Journalists: What if we went back to reporting objectively?

As newswriting has evolved into a language a little more opinionated in recent years, it's become increasingly difficult to find pure, straight, down-the-middle reporting on TV or online.

Covering the Trump presidency, COVID and last year's civil reckoning in particular have left me wondering what news would look like if all we did was report facts. Only facts. Few adjectives. Fewer adverbs. Nothing that can be interpreted in multiple ways. IE-my use of the word "recent" in the first paragraph. What that word means to me might mean something different to you.

As part of my growing interest in a no-adjective approach to newswriting, I did what anybody would do. I spent a few nights in, ahem, recent weeks scouring internet archives for reports on some of America's most significant historical events -- the Emancipation Proclamation, Watergate, Black Friday, the end of the Civil War, the start of World War I, the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, the end of the Vietnam War, the sinking of the Titanic and the assassinations of Lincoln, King and both Kennedys.

What I found was that in some ways, newswriting has evolved more than most people realize. I also found -- and had reinforced -- some lessons for today's newswriters, but before I get to those, let’s take a look back.

YESTERDAY'S NEWS

The majority of the reports I found did include editorializing, but what struck me more was their verbosity. I'm all for using words to paint colorful pictures; that's what the greats do. But the true poets do it so naturally that the only reason a reader would pause would be to straighten an appreciative smile, not to go back to find clarity.

I'm not sure why, but I went into this project expecting to see writing reminiscent of the copy you hear in those old-timey Movietone news clips. That's not what I found.

One trend I saw in several articles in New York Times and Washington Post archives was the use of the word "here," something I emulated when I first started writing sports for my college newspaper many years ago. The "here" referred to the city in the dateline, in those cases Washington, but the technique doesn't really get used in print/online reporting anymore, which is fine.

A poorly-written lede paragraph published in the New York Times described initial rescue attempts following the sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912. It looked like this:

CAPE RACE, N.F., April 15. -- The White Star liner Olympic reports by wireless this evening that the Cunarder Carpathia reached, at daybreak this morning, the position from which wireless calls for help were sent out last night by the Titanic after her collision with an iceberg. The Carpathia found only the lifeboats and the wreckage of what had been the biggest steamship afloat.

I need a nap after reading that one.

Forty-seven years earlier, on the exact same date the Titanic slammed into an iceberg, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at a theater in Washington, D.C. But you'd hardly know it by the first two paragraphs of the Associated Press' initial report about the tragedy:

WASHINGTON, APRIL 14 — President Lincoln and wife visited Ford's Theatre this evening for the purpose of witnessing the performance of 'The American Cousin.' It was announced in the papers that Gen. Grant would also be present, but that gentleman took the late train of cars for New Jersey.

The theatre was densely crowded, and everybody seemed delighted with the scene before them. During the third act and while there was a temporary pause for one of the actors to enter, a sharp report of a pistol was heard, which merely attracted attention, but suggested nothing serious until a man rushed to the front of the President’s box, waving a long dagger in his right hand, exclaiming, 'Sic semper tyrannis,' and immediately leaped from the box, which was in the second tier, to the stage beneath, and ran across to the opposite side, made his escape amid the bewilderment of the audience from the rear of the theatre, and mounted a horse and fled.

So, um, what happened exactly?

In 1963, the Dallas Morning News was more succinct in delivering a solid lede paragraph about the JFK assassination, but by today's standards, it would have been considered punchless:

A sniper shot and killed President John F. Kennedy on the streets of Dallas Friday. A 24-year-old pro-Communist who once tried to defect to Russia was charged with the murder shortly before midnight.

This research showed me that editorializing is not a new part of newswriting. Also, as reporting and writing have evolved with the times, so, too, has language. For example, according to the aforementioned AP story about the Lincoln assassination, a theater patron cried amid the commotion, "Has anyone stimulants?" in a rushed effort to treat the president. That speaks to the evolution of our use of language. Could you imagine somebody asking that same question in 2021?

FOCUS ON FACTS

One thing I tell young writers who are trying to do too much is to just focus on facts. When you're back from crime scenes or news conferences, when you've logged your interviews word for word, when you've figured out what you're going to write, but before you actually begin writing, just list out the first six or eight or 10 facts that come to mind. Give a bullet point each to who, what, where and when. If you know the why and the how, certainly write those down, too. Then maybe you've got a noteworthy statistic or two, and a few insightful quotes from at least two good sources, and perhaps a what's-next at the end if that is applicable.

Your next step? Mix all that stuff together and begin with the most important thing, then follow with the next-most-important thing, and so on. Surely you'll be able to find logical places to weave in your quotes and any stats or relevant background notes.

If you report first, and write second, your story will be easy for your readers to understand. Reporting means you're simply presenting facts, without the color, mostly doing so in order of importance.

DON'T TRY SO HARD

Writing, however, is more subjective. This is where a writer becomes an artist, pulling out the paintbrush to make his or her story more colorful, memorable. But writers need to be careful not to try too hard to make the story about their style or talent more than the event or person they're covering. If you want to plug in an overrated technique like alliteration, make sure it doesn't disrupt the flow or clarity of your story. Ask yourself whether the punch word is one you would normally use or if you're just employing it to set up the wordplay. If the latter, your readers will notice, and you might lose their trust because you're not being authentic. You're trying to show off.

Writers also need to stop trying to manufacture drama. Do we want to write with emotion? Lead our readers toward feeling something? Of course we do, but let's be honest; as with anything, it's possible to try too hard. We cover many stories that, candidly, aren't emotional stories. And again, if we're forcing things, our audience will see that, too.

Our readers are why we do the job. It's always about them. And speaking of the readers, perhaps you've heard they've gotten a little critical of us the last few years. Much of that is warranted, and that's why I've been giving a lot of thought to a newer, facts-only iteration of newswriting. I'm actually embarrassed to have just typed that last line, because we should already be doing that, but I'm just as guilty as anyone of engaging in the click-baity approach to newswriting.

I personally have begun stories with words like "Embattled Police Chief Steve Conrad" or "Disgraced basketball coach Rick Pitino." I don't think those are inaccurate descriptions, but again, some people -- particularly UofL fans who've dragged me on Twitter -- might disagree. So while I might lose some impact by starting those stories with just "Police Chief Steve Conrad" or "Former UofL basketball coach Rick Pitino," I doubt any reader would quit reading those stories because of how plainly I introduced my characters.

But this takes me back to my use of "recent" above. While it isn't a terribly polarizing word, it is an adjective. And "embattled" and "disgraced" aren't just adjectives; they are very charged words. I definitely editorialized by using those words in prior reporting, even though many probably considered those usages to be accurate.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS

In the last couple of years, news organizations have made at least two significant philosophical upgrades. First, many of us have stopped publishing generic crime stories for the sake of the mugshot. Let's face it, the shoplifting arrest of the guy with the wacky tattoo on his forehead never was a story until the arrival of viral culture and the desperate race for clicks.

In fact, the Associated Press just took that practice a step further, announcing last month that it will discontinue reporting basic crime stories, including -- especially -- those with mugshot-gold potential.

Secondly, in light of the civil reckoning that's taken a giant leap forward over the last 12+ months, some operators are doing away with crime stories featuring suspects of color, or at least choosing instead to use non-mugshot imagery with them.

I see these changes mostly on the local level, and am hopeful that perhaps the cable networks will follow suit at some point.

LOOKING AHEAD

In having simultaneously covered a global pandemic and civil unrest, many American journalists, one could assume, got better at the craft last year. Maybe the writing did simply because of the number of reps we were given; we just did more work last year than in any previous year. But considering how charged and political both of those career-defining stories became, I'm not sure how much better we got at reporting. To some, it's obvious it was a botched police raid that led to Breonna Taylor's death in her own home. To others, the police officers were just doing their jobs, and they were fired upon so they had to fire back. The trick isn't to keep yourself from formulating opinions on issues; the trick is to check those feelings at the door and keep them out of your reporting.

Some news veterans might disagree with me here. Write with emotion, make your audience feel something, they'll say. That used to be the way, but we see where that has gotten us. The slope is slippery. I prefer not to do something because it's the way we've always done it. I'd rather reassess, evolve, even if, in this case, I'm proposing we go backward, refamiliarize ourselves with objective reporting and let fairness always be our only guide.

I'm much more hopeful than I am optimistic that our industry can course-correct and get back to basics, recognize the biases in our newswriting, eliminate them, and just report the facts. It doesn't matter if you're writing for a suburban weekly paper or a major cable network. Storytelling is storytelling. Newswriting is newswriting. There is one truth. Go and find it.