The tremendous challenge of narrative journalism about subjects that are underreported is, how do you make people care about something they think they already know about, or think they don't need to know about?

Sarah Stillman

Categorized in : Thinking People Challenges

Workers are actually being starved on the largest military base in Baghdad, and women are being raped with impunity - and because it doesn't fit into a Hollywood context it's not going to fly.

baghdad hollywood military

I always knew I wanted to write, but I didn't know that I would want to do investigative reporting - in part because it seemed so ill-suited for my personality, or I thought it was ill-suited for my personality, insofar as I'm not very aggressive, and I'm not confrontational.

personality want writing

Often, I'm spending months with a person in a very intimate context, getting to know the ins and outs of what they ate for breakfast, not to mention dredging up the most traumatic experiences of their lives, digging through their documents and photographs from difficult times, all of that. And that process, I think, can be extraordinarily strange for subjects who've never been interviewed before, especially if you don't acquaint them from the get-go with what you're trying to do, what it entails, and why you care.

digging trying thinking

I think most of us, as writers, have had experiences where you get edited and it doesn't feel like your voice at all. And so it's been nice to go through the experience of having a lot wind up on the cutting-room floor, and yet still feel that your voice is being - not purified, but made more yourself. I think that's a very rare thing.

cutting nice thinking

I wanted to think about ways to get an American readership concerned with what is happening in Mexico, but also to reframe it as a problem Americans share.

mexico way thinking

I learned a lot, investigative methodology - wise, from litigator... by Sarah Stillman

I learned a lot, investigative methodology - wise, from litigators - watching their process.

litigators methodology wise

The journalist's job isn't to be someone's friend, or their psychologist, or anything other than what we actually are. And at the end of the day, that can definitely seem like such a strange, extractive relationship.

the-end-of-the-day strange jobs