USA Today reporter Dan Vergano does an admirable job of
explaining the
challenges of discovering how former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko died from radioactive polonium.
Vergano's story demonstrates what journalism prof and legendary writer/editor
Jacqui Banaszynski means when she talks about
multiple
storytelling paths open to writers.
In this case, Vergano chose the
explainer, a story built on answering a number of critical questions about the
case:
- How do you conduct an autopsy someone killed by radioactive poisoning? (Very carefully)
- How does the element kill?
- What's the history behind it?
This story brought another
writing lesson to mind. In 2003, I interviewed Star-Ledger reporter Amy Ellis
Nutt when she won the American Society of Newspaper Editors' non-deadline
writing award for "The Seekers."
The
series explored five of
the biggest and most esoteric unanswered questions in science and philosophy, among
them: Where does life begin? Where does it end?
Her guiding light, Nutt
said, was this advice from her editor, Jim Willse: "This series will rise
or fall on your ability to make analogies."
The ASNE judges grasped that accomplishment, and it shows in their comments explaining Nutt's award-winning series:
[...] She succeeds not only because of superb topic selection, but because
of her ability to weave literary devices into simple, explanatory prose. Such
as her description of a science professor: "When he speaks, his sentences
often spill out into one another like excited children on the cafeteria
line." And she understands the value of the simile in describing matter: "Instead of matter being spread out evenly through space like butter on
bread, it looked like a bowl of clumpy oatmeal someone forgot to stir."
Like Nutt, Vergano also employs poetic devices,
such as analogies, metaphors and similes to
make an abstract scientific mystery understandable to readers:
Polonium emits
radioactive "alpha particles." Alpha particles are the "offensive lineman" of
radioactive particles, [health physicist Kelly] Classic says, big and slow.
With
investigators locating trace amounts of a radioactive substance on two British
jets, Vergano provides comforting information to air passengers with a dash of
humor:
If that substance is polonium,
its weak alpha emitters mean travelers face little risk, [health physicist Andrew] Karam says, "unless passengers were licking seats."
Perhaps the most impressive thing about this feat of explanatory journalism is that Vergano wraps it up in just 567 words.
Such brevity is possible when writers rely on the most economical
and razor-edged of literary forms and the devices responsible for its
power.
"Read
poetry," Nutt counsels. "It's great to read books about writing and
it's great to read novels and it's great to read great nonfiction, but poets
are unique in their ability to use a modicum in terms of language and yet have
acuity of description."
Which poets help you write better non-fiction?
... I suppose. But I get a little vexed when...
