HOW
WE GOT THOSE STORIES
STICKING WITH STANDARDS
AND OTHER HARD ACTS
(A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Play)
BY
AMANDA BENNETT AND JACK HART
This
spring The Oregonian won two Pulitzer Prizes. Tom Hallman won
the feature-writing prize for his profile of Sam Lightner, a fourteen-year-old
boy born with severe facial malformation. And the paper won the
gold medal for public service for what the Pulitzer board called
its "detailed and unflinching examination" of persistent
problems and abuses within the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service. Both series were notable for the demanding standards
of evidence that guided the reporting and writing. Such standards
are not merely imposed, as two key editors illustrate in this
short drama. They are made possible when editors and reporters
define stories in ways that permit their application, and stick
to those definitions.
ACT
ONE: SETTING A TARGET
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"Corruption"
"Secret prisons"
"Bungling"
"Service"
"Abuse"
In early September 2000, in a small, overheated meeting room,
black marker in hand, editor Amanda Bennett scribbled words on
the whiteboard as fast as four reporters could utter them.
"Waste"
"Pressure"
"Economic impact"
"1996 law"
For nearly a year, reporters Julie Sullivan and Richard Read had
been writing story after story detailing problems with Portland's
office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service: six children
held incommunicado in a local jail, a Korean computer technician
handcuffed and jailed over a missing document, a Chinese businesswoman
strip-searched when her battered passport aroused suspicions.
At first the incidents appeared isolated, the handiwork of an
overzealous local official. But as the cases mounted, sources
began suggesting the problem was bigger -- nationwide, in fact.
Faced with a huge reporting task, Read and Sullivan asked that
two investigative reporters, Kim Christensen and Brent Walth,
join them. After some initial reporting around the country, the
four gathered and began spilling out the words that their reporting
had suggested.
Bennett then had a question: Dozens of stories over the years
have suggested problems within the INS -- why do another?
Over the next several days, the reporters fanned out for additional
overview reporting. Quickly they concluded that they already had
enough evidence to set their targets high. They would aim for
a story showing that the INS systematically violated human rights,
jailed people and misplaced them in an anonymous system, imprisoned
children and broke up families without cause. What's more, they
would pinpoint the sources of these violations by demonstrating
that the INS was prone to both bungling and corruption. And that,
moreover, the agency tolerated a pervasive culture of racism.
Such high and specific targets set the reporting standards for
the rest of the project. It would not be enough to suggest that
these things were true. They were going to have to prove them.
ACT
II: FINDING THE WORDS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom
Hallman stuck his head into his editor's office. "She saved
it," he said, grinning. "She saved everything."
His smile highlighted a key moment in his reporting for "The
Boy Behind the Mask," his four-part series about the struggles
of Sam Lightner, an engaging fourteen-year-old afflicted with
a terrible facial deformity. Hallman had been following Sam closely,
developing a story about the boy's struggle to win acceptance
from his peers while he contemplated risky surgery that might
reduce his deformity. That day in August 2000, Hallman had dug
into pay dirt that would push his story to a level of precision
he'd never before achieved in a long newspaper narrative.
"Hold on. Who saved what?" asked Jack Hart, his editor.
The reporter had found out that Debbie Lightner saved all the
medical records, the get-well cards, and the handwritten notes
that her son Sam had collected during a 1999 hospitalization.
The mass on his face had suddenly begun to grow, threatening to
choke Sam to death, a threat that eventually passed. Like the
good mom she is, Debbie Lightner had squirreled all the mementos
of her son's hospital stay away in a cardboard box.
For a narrative storyteller holding himself to the highest possible
standards of evidence, the box was a godsend. Sam's brush with
death had taken place before Hallman began reporting. So he'd
have to reconstruct the 1999 hospital scenes. Human memories being
what they are, that was dicey enough. But reconstructing the dialogue
that would bring the scene to life would be even riskier.
Debbie Lightner's cardboard box held several spiral notebooks.
As he lay in the hospital, Sam -- robbed of his ability to speak
by a grotesquely swollen tongue -- had communicated by scrawling
messages in the notebooks. It was as though a tape recorder had
been running. Hallman not only had Sam's half of the dialogue,
but he also was on his way toward achieving the gold standard
for use of dialogue in a newspaper narrative. Not a single word
of his story would appear inside quotation marks unless he'd heard
it with his own ears or found a verbatim record of the original.
ACT
III: ADJUSTING THE AIM
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In
a darkened news conference room, reporter Brent Walth fiddled
with a wireless keyboard. The four reporters on the INS story
had been working furiously for weeks. Now, in early October, they
compared notes by projecting topic headings on a large screen:
"The INS runs a secret, abusive prison system."
"The INS has fostered corruption in its ranks."
"The INS wrecks families."
"The INS has created an internal culture that has tolerated
racism and abuse."
The reporters had set themselves a high bar: they would publish
only material from primary sources -- people with firsthand knowledge
or experience with the subject at hand. They would avoid publishing
material from interest groups. They would publish only on-the-record
sources. They would find at least three examples for every point,
drawing examples from across the country. They would concentrate
on regions of the country where there weren't as many immigrants
as in coastal areas, and thus abuse would seem less likely. They
would seek political opinion from both Democrats and Republicans
and historical perspective from former INS officials of as many
prior administrations as possible. They would seek clear and compelling
statistical evidence, from public records when possible and from
Freedom of Information Act requests when necessary.
They would challenge each example and each fact to make sure that
they weren't seeing patterns where none existed, and they would
make sure each source's motivation was clear.
For hours, until long after most other reporters had left for
the day, the four projected the computer files containing their
notes onto the screen overhead. They meticulously sorted through
their notes, discarding reporting that didn't meet the standard.
Gradually, they built a table: "What We Have" and "What
We Need."
ACT
IV: SEEING THE SCENES
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Hallman
finished his first draft in late August and turned it over to
Hart, who took it home and began his markup.
His written comments reviewed major goals. The story needed to
begin with action that would draw readers in, rather than exposition
that would let their attention wander. Descriptive details needed
to develop Sam as the sympathetic character he is. But Hallman
needed to maintain an objective point of view, describing only
external realities anybody could see. The goal wasn't objectivity
in the classic journalistic sense, but vivid, honest storytelling
that creates its own credibility.
For example: at one point in his draft, Hallman described other
patients staring at Sam in a hospital waiting room. "They
all looked at Sam, and seemed to feel that whatever the problem
was that brought them here, it couldn't be worse than the boy
with the face." Hart's markup cautioned Hallman to "be
careful of statements such as 'seemed to feel.' We don't want
anybody accusing us of mind reading."
So Hallman went back to his notes and rewrote the scene: "Sam
found a seat and flipped through a stack of magazines. He caught
the eye of a woman sitting across from him. She turned away. Sam
saw her whisper something to a woman sitting next to her before
both turned back to stare."
And so it went, through the entire four episodes and 500 inches
of manuscript. Tweaking and honing. Removing the writer's commentary
and substituting the direct evidence that would allow readers
to see the truth for themselves.
ACT
V: CHALLENGING
CONCLUSIONS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over four months of reporting, Christensen, Walth, Read, Sullivan,
and their editor, Bennett, had done everything they could to get
input from top INS officials. They had written letters. Filed
FOIA requests. Made scores of phone calls requesting comment on
individual items and asked for full-scale interviews to sort out
larger issues. By the end of the last week in November, with a
publication deadline just two weeks away, the INS had yet to respond.
The reporters hit on a strategy. They faxed interview requests
to every telephone line they could find listed for Janet Reno,
then the attorney general, who oversaw the INS. Within two days,
the interviews were set up. Hours of interviews were concluded
on December 5.
But
even after marathon last-minute interviews the journalists weren't
satisfied. In many cases the INS officials' answers had been unfocused
and vague. So the Oregonian staff set about to tear down their
own story. If the INS wouldn't challenge the reporting, the reporters
would do it themselves.
"You've picked isolated incidents and strung them together,"
charged Bennett, role-playing a critic. In answer, Walth began
ticking off the statistics that proved that each anecdote was
representative of many others.
"You're sensationalizing a few kids' stories," Bennett
continued, referring to a piece on children in jail. In response,
Sullivan counted off many other examples that didn't get into
the story.
"You're playing into the hands of political partisans,"
Bennett said. Read began citing evidence gathered from both political
parties, as well as from non-political sources.
"You're only reporting the critics' side."
After a while the room fell silent. Finally Christensen spoke
up, pointing out that, despite hundreds of interviews, none of
them had uncovered any serious challenges to their theses. In
fact, he had never felt on more solid ground. "I've been
doing this kind of work for twenty years," he said. "I've
never been in a situation before where no one will say we're wrong."
It was time to publish.
ACT VI: WITNESSING THE STORY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hallman
was shaken. He was midway through his reporting. Sam and his family
had decided he would undergo surgery by an elite team of Boston
surgeons before he entered high school in the fall of 2000. The
surgery was risky, but it was Sam's only chance for a more normal
life. He desperately wanted it, and his parents were willing to
go along.
But until the doctors filled him in, Hallman had never completely
understood the degree of risk the fourteen-year-old actually faced.
Sam's surgery would be the most extensive his doctors had ever
attempted. Cutting into the boy's deformity, a twisted mass of
blood vessels that bulged out the side of his face, was potentially
lethal, given the possibility of uncontrolled bleeding.
The chance that Sam might not make it not only wrenched Hallman's
emotions, but also called into question his approach. What were
the journalistic implications? "There's a good chance he
could die," Hallman told Hart. "What do we do then?"
He and Hart stepped back to regroup, batting possible theme statements
back and forth. This was a story about the pressures of conformity.
No, it was a story about a caring surgeon. No, it was a story
about human beings coming to terms with themselves. Or maybe .
. .
Look, Hart finally said, we've done these kinds of stories before.
We know the theme always emerges so long as we stick with the
narrative and think hard. We've latched onto some human beings
caught up in events that will inevitably change them. And that's
bound to reveal something important.
No matter what happened, they agreed, they had an amazing story
in their hands. Rather than forcing it into a preconceived mold,
Hallman would strive to witness the key moments, finding his ultimate
vision in the facts he could verify with his own eyes. Shifting
the point of view to make one of the surgeons the protagonist,
for one example, was out. Hallman would witness only one scene
involving the surgeons -- the actual operation. He'd have to reconstruct
everything else.
As the reporting progressed, key decisions about theme, point
of view, construction of scenes -- all the literary devices central
to good storytelling -- were made in a way that would maximize
Hallman's chances of witnessing everything he described.
When Hart finally finished editing the last draft of the last
episode, he stopped by Sandy Rowe's office to tell her the long
project was nearly complete. And, he told The Oregonian's editor,
it's almost all based on firsthand observation, rather than reconstruction.
How much is firsthand? she asked. How much is reconstruction?
Hart returned to his office, punched up a clean print of the story,
grabbed a yellow highlighter and headed for Hallman's desk. Here,
he said, do Sandy and me a favor. Highlight every line that describes
anything you didn't witness first-hand or get from a firsthand
document recorded at the time.
Later that day, Hallman carried the highlighted manuscript into
Rowe's office. The first episode, the one with the background
on Sam's early years, was about half yellow. But as the story
progressed, the yellow highlighting faded until only an occasional
splash of color marked the manuscript. All told, Hallman had managed
to witness 80 percent of the story himself.
The highlighting exercise offered a final chance to check the
reporting standards that had been applied to the story. Not a
single direct quote appeared in any of the highlighted manuscript.
And every bit of highlighted material was attributed to its original
source. Readers wouldn't have to guess what Hallman had seen himself
or where he'd found the rest of his material.
In terms of marking a story that met the highest standards of
evidence for a work of narrative nonfiction, those splashes of
yellow were solid gold.
Postscript: On the night before the final installment ran, Sam
Lightner slipped into a coma from which doctors said he was unlikely
to recover. But he did recover, and was to start high school in
September. Hallman continues to follow the story.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amanda Bennett is The Oregonian's managing editor/enterprise.
Jack Hart is the paper's managing editor/weekends.
