Cheryl Wehlau's Iron Fist

I'd like to direct your attention to a report by Jeff Testerman of the St. Petersburg Times:

PALM HARBOR -- With hundreds of loan closings a month, business boomed at Gulf Coast Title, and the perks were plentiful: Hummers and Escalades for travel, shopping sprees for staffers who wanted outfit upgrades, lavish holiday office parties that included all-expense-paid hotel rooms.

But under the iron-fisted rule of Gulf Coast founder Cheryl L. Wehlau, the perks came with a price.

Loan closers worked 12-hour days, weeks on end without time off. Processors prepared loan packages, napped on cots, splashed water on their faces, then went back to work to meet the volume of loans. Wehlau and her husband, co-owner John T. Wehlau, even insisted employees do what they called "Chinese overtime" -- paid not at time-and-a-half, but at half-wage.

Here's why I think this piece is worth discussing. It has no scenes, no dialogue, no clear narrative line, no distinctive writing voice. It is, as Roy Peter Clark would say, a report, not a story. And yet I read to the end with satisfaction.

I did that because Jeff, through diligent reporting, gave me a glimpse into a fascinating and disturbing world: workers napping on cots, microphones in every office, a relative of the boss's ex-husband hired to the marketing department even though she can barely speak English.

I got more from this report than I've gotten from a hundred mediocre narratives that I've tossed aside in the seventh graf.

Now. I'm not saying we should put down our narrative tools. What I'm saying is that we should pick stories that have the inherent power to fascinate. Then we should report them to the bone.

Our readers will thank us.

Thoughts?