Sometimes stories don't need nut grafs, said
Ken Wells from
The Wall Street
Journal.
What? I didn't know if I'd heard him correctly. My fingers froze
and the exact quote escaped me. But he wasn't going to catch me off guard with my
note-taking again.
"In today's world of journalism, we're pressed for
time and space -- we're beginning to lose sight that every story doesn't need to
have a point," Wells said. "Sometimes stories are stories because they are great
stories."
It was as if I had stepped into a mirror universe, like the
one Captain Kirk was trapped in during
that episode of "Star Trek" when he
met a goateed Evil Spock.
No sentence about the big social context? No pin-the-trend-on-the-donkey??
No (dramatic pause) "he is not alone"??
This
mustached mirror of an editor was an advocate for ditching that
roadblock-of-a-sentence that most writers try to leave out when writing a
stylized beginning, hoping the editor won't notice its absence.
|
"Travels with Barley" is Ken Wells' most recent book. |
"Why would you want to slow down a beautiful story and have a faux
sentence there?" asked Wells, referring to the lede in a story about the lack of
bananas in Greece.
Wells admitted he's a rare editor, a "radical" one,
the likes of whom would probably not be found in other newsrooms. "The strongest
desire is not to love or hate, but to change someone's copy," he said.
The best way a writer can get an editor to overlook a rule is to write
cleverly enough for the editor to let it pass. Wells said the best way to do so is
still grounded in the basics of journalism: "It's the reporting, stupid."
"Most editors know that the best writers really can break the rules, and
we should encourage that," he said.
Rules be damned is right. Maybe I
should grow a goatee.
