Lede in Esquire: Pushing the bounds of "nonfiction"?

Another mistake, to me, is necessarily attaching the label "journalism" to what appears in various forms of the written word. No, it's not newspaper journalism. A) It's magazine journalism and B) it's Esquire journalism.

It's just a different part of the arguments about blogs and all the other things we read, all the way back to Bandwagon boy.

Just because it's not appropriate in the N.Y. Times doesn't mean it's not appropriate in, well, life.

 

But why do it? Is the reader's knowledge enhanced by speculation? No. Is it more entertaining for the readers when the writer guesses? I'd guess not -- in fact, I'd say it ruins it for some. Would the story be less compelling if we knew nothing about the killer's prep work in the room? Really, it adds little.

The only reason I can think of for doing it that way is that writer wanted to, for writerly reasons. That doesn't cut it.

 

That's OK, Frank. Not the first time we've had a friendly disagreement.

 

Set of facts: I'm at Panera. Eating bagels and drinking coffee. Cute girls around. I snuck a peak at a cute girl's legs; cottage cheese, large curd. I'm wearing shorts a t-shirt and an SVC baseball jersey, #12.

OK, writers, recreate what I was doing 75 minutes ago.

You can't because you were around 75 minutes ago and I haven't given you one concrete fact.

 

The rest of the article are verifiable facts, though. So my expectation would be for the lede to be so, as well. This isn't the same as them running a fictionalized story about Heath Ledger's final day. This is an investigative report, and the standards of investigative journalism should apply.

You can't just make shit up.

I can't believe this is even a debate here.

 

Even if we don't agree, it might be better to lay off the weak analogies.

There are no police reports, eye-witness accounts, media accounts, court records, or any other kind of records about how you came to be there because you're doing something nobody cares about (no offense, just the way it is based on your description).

There's also nothing placing you in a specific hotel room with specific items right before you left there and went directly to your rampage.

I'm absolutely positive all these things existed and were available to the writer of this story.

Analogy just doesn't work.

 

I know it's a weak analogy.

The point is, no one knows what the killer did in the hotel room before the rampage.

 

SF, I don't see how you can defend this. He is stating as fact things he can not prove happened.

 

If a blogger did this or the National Enquirer or the NY Post, they'd be crucified around here.

I'm really not getting the "different type of journalism argument."

Aren't some things just absolutes in journalism?

Like you don't make up shit and pass it off as fact?

 

I'm wondering if a distinction can be made between creative nonfiction and journalism here -- or if there even is a difference. Could we assume a regular reader of Esquire would understand that what they were reading is a reasonable account of what might have happened in that room? Many people who read "Devil in the White City" didn't seem to have problems differentiating the scenes Erik Larson recreated obviously without witnessing them. I'm talking the scenes with dialogue not the scenes that can be recreated through documents. I know there was some controversy about Larson's approach in doing that, but I think in general most people understood some creative licensing was taking place. Larson admits to doing that in certain scenes, saying he based them on a reasonable assumption of what might have happened based on all the other things he learned in doing his research (that's paraphrasing from what I remember reading about this a while back).
It might not be the Journalism you find in a newspaper, but I assume that's not the audience the writer or Esquire is going after.
And of course, I could be way off base. I just see more similarities in much of Esquire's pieces to creative nonfiction than standard journalism.

 

No, I don't agree.

Again, we're talking about "reasonable readers."

Billy is correct when referencing "creating nonfiction."

He's painting a very plausible picture of what was going on in that hotel room before the shooter left it.

Is every detail 100 percent correct? Of course not.

Is any reasonable reader going to think so? Again, in my opinion, of course not.

Let me put it another way: This very thread proves my point. We know the guy is painting a scene. That's why we're arguing whether he should have done it. We KNOW the facts can't all be 100 percent accurate as described.

I'm saying that for the purposes of this story, it's dramatic license exercised in a perfectly reasonable manner given the writing form involved -- and that no reasonable reader will be duped, nor is there any intention to do so.

 

It's not about being duped. I can read it and know he wasn't there. Doesn't make it right.