when researching theirstories documented in this study. TrumanCapote was at the least risk of physicalinjury, given the details of his six years ofresearch.

Psychological trauma (includingvicarious or secondary traumatization) isdependent on a person’s early life experi-ences, education and professional train-ing, mental/spiritual strength and indi-vidual resilience, personality and othercharacter traits. Each of the authors mani-fested varying levels of anxiety/stress,fear and depressive tendencies. Joan

Didion discussed that several years priorto going to El Salvador during the dan-gerous period in the early 1980s, she hadbeen evaluated at a psychiatric clinic asa person who “feels deeply that allhuman effort is foredoomed to failure, aconviction which seems to push her fur-ther into a dependent, passive withdraw-al.”68

In Capote’s case, the ongoingstress of spending six years covering bru-tal murders allegedly led him to sub-stance abuse and a premature death.Joan Didion, Michael Herr and TedConover disclosed their feelings of fearand intimidation, given the demands oftheir story subjects. Didion and Herr dis-

cussed their concerns about being serious-ly injured or even killed while on assign-ment in El Salvador and Vietnam, respec-tively. Similarly, Ted Conover chronicledhis ever-present awareness of the risks ofbeing assaulted and fatally injured whileworking as a corrections officer in the vio-lent subculture of Sing Sing Prison.Conover wrote about his fears not only ofbeing hurt but also of losing control andinjuring others. He discussed his angerand hostility on and off the job and thefamily/interpersonal problems caused byhis demanding immersive work at theprison.

Truman Capote and MichaelHerr were very forthcoming about theirpsychological problems that resulted fromtheir extended immersion in their stories.Capote’s friends and colleagues also dis-cussed his significant physical and emo-tional decline in biographies, such asGerald Clarke’s Capote.

Michael Herr’s disclosure inDispatches of his Post-Traumatic StressDisorder (PTSD) after years on thefrontlines in the Vietnam War wasremarkably prescient and a precursorof revelations of military personnel,police, firefighters and other firstresponders much later in the twenty-first century. By commenting on hismental health problems—“I was prettycrazy when I came back.…For a longtime I was, in fact, very crazy”69—andhis efforts to address those issues withpsychoanalysis in the 1970s, Herr’srevelations were rare for any individ-ual in that era, much less a journalistworking in a profession that prideditself on stoicism and distanced objec-tivity.

This type of commentarywould be praised decades later bynews media reformers in 2012, whotoday advocate that journalists receiveproactive hostile environment trainingand proper safety precautions. Centralto this reform effort, urging a “cultureof caring” for journalists and theirsources, is an appeal to those affectedby trauma to discuss their emotionalreactions and to seek intervention(e.g., counseling) when and whereneeded. The study of these fournotable literary journalists and theirreactions to the rigors of their workprovides additional, timely evidenceof the risks and hazards of coveringtragedy and trauma.

FUTURE STUDY

As noted at the outset, this qual-itative research focused on thenegative impact of extended

ethnographic immersion on four liter-ary journalists. The positive effects ofin- depth reporting, such as friend-ship, personal and professionalgrowth and productivity were not dis-cussed in this study. Future researchcould compare and contrast positive

Some are very forthcomingabout their

psychological problems thatresulting from their

extended immersion in their stories.

Continued on next page

IMMERSION Continued from previous page

Page 24: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 24 LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013

and negative effects of long-term access tochallenging journalistic subjects.

Another limitation of this studyis that purposive sampling was employedin the selection of the four literary journal-ists and excerpts of their work. Differentresults may be derived from future analy-sis of published accounts of other narra-tive nonfiction authors.

Other suggestions for futurestudy include in-depth interviews with lit-erary journalists to explore not only theeffects of extended immersion but otherfactors including the motivation for suchassignments, coping techniques and rec-ommendations for future immersivereporting.

Also, the use of standardizedsurvey questions might provide addition-al data to enhance the body of knowledgeon the impact of extended ethnographicimmersion in covering tragic and trau-matic literary journalism stories. ©

ENDNOTES

1. Mark Massé, “Literary Journalism:Learning the Basics,” Writer’sDigest, March 2002, 28-30.2. Tom Wolfe, E. W. Johnson, editors, TheNew Journalism (New York: Harper &Row, 1973), 21.3. Mark H. Massé, Trauma Journalism: OnDeadline in Harm’s Way (New York:Continuum International PublishingGroup, 2011).4. Roger Simpson and William Coté,Covering Violence: A Guide to EthicalReporting About Victims and Trauma (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 2006), x-xi.5. Anthony Feinstein, Journalists Under Fire(Baltimore: John HopkinsUniversity Press, 2006).6. John Laurence, The Cat From Hue´: AVietnam War Story (New York: PublicAffairs, Perseus Books Group, 2002).7. Ian Stewart, Ambushed: A War Reporter’sLife on the Line (New York: AlgonquinBooks, 2002).8. Jackie Spinner, Tell Them I Didn’t Cry: AYoung Journalist’s Story of Joy, Loss and

Survival in Iraq (New York: Scribner,2006).9. Chris Bull and Sam Erman, eds., AtGround Zero: 25 Stories From YoungReporters Who Were There (New York:Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002).10. Norman Sims, True Stories: A Centuryof Literary Journalism (Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 2007),306-7.11. Ibid, 307-8.12. Michael Herr, Dispatches (New York:Avon Books, 1978), 234.13. Ibid, 220.14. Ibid, 222.15. Ibid, 219.16. Ibid, 221.

17. Norman Sims, True Stories: A Centuryof Literary Journalism (Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 2007),247.18. Gerald Clarke, Capote: A Biography(New York: Simon & Schuster,1988), 548.19. Norman Sims, True Stories: A Century ofLiterary Journalism (Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 2007),254-55.20. Ibid, 257.21. Ibid, 252.22. Ibid, 252.23. Ibid, 252.24. Eric James Schroeder, Vietnam, We’veAll Been There: Interviews withAmerican Writers (Westport, CT: Praeger,1992), 40.25. Gerald Clarke, Capote: A Biography(New York: Simon & Schuster,

Further researchcould compare and contrast

the positive andnegative effects of challenging

assignments

IMMERSION Continued from previous page

Continued on next page

AWARDS COMMITTEE’S2013 RESOLUTION

The IALJS AwardsCommittee, deliber-ating on an annualbudget of $1,000,decided that theunderlying objectivewould be to high-light the bestresearch on literaryjournalism producedin the course of ayear and made pub-lic through the offi-cial channels ofIALJS: the annual

conference, Literary Journalism Studies andthe quarterly newsletter of the association.The committee’s conclusions are a first stepin the recognition of the success of our field ofstudy, as well as of the association itself.Therefore, it has been duly decided and con-firmed by the IALJS Executive Committe that:• Each year’s GGrreeeennbbeerrgg PPrriizzee winner will beoffered the opportunity to publish their paperin Literary Journalism Studies (upon comply-ing to make the necessary revisions suggest-ed by the journal’s editor). The winner will alsoreceive a one-year waiver of the IALJS mem-bership fee and the conference costs pertain-ing to registration, Breakfast for Your Thoughtsand the Conference Banquet plus an honorari-um of $100. The value of this award isapproximately $350.• A BBeesstt PPaappeerr bbyy aa GGrraadduuaattee SSttuuddeenntt prizewill be awarded at each annual conference.The winner will receive a one-year waiver ofthe IALJS membership fee and the conferencecosts pertaining to registration and theConference Banquet plus a research stipendof $260. The value of this award is approxi-mately $350.• The best articles published each year inLiterary Journalism Studies and the IALJSnewsletter, Literary Journalism, will alsoreceive the association’s recognition. Therespective editors will nominate the best three(3) articles published in a calendar year, sub-mitting them to the Awards Committee whichwill select the Best Journal Article and BestNewsletter winner. (Note: The Greenberg Prizewinner cannot be nominated). The winner ofthe BBeesstt JJoouurrnnaall AArrttiiccllee award will receive a$250 honorarium. The winner of the BBeessttNNeewwsslleetttteerr AArrttiiccllee award will receive a one-year waiver of the IALJS membership fee. ©

IALJSIAWARDS

Page 25: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013 PAGE 25

1988), 402.26. Norman Sims, True Stories: A Century ofLiterary Journalism (Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 2007),257.27. Ibid.28. Mark H. Massé, “On Deadline inHarm’s Way: A Qualitative Study ofTrauma Journalists,” AEJMC Convention,August 2009.29. Gerald Clarke, Capote: A Biography(New York: Simon & Schuster,1988), 533.30. Ibid, 546.31. Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding SingSing (New York: Random House, 2000),244.32. Ibid, 245.33. Ibid, 276.34. Ibid, 301-2.35. Ibid, 309.36. Gerald Clarke, Capote: A Biography(New York: Simon & Schuster,1988), 341.37. Ibid, 397. (Note: These excerpts alsoused in “Section 8. PTSD.” Not consid-ered mutually exclusive as a negativeeffect of extended ethnographic immer-sion.)38. Ibid, 515.39. Joan Didion, Salvador (New York:Vintage Books, 1983), 14.40. Mark Kramer and Wendy Call, edi-tors, Telling True Stories (New York:Penguin Group, 2007), 37.41. Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding SingSing (New York: Random House, 2000),12.42. Ibid, 14.43. Ibid, 243.44. Gerald Clarke, Capote: A Biography(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 402.45. Norman Sims, True Stories: A Centuryof Literary Journalism (Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 2007),256-7.46. Michael Herr, Dispatches (New York:Avon Books, 1978), 260-1.47. Ibid, 270.48. Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding SingSing (New York: Random House, 2000),246-7.49. Ibid, 247.

50. Norman Sims, True Stories: A Centuryof Literary Journalism (Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 2007),254-5.51. Joan Didion, Salvador (New York:Vintage Books, 1983), 14-15.52. Ibid, 77.53. Ibid, 105.54. Norman Sims, True Stories: A Centuryof Literary Journalism (Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 2007),248.55. Michael Herr, Dispatches (New York:Avon Books, 1978), 13.56. Ibid, 143.57. Mark Kramer and Wendy Call, edi-tors, Telling True Stories (New York:Penguin Group, 2007), 38.58. Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding SingSing (New York: Random House, 2000),95.59. Norman Sims, True Stories: A Centuryof Literary Journalism (Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 2007),241.60. Gerald Clarke, Capote: A Biography(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 341.61. Ibid, 397.62. Norman Sims, True Stories: A Centuryof Literary Journalism (Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 2007),242.63. Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding SingSing (New York: Random House, 2000),32.64. Ibid, 61.65. Ibid, 171.66. Ibid, 247.67. Ibid, 275.68. Norman Sims, True Stories: A Century ofLiterary Journalism (Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 2007), 257.69. Ibid, 252.

EDITOR’S NOTE

The Kindle edition of Mark Massé’s newnovel, Whatever Comes, an Irish-Americanauthor's sentimental fool's journey to findlove and success in 1970s Cleveland, hasbeen recently published. The paperbackedition was published on 1 June 2013.

IMMERSION Continued from previous page TEACHING TIPS

“I don’t like repetition.” TheArgentine editor made a dramat-ic pause, looked at the other par-ticipants and me and askedrhetorically: “Isn’t this why weare all journalists?”

I believe that if we learnhow to trace the road back tohow and why we remembersome things and forget others,we might learn how to becomememorable writers.

And then I repeat a les-son the great Columbia professorSig Gissler used to say: “Whenyou come back from reporting,try sitting and writing the leadbefore opening your notebook.”It makes sense: if you have toread your notes in order toremember what you have justbeen told, how can you expectyour article to be memorable?

By the end of that firstclass, the students have all spo-ken in class, even the shyest. Andthey all know something abouttheir mates, and have learned tolisten to others. Who knowswhich stories I will hear nextyear, and which ones the newstudents will remember? I will gointo the classroom withoutknowing how it will end. That isperhaps one of the reasons why Iteach narrative journalism. ©

BOOK AND PUBLISHINGMEETING IN SEPTEMBERThe Eleventh International Conference onBooks and Publishing will be held 26-27September 2013 at the University LibraryRegensburg—the largest academic libraryin the region and is an established leader indigitalization and database information sys-tems—at Universitat Regensburg inRegensburg, Germany. This interdisciplinaryconference will bring together academicand practice-based scholars, includinginternational lecturers, researchers, teach-ers, leaders and practitioners. For moreinformation, please see <http://booksandpublishing.com/the-conference>.

Continued from Page 30

Page 26: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 26 LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013

Page 27: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013 PAGE 27

Please fill out form and return (by mail, fax or scanned e-mail attachment) with dues payment to address below.

Name _______________________________________________________ Title (Dr., Prof., Mr., Ms., Mrs., Miss) _____________

University_________________________________________________________________________________________________

School/Department _________________________________________________________________________________________

Work address (street, city, state/province, country) ________________________________________________________________

Home address (street, city, state/province, country) ________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Phone (include intl. code) Home ________________________ Work ________________________ Cell _____________________

Fax phone _____________________ E-mail address ______________________________________________________________

Area(s) of teaching/research interest ___________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Membership Categories: The annual IALJS membership coincides with the calendar year (no pro-rating is available). Membersreceive the Literary Journalism newsletter, the Literary Journalism Studies journal, all IALJS announcements and conference CFPs.

Please check category: _____ US$ 50: Regular Member (Faculty member)_____ US$ 50: Associate Member (Professional member)_____ US$ 25: Student Member (Master or Doctoral level)_____ US$ 25: Retired Faculty Member_____ US$100: Sponsoring Member (to support the IALJS general operating fund)

Please Note: Because your IALJS membership dues are apportioned to various publication accounts, as well as for operating expenses,the U.S. Postal Service requires that you sign off on this procedure. Please sign below.

Signature ____________________________________________________________ Date ______________________________

PAYMENT METHODS: PayPal/Credit Cards or Check:

1. PayPal and Credit Cards:

Payments may be made via PayPal (and credit cards). Please see “Membership Payments” at http://www.ialjs.org. Please also faxcompleted form (above) to Bill Reynolds, IALJS Treasurer, School of Journalism, Ryerson University: +01-416-979-5216.

2. Make Check Payable, in U.S. Funds only, to “IALJS”; please mail check with completed form to:

Bill Reynolds, IALJS PresidentSchool of Journalism, Ryerson University350 Victoria StreetToronto, OntarioCANADA M5B 2K3

2013 IALJS Membership Form

Page 28: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 28 LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

IALJS OFFICERS AND CHAIRS, 2012-2014

PPRREESS IIDDEENNTTBi l l Reyno ldsRyerson Un ivers i t ySchoo l o f Journa l i sm, 350 V ic to r ia S t .Toronto , Ontar io M5B 2K3CANADAw/+1-416-979-5000 x6294, h/+1-416-535-0892reyno [email protected]

FFIIRRSSTT VVIICCEE PPRREESS IIDDEENNTTNorman S imsUnivers i t y o f Massachuset ts , Amhers tCommonwea l th Honors Co l legeAmhers t , MA 01003U.S.A.w/+1-413-545-5929, h/+1-413-774-2970, fax/+1-413-545-3880 s ims@honors .umass.edu

SSEECCOONNDD VVIICCEE PPRREESS IIDDEENNTTIsabe l SoaresTechn ica l Un ivers i t y L isbonIns t i tu to Super io r de C iênc ias Soc ia is e Po l í t i casPó lo Un ivers i tá r io do A l to da A juda, Rua A lmer indo Lessa1300-663 L isboaPORTUGALw/[email protected] t l .p t

SSEECCRREETTAARRYY--TTRREEAASSUURREERRDav id AbrahamsonNor thwestern Un ivers i t yMed i l l Schoo l o f Journa l i sm, 1845 Sher idan Rd.Evanston, IL 60208U.S.A.w/+1-847-467-4159, h/+1-847-332-2223, fax/+1-847-332-1088d-abrahamson@nor thwestern .edu

CCHHAAIIRR,, RREESSEEAARRCCHH CCOOMMMMIITTTTEEEEIsabe l le Meure tUn ivers i té L ib re de Bruxe l lesCampus du So lbosch, ULB CP123, avenue F.D. Rooseve l t 501050 Bruxe l lesBELGIUMw/+32- (0 )2-650-4061, fax/+32- (0 )2-650-2450imeure t@ulb .ac .be

CCHHAAIIRR,, PPRROOGGRRAAMM CCOOMMMMIITTTTEEEERob A lexanderBrock Un ivers i t yDepar tment o f Eng l i sh Languages and L i te ra tureSt . Ca thar ines , Ontar io L2S 3A1CANADAw/+905-688-5550 x3886ra [email protected]

CCHHAAIIRR,, PPUUBBLL IICC IITTYY CCOOMMMMIITTTTEEEEL indsay Mor tonAvonda le Co l legeDepar tment o f Humani t ies & Creat i ve Ar tsCooranbong, New South Wales 2265AUSTRALIAFax/+61- (02)-4980-2118l indsay.mor ton@avonda le .edu.au

CCHHAAIIRR,, EESSSSEE OORRGGAANNIIZZIINNGG CCOOMMMMIITTTTEEEEJohn BakUn ivers i té de Lor ra ineCent re de Té lé-ense ignement Un ivers i ta i re (CTU)42-44, avenue de la L ibera t ion , B.P. 3397 54015 Nancy FRANCEw/+33- (0 )383-968-448, h/+33- (0 )383-261-476, fax/+33- (0 )383-968-449john.bak@univ-nancy2. f r

CCHHAAIIRR,, AAEEJJMMCC OORRGGAANNIIZZIINNGG CCOOMMMMIITTTTEEEEJoshua Ro i landUn ivers i t y o f Not re Dame

Depatment o f Amer ican Stud iesNot re Dame, IN 46556 U.S.A.h/+1-314-550-9156j ro i [email protected]

CCOO--CCHHAAIIRRSS,, CCOONNFFEERREENNCCEE PPLLAANNNNIINNGG CCOOMMMMIITTTTEEEEHi lde van Be l leKatho l ieke Un ivers i te i t LeuvenThomas More Un ivers i t y Co l lege AntwerpS in t-Andr iess t raa t 2 / 2000 AntwerpBELGIUMw/+32-3-206-0491hi lde .vanbe l le@less ius .eu

Dav id AbrahamsonNor thwestern Un ivers i t yMed i l l Schoo l o f Journa l i sm, 1845 Sher idan Rd.Evanston, IL 60208U.S.A.w/+1-847-467-4159, h/+1-847-332-2223, fax/+1-847-332-1088d-abrahamson@nor thwestern .edu

CCHHAAIIRR,, GGRRAADDUUAATTEE SSTTUUDDEENNTT CCOOMMMMIITTTTEEEETob ias Eberwe inTechn ische Un ivers i tä t Dor tmundIns t i tu t fü r Journa l i s t i k , Emi l -F igge-St r. 50D-44227 Dor tmundGERMANYw/+49-231-755-6987, h fax /+49-231-755-5583tob ias .eberwe [email protected]

MMEEMMBBEERRSS,, NNOOMMIINNAATTIINNGG CCOOMMMMIITTTTEEEE ( inc ludes F IRST V ICE PRESIDENT)Isabe l le Meure tUn ivers i té L ib re de Bruxe l lesCampus du So lbosch, ULB CP123, avenue F.D. Rooseve l t 501050 Bruxe l lesBELGIUMw/+32- (0 )2-650-4061, fax/+32- (0 )2-650-2450imeure t@ulb .ac .be

Isabe l SoaresTechn ica l Un ivers i t y L isbonIns t i tu to Super io r de C iênc ias Soc ia is e Po l í t i casPó lo Un ivers i tá r io do A l to da A juda, Rua A lmer indo Lessa1300-663 L isboaPORTUGALw/[email protected] t l .p t

WWEEBBMMAASSTTEERRNicho las Jackson205 R. St . NW, BSMTWash ington, DC 20001U.S.A.ce l l /+1-815-341-8122nicho las .b . jackson@gmai l .com

MMEEMMBBEERRSS,, AAWWAARRDDSS CCOOMMMMIITTTTEEEEIsabe l Soares (cha i r )Techn ica l Un ivers i t y L isbonIns t i tu to Super io r de C iênc ias Soc ia is e Po l í t i casPó lo Un ivers i tá r io do A l to da A juda, Rua A lmer indo Lessa1300-663 L isboaPORTUGALw/[email protected] t l .p t

Mar ia Lass i la-Mer isa loLass i lan t ie 5313430 Hameen l innaF INLANDce l l /+358-50-525-5819mar ia . lass i la-mer isa lo@ik i . f i

Norman S ims

Page 29: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013 PAGE 29

IALJS OFFICERS AND CHAIRS, 2012-2014 Continued from previous page

Univers i t y o f Massachuset ts , Amhers tCommonwea l th Honors Co l legeAmhers t , MA 01003U.S.A.w/+1-413-545-5929, h/+1-413-774-2970, fax/+1-413-545-3880 s ims@honors .umass.edu

MMEEMMBBEERRSS,, PPUUBBLL IICCAATTIIOONN CCOOMMMMIITTTTEEEEAl ice Donat Tr indade (cha i r )Techn ica l Un ivers i t y L isbonIns t i tu to Super io r de C iênc ias Soc ia is e Po l í t i casPó lo Un ivers i tá r io do A l to da A juda, Rua A lmer indo Lessa1300-663 L isboaPORTUGALw/+351-213-619-430, fax/+351-213-619-442at r [email protected] t l .p t

Rob A lexanderBrock Un ivers i t yDepar tment o f Eng l i sh Languages and L i te ra tureSt . Ca thar ines , Ontar io L2S 3A1CANADAw/+905-688-5550 x3886ra [email protected]

Thomas B. Conner yUn ivers i t y o f S t . Thomas Depar tment o f Communica t ion and Journa l i sm2115 Summit Ave.St . Pau l , MN 55105U.S.A.w/+1-651-962-5265, h/+1-651-647-0048, fax/+1-651-962-6360tbconner y@st thomas.edu

EEDDIITTOORR,, LLIITTEERRAARRYY JJOOUURRNNAALLIISSMM SSTTUUDDIIEESS John Har tsockSta te Un ivers i t y o f New York Co l lege a t Cor t landDepar tment o f Communica t ion S tud iesCor t land, NY 13045U.S.A.w/+1-607-753-4103, h/+1-607-749-6756, fax/607-753-5970har tsock j@cor t land.edu

AASSSSOOCCIIAATTEE EEDDIITTOORRSS,, LLIITTEERRAARRYY JJOOUURRNNAALLIISSMM SSTTUUDDIIEESS Wi l l iam DowAmer ican Un ivers i t y o f Par isDepar tment o f Compara t i ve L i te rature147, rue de Grene l le75007 Par isFRANCEw/+33-1-4062-0600 ex t 718wi l l i am.dow@wanadoo. f r

Mi les Magu i reUn ivers i t y o f Wiscons in - OshkoshDepar tment o f Journa l i smOshkosh, WI 54901U.S.A.w/+1-920-424-7148 magu i [email protected]

Rober ta Magu i reUn ivers i t y o f Wiscons in - OshkoshUn ivers i t y Honors Program / Depar tment o f Eng l i shOshkosh, WI 54901U.S.A.w/+1-920-424-7364magui [email protected]

BBOOOOKK RREEVV IIEEWW EEDDIITTOORR,, LL IITTEERRAARRYY JJOOUURRNNAALLIISSMM SSTTUUDDIIEESS Nancy L . Rober tsUn ivers i t y at A lbany (SUNY)Depar tment o f Communica t ion1400 Wash ington Avenue A lbany, NY 12222w/+1-518-442-4884, h/+1-518-583-8965, fax/+1-518-442-3884

nrober [email protected]

MMEEMMBBEERRSS,, BBOOAARRDD OOFF AADDVVIISSOORRSSJohn Bak ( found ing pres ident )Un ivers i té de Lor ra ineCent re de Té lé-ense ignement Un ivers i ta i re (CTU)42-44, avenue de la L ibera t ion , B.P. 3397 54015 Nancy FRANCEw/+33- (0 )383-968-448, h/+33- (0 )383-261-476, fax/+33- (0 )383-968-449john.bak@univ-nancy2. f r

Thomas B. Conner yUn ivers i t y o f S t . Thomas Depar tment o f Communica t ion and Journa l i sm2115 Summit Ave.St . Pau l , MN 55105U.S.A.w/+1-651-962-5265, h/+1-651-647-0048, fax/+1-651-962-6360tbconner y@st thomas.edu

Jo Bech-Kar lsenBI Norweg ian Bus iness Schoo lDepar tment o f Communica t ion , Cu l tu re and LanguagesN-0442 Os lo NORWAYw/+47-90-566-907 jo .bech-kar lsen@bi .no

Susan GreenbergUn ivers i t y o f RoehapmptonDepar tment o f Eng l i sh and Creat i ve Wr i t ing , 80 Roehampton LaneLondon SW15 5PHUNITED K INGDOMw/+44-20-8392-3257 s .g [email protected] .uk

R ichard Lance Keeb leUn ivers i t y o f L inco lnL inco ln Schoo l o f Journa l i sm, Bray ford Poo lL inco ln LN6 7TSUNITED K INGDOMw/+44- (0 )1522-886-940rkeeb le@l inco ln .ac .uk

Jenny McKayUn ivers i t y o f Sunder landResearch Cent re fo r Med ia and Cu l tu ra l S tud iesSunder land SR6 0DD, Scot landUNITED K INGDOMw/+44- (0 )191-515-2157jenny.mckay@sunder land.ac .uk

John J . Pau lyMarquet te Un ivers i t yOf f ice o f the Provos t , 106 O'Hara Ha l lMi lwaukee, WI 53201, w/+1-414-288-3588, ce l l /+1-414-313-7949fax/414-288-6400john.pau ly@marquet te .edu

A l ice Donat Tr indadeTechn ica l Un ivers i t y L isbonIns t i tu to Super io r de C iênc ias Soc ia is e Po l í t i casPó lo Un ivers i tá r io do A l to da A juda, Rua A lmer indo Lessa1300-663 L isboaPORTUGALw/+351-213-619-430, fax/+351-213-619-442at r [email protected] t l .p t

Doug UnderwoodUnivers i t y o f Wash ingtonDepar tment o f Communica t ion , Box 353740Seat t le , WA 98195U.S.A.w/[email protected] ington.edu

Page 30: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE IALJS Literary jourNAlism

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I A L J S

PAGE 30 LITERARY JOURNALISM / SUMMER 2013

My new students enter the class-room as if they were walkingon shattered glass, and sit in a

horseshoe-shaped disposition. “Buenosdías,” I say. They usually come from a

dozen countries andfour or five mothertongues. The pro-gram, a University ofBarcelona one-yearMaster’s coursemodeled on anddone jointly withColumbia’sJournalism School, isin Spanish.

First, the usualround of presenta-tions: In one minute,please tell the class

who you are, where you come from andwhy you are here. Some recite their CVsor explain why they chose the program.But quite a few start telling stories: aconversation with a grandfather, a bit-ter discussion with a boss in the news-room, a teacher that inspired him, ananecdote about the sorry state of thepress in her country.

And then, when they think it’sall over, the exercise really starts. I tellthem that a mad editor has decided tohave a story written about that first dayin class, and that there should be astand-out pull-quote in the middle ofthe page: something that one of theirclassmates said, something that mightdraw the attention of the reader.

LITERARY JOURNALISMTHE NEWSLETTER OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR LITERARY JOURNALISM STUDIESSUMMER 2013 VOL. 7 NO. 3

Of course, it can be paraphrased. I askthem to write it down and to stick totheir choice even after somebody men-tions a great quote they had missed.This is when I say the name of the exer-cise: it is called “The art of memory.”Usually three or four get the mostvotes. In the third part of the class, themost important for me, I ask: “Why doyou think you chose the phrase youdid? Why do you think so many of youchose that one?” Among the first rea-sons, there’s always one student whotalks about substance, and another onewho mentions style. One winner told agreat story, and another one said some-thing that most people think, but said it

in a beautiful, powerful or innovativeway.

I can still remember the win-ners of the class of 1999-2000: a man inhis thirties said he first felt the urge totell stories when, as a casino croupier,he was asked to train croupiers in thenew casinos of Saint Petersburg, afterthe fall of the Soviet Union. “Shouldn’t

A LESSON FOR THE FIRST CLASS OF THE TERM Who am I? Who are you? What do I remember? Why?

By Roberto Herrscher, Universitat de Barcelona (Spain)

we tell them to go home to their fami-ly?” an old Communists hand askedhim, when he finally understood thelogic of the casino. The studentslaughed uneasily, and nobody forgotthe scene. The other student was a veryyoung Sociology major, who said hehad dreamed of being a painter butinstead of hands, he claimed he was“born with two left hoofs.”

But that is not all. Most of mystudents say they had chosen stories orthoughts that they identify with. Theyfound a secret link, a connection totheir own thoughts or stories. It can bepositive identification—people whoselives they can relate to, people whoseideas mirror their own weltanschauung—or negative identification, a life notworth living, ideas so radically differentthat you can barely conceive anybodycould think that way.

I used this exercise at theGarcía Márquez Foundation inColombia once, and an Argentine editorused his minute to tell the story of acarpenter who, when asked to make 12identical chairs, said the price washigher than that for producing one dif-ferent chair for 12 customers. “Youdon’t understand; each of 12 identicalchairs should be cheaper than selling 12different ones,” the customer argued.“But I like to create, to do the chair thatsuits me today, to ask the wood how itwants to be carved,” the carpenter said.

TEACHINGTIPS

There shouldbe a stand-out pull-quote in

middle of thepage to draw the attention

of the reader

Continued on Page 25