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Terry wrote yesterday about “the dreaded passive-voice paraphrase quote.” Today I turn to another vexing problem in journalism: the dreaded one-sentence summary of a complex history.
Later this month, the Newport Beach Film Festival will include a documentary on Lonnie Frisbee, a charismatic figure who helped shape the early Jesus Movement.
The first vote by the papal conclave on Monday cannot come soon enough, if only to relieve the incessant speculation about frontrunners. The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post all have repeated the forecast in Milan’s Corriere della Sera that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is the man to beat.
I sympathize with any reporter writing about Philip Anschutz, who has to be the most publicity-adverse tycoon in decades. That the self-made billionaire is now branching into buying newspapers and producing mostly family-friendly films makes him more a tempting target for journalists who believe, in the words of Slate‘s Jack Shafer, that “There’s got to be an angle.”
There is no one correct way to write a news story, other than to tell the truth of what you’ve observed and gathered. Reporting is more an art than a science, and that was clear earlier today in how The New York Times and The Washington Post differed in their descriptions of Pope John Paul II’s funeral in St. Peter’s Square.
Damon Linker, former editor of First Things, has written a provocative (and sometimes annoying) essay on how he believes Pope John II’s moral absolutism has affected Americans’ discussions of embryonic stem-cell research and the court-sanctioned dehydration death of Terri Schiavo:
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Did Pope John Paul II have a preference, or a premonition, about who might succeed him? This is not an angle appearing in many stories about the coming papal election, but two mainstream media outlets reported it in 2003.
Maura Reynolds of the Los Angeles Times reports today on President Bush’s plan to attend Pope John Paul II’s funeral, interpreting it as an effort to cultivate votes among Catholics:
