Ten years ago, Justin Heckert emailed Walt Harrington a few clips and asked for some advice. Justin was a sophomore at Missouri and had just finished “Intimate Journalism.” He was blown away by Walt’s writing, and the other work in the book.
As Justin explains via email: A few months went by and I forgot that I’d done this. You can imagine my surprise when I got a response from him, especially a response like this. … I read it today, a decade on, and he’s right about so much, especially about the aging part, getting better and maturing as you get older. It’s incredible how insightful this email still is, even though bits of it due to the age we live in might now apply so much anymore.
I read it today, a decade on, and he’s right about so much, especially about the aging part, getting better and maturing as you get older. It’s incredible how insightful this email still is, even though bits of it due to the age we live in might now apply so much anymore.
We’re honored to share it.
4/4/00 To: Justin Heckert From: Walt Harrington
To: Justin Heckert From: Walt Harrington
Dear Justin,
Sorry to take so long to get back to you. I just found your note under a pile I’m digging out of. I’ll take it at your word that you have emergent talent but that you aren’t yet excellent. That’s a healthy attitude. But I’m afraid I don’t have a magic bullet that will let you achieve your ambitions.
I’m pretty much of the old school. I think a lot of what I read in the newer, hipper mags, is hopelessly superficial and flies on decent observation and some zippy writing. Nothing wrong with that, but it won’t get you to the level of Gary Smith at SI or Mike Sager at Esquire. The tough news is that those kinds of writerly journalists (and I would include myself in this type if not at their level) are so good because they aren’t only smart and observant and thoughtful and empathetic, and critical, but they are also well-trained reporters. They learned the gritty part of the craft by covering cops and communities, all the stuff that is difficult for aspiring journalism stars to see themselves doing. But I think if you want to be doing fine in-depth work 25 years from now, putting in two or three or five years of harder-edged reporting will go a long way toward that goal.
I don’t mean that you have to spend five years covering county board meetings. But I do mean covering all-night cops, investigating how housing and industrial developments works in communities and how power flows from real estate and business people into politics, reporting on the dramas of life and death with car accidents and suicides. Doing general assignment reporting, something you don’t get to do until after you’ve proven you can do news, feature and news feature reporting, is a wonderful way to become introduced to the huge range of stories and humanity that’s out there. Much of the finest intimate journalism is really a kind of journalistic anthropology, going into worlds from a typical high school to a garage rock band to an old folks home to a hospice to police precinct to a rug culture to a suburban housewife book club and understanding it in its own terms and making sense of the group’s value and beliefs while also learning to master the techniques of interviewing and observing and thinking critically on your feet and then mastering in small steps the ways of rendering all that material in a story. That means mastering the whole range of word and technique and structure skills. There is so much to learn that learning it in smaller pieces is, I think, really the only way to do it. That means that most people who do this work really well first became the best feature writers on their newspapers before they went on to become the best projects reporters on their newspapers.
Certainly, the alternative press is a place to look for early opportunities to do take-out reporting and narrative writing. I believe that a person doesn’t make the leap to writing for the glossies or for the Washington Post or New York Times without learning his craft first. I suggest an attitude of determined humility that recognizes how awfully much you have to learn and then taking consistent small steps toward the big goal that you must keep in mind or you will be smothered by the crap and competing value systems along the way. You need to constantly keep reading good work. You need to read backward toward the classics in literary and narrative nonfictions (everything from John McPhee to Robert Caro) and stay up with on-going work in places like SI, Esquire, GQ, the New Yorker, the city magazine articles that win writing and reporting awards each year, the best of the alternative press, the pieces that win the national magazine and Pulitzer feature awards each year, the books that win the national book award an critics book circle award nonfiction prizes each year. You also should be reading good naturalistic short story fiction with the eye to what you can learn about beautiful language and storytelling techniques. You should probably be taking autobiographical and fiction writing classes on the side for the same reasons.
Doing this work well is an adventure but it is a lifelong adventure. I tell people that I didn’t do any work that I would like to have seen collected in books until I was 35. That means I’d been doing journalism for ten years before I did anything that I thought was memorable enough to keep. And yet during those years I was considered to be among the best at the places I worked. You need to set your own standards and keep them. I remember Ed Lambeth telling me when I was leaving Missouri that it would probably be at least five years before I had an editor as good as Ed. He wasn’t being arrogant. He was telling it to me straight. At beginning places, the talent pool is unpredictable. Ed said that I needed to learn to be my own editor and establish my own standards or I would eventually adapt to the lower standard of the business. I think I managed to do that, and I sometimes seemed awfully arrogant along the way. But I tried to learn what I could and then move on when I’d exhausted the possibilities. I had my goals in mind, not only my employer’s.
Oddly enough, doing this work well isn’t based only on your reporting or writing skills. You can throw all the technique in the world at a story but unless the reporter-writer has, well, maturity, the article will be sound and fury. I see it all the time among my students. They haven’t lived long enough to really write an article about what it’s like for a father after his son is killed in a car accident. Growing up is a pretty important part of doing grown-up work. I tell students that knowing this is the first step toward being able to report around it by doing a better job of reporting, really reporting out beyond your limits. You first talk to people who study what parents who lose children to death go through, how they respond physiologically, how the quality of their past relationship with their child helps determine their grief afterward and on and on and on. You force yourself to be a wiser, more mature person than you actually are. Reporting will always confirm our ignorance. For young reporters aspiring to do sophisticated work, though, the first step is to recognize just how dumb you are. That isn’t so easy for cocky, confident, ambitious young journalists to do. That’s why I always quote Crash Davis from Bull Durham saying, “Baseball is a game of fear and arrogance.” I think journalism requires that same balance of humility and confidence.
So, no, I don’t want to read your articles now. I hope that someday I will not out of charity as a favor but because they demand it. If you ever have an article that you believe is worthy of being collected in a book someday, send it on. But set the standard high. Not for me, but for yourself.
Well, that’s a long, rambling answer going no place in particular.
Best, Walt Harrington
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