My first newspaper job was with the Goldsboro News-Argus, which, to the under-informed, is the leading newspaper in Wayne County, North Carolina. It then had a circulation of 9,000. I wrote its farm column. It was called "Ramblin' in Rural Wayne." I wrote about the first farmer of the season to transplant tobacco plants from the seedbed to the field; about the season's first cotton blossom. I wrote about picnic tables sagging at family reunions under the weight of banana sandwiches, banana pudding, chicken pastry, sage sausage, fried chicken, and collard greens. I wrote of hailstorms and drought. I once wrote about a sweet potato that looked like General Charles DeGaulle.

 The editor of the paper was Henry Belk. He was then in his sixties, and he was blind -- he was sightless. This was in the 1950s. But he wore battered fedora hats like newsmen wore in the movies in the 1930s and '40s, when he could still see. He was tall -- no, towering. There were no ready-made canes to fit his six-foot seven-inch form, so he tapped with a stretched cane made especially for him out of aluminum. He cared passionately about the paper. And it was read to him, word for word, over the years by a succession of high-school students. And in the mornings, his wife, Lucille, once a journalist herself, read him the newspaper published in the state capital, The Raleigh News and Observer.

 He was awesomely informed. Most days at the office, he would call out from his cubicle, and say such things as, "On page seventeen of the News and Observer, in column three, halfway down the fold, there is a three-inch story about Goldsboro, under an 18-point head." Then he would demand, "Why didn't we have it?" Mr. Belk was nothing if not demanding. Often when he heard my footfall in the morning, he would summon me to his cubicle and criticize the "Ramblin' in Rural Wayne" column I had written the day before. On too many days, alas, my writing was insufficiently descriptive. "You aren't making me see," Mr. Belk would say. "Make me see."

 In an effort to force me to be graphic and vivid, he made me end every column with a paragraph labeled, "Today's Prettiest Sight." Let me tell you, it's tough to go into a poolroom in your hometown for an end-of-the-work-day beer, known as the guy who writes "Today's Prettiest Sight." But I persevered. It took me years to appreciate it, but there is no better admonition to the writer than "make me see." There is no truer blueprint for successful writing than making your reader see. It is the essence of great writing and great reporting.

 If you write vividly, you'll stay in the minds of readers, sometimes in unexpected ways. I learned this in the Vietnam War when I was a correspondent for The New York Times. It was 1968, during the Tet Offensive, more than a decade after I had left the Goldsboro News-Argus and the "Ramblin' in Rural Wayne" column. I had heard vague reports of trouble in Hue, the capital city of the Nam's puppet emperors during the French colonial era. I made my way there by truck and helicopter, and found that the marines were surrounded, and held only two blocks of the city. The Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese forces held onto the rest. Each day, after the marines were reinforced by fresh units, they retook two or three blocks of the city, only to lose it again during the night to enemy troops who had infiltrated into houses during the darkness.

 It took about ten days for the marines to get ten blocks or so from their headquarters compound. When they did, they found several American advisers, who had been hiding under a house since the night the enemy overran the city. They had little water, even less food, and were hanging by their nerve ends when the marines broke through.

 The marines took the survivors to the headquarters compound, and to give them a sense of security, put them in the safest place they could find -- a bunker, dug deep into the center of the compound. I heard about the survivors and went to interview them. I snaked over some sandbags and I entered a tunnel. I crawled a bit, I rounded the bend, and dimly made out some human forms in the darkness. "My name is Gene Roberts," I said. "I'm with The New York Times, and I've come to get your story." And out of the darkness came a voice, and it said, "Hey, did you ever write the 'Ramblin' in Rural Wayne' column for the Goldsboro News-Argus?"

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