Wright Thompson: outta the park, through the uprights, slam dunk, et al

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Don't you generally read someone because you enjoy the personality someone brings to his/her writing? We're inundated with personality....you can't get anywhere in this business today without a personality and presence that distinguishes you or makes you notorious. Nothing new there, but so much more obvious now that you can twitter and blog with your readers.

 

You can have a style or a personality, but it shouldnt impinge upon the subject or the news

 

I just don't know how practical that is, when every tweet and blog and radio/TV segment is all about the personality.

Here's a random example, not picking on anyone in particular, but just saw this tweet from G Doyle: 'If your phone rings at 8 p.m. ET, it won't be me. I'll be watching LeBron's pregame ritual: blowing smoke up his own ass.'

That's the personality talking, the style that attracts his readership.. How can it not impact the way he writes about the game? How would you have him do it different?

 

21, I kind of agree with you, but "personality" is becoming one of those words that doesn't mean what it used to. A writer can and should have a personal style in prose. But to me, the word "personality" applied to a journalist now means "comes off as a flaming asshole."

 

Like "journalism"?

And while I doubt it's a coincidence you followed up a post including a Doyel quote with the term "flaming asshole," that LeBron comment was fucking hilarious.

 

And I agree with you. In this conversation, 'personality' seems to be a pseudonym for 'outrageous/controversial for the sake of being outrageous/controversial.'

I used the Doyle quote but could have used a dozen others...where the 'personality' precedes the content. You know what you're getting.

 

He's a columnist, and aside from the issue of how this represents public discourse swirling further down the bowl, he can have at it as far as I'm concerned. But as far as documenting how the game went, plenty of good writers use their style to provide a compelling narrative, without making it about themselves.

 

I didn't think we were talking about basic game reports, that goes without saying. Wasn't this discussion about long form and first person? Maybe I missed where we jumped off that topic.

 

What the start date of sj?

 

Nasty cat fight amongst writers over the story-- complete with the Jones.

http://gangrey.com/2684#comments

Reminiscent of the old sj days.

 

Today I was reading Jane Leavy's Mickey Mantle biography and it made me think of this thread about Wright Thompson's use of first-person.

Leavy's use of first-person in the Mantle book, "The Last Boy," is interesting. The book opens in first-person, with her experience meeting Mantle, and a lot about her upbringing in the Bronx and why this subject means so much to her.

First person also makes occasional intrusions into what is otherwise a straight forward third-person narrative. For example, at one point she goes on a hunt for the person who found the 565-foot home run ball in Washington, D.C. Rather than just straight report on what she discovered, the chapter becomes about her hunt to find that person. That is actually the engine of that particular portion of the narrative.

I think it really, really works. Curious if anyone else has read that book and agrees or disagrees.