Jim Sheeler and the Death Story

Image of scene from Grimm Brothers story Godfather Death. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jim Sheeler talking about obit writing

Photos from Jim Sheeler's Pultizer winner, the Final Salute

Here's an interview he did with an 'amateur'


What finally are the implications of our stories? Do they prompt action or discourage it? Do they change our attitudes or threaten them? Here's a link to quote/counterquote.

Storytelling and Nonfiction: Art, Ethics and Accuracy

Implications for The Stranger

 • Interview thoroughly being sympathetic AND skeptical AND silent AND assertive. That's how you collect a deep pool of information and insight
 • Find a theme or focus. That means highlighting certain facts and ignoring others (see below)
 • That theme or focus can be a universal narrative form
 • Step back and consider whether or not what you have presented is “true” – and true is always in quotation marks.

From John Hersey's "The Legend on the License"

As to journalism, we may as well grant right away that there is no such thing as absolute objectivity. It is impossible to present in words "the truth" or "the whole story." The minute a writer offers nine hundred and ninety-nine out of one thousand facts, the worm of bias has begun to wriggle. Tolstoy pointed out that immediately after a battle there are as many remembered versions of it as there are participants.

Still and all, I will assert that there is one sacred rule of journalism. The writer must not invent. The legend on the license must read: NONE OF THIS WAS MADE UP. The ethics of journalism, if we can be allowed such a boon, must be based on the simple truth that every journalist knows the difference between the distortion that comes from subtracting observed data and the distortion that comes from adding invented data.

The threat to journalism’s life by the denial of this difference can be realized if we look at it from the reader’s point of view. The reader assumes the subtraction as a given of journalism and instinctively hunts for the bias; the moment the reader suspects additions, the earth begins to skid underfoot.

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Reporting Embarrassing Moments

Here's a British Journalist Boasting That Brit Reporters are Tougher than Ours

Here's the link, and here's a quote.


Coming from a British tabloid I was barred from virtually every interview by Hollywood publicists.

After the fifth rejection (it was with an actor so wooden he probably now plays a bench in an LA park) I pinned a PR man against a wall and ­demanded to know what was going on.

“You Brits always go for the jugular and these actors don’t need your awkward questions. It upsets them.”

In other words, other ­nationalities will ask actors how they “managed to capture their ­character’s essence so profoundly” while us Brits want to know how they managed to avoid being sent down for their recent shoplifting/drug-taking/wife-beating/gun-using/Jew-baiting episode.

(The writer links to the Tarantino interview included below and to  Piers Morgan interviewing a gun rights advocate.)

 If you haven’t seen either grilling, both are on this page. Not only will they make you laugh and squirm, they should also make you proud of British journalism.

Even though Morgan and ­Guru-Murthy were only staying true to the interview technique most British reporters have ­hammered into them: “If a reader (or viewer) was in my place what questions would they want ­answered?”

We may not realise it, but we are lucky to have ­journalists who refuse to give the rich and powerful an easy ride.

How Not to Interview Someone?

NBC got into a bit of trouble for pressing Olympian Bode Miller to talk about his deceased father. As the New York Times’ Richard Sandomir explains it: NBC Pushes Too Far in Bringing Bode Miller to Tears. Edward Wyatt there tweeted: “NBC says Bode Miller interview was ‘a necessary part of the story.’ Wrong. Let's end ‘Up Close & Personal.’” Susan Reimer at the Baltimore Sun suggested: “Sometimes you have to use your head, and your heart, in this business. #clueless.” Jennifer Brett at theAtlanta Journal-Constitution just called the situation: “How not to interview someone.”

Here's the link.