First-person feature stories?

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one that i don't think works: My Winner with Andre - Esquire Classic

in fact, when it was published i was nauseated by granger's being sucked whole hog into the agassi vortex, and allowing himself to be so conned into thinking the agassi and "bg" liked him. he thought he was part of the entourage, loved how agassi handled his head both literally and figuratively, and never delved into the nasty half of agassi's personality that made him such a great competitor.

 

[Alma]

Why don't you accept her premise? Do you feel like a black woman entering an all-white church in Charleston would be seeing uneasiness where it might not exist, or that she doesn't do enough to prove it exists beyond asking for the readers trust?

There is no more segregated place than church on Sundays. I write that with sadness, but it's true. African-Americans and whites don't often worship together.

I've walked into predominantly African-American churches before. "Why are you here?" is the look. I do not ascribe "You shouldn't be here" to that look, but each person is different.

 

[doctorquant]

There is no more segregated place than church on Sundays.

MLK: "It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o'clock on Sunday morning."

 

[Alma]

MLK: "It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o'clock on Sunday morning."

I wish it were less true since he said it, and it is in a few kinds of churches. I'm guessing Joel Osteen - not a fan of him personally, but that's immaterial - has a church that's more integrated.

But it generally remains true. And I think it's more the fault of white flight out of cities - to suburban churches where few black people live, and thus would have no reason to attend - than anything.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I wish it were less true since he said it, and it is in a few kinds of churches. I'm guessing Joel Osteen - not a fan of him personally, but that's immaterial - has a church that's more integrated.

But it generally remains true. And I think it's more the fault of white flight out of cities - to suburban churches where few black people live, and thus would have no reason to attend - than anything.

A few years ago, my grandmother died, and I heard the funeral service would be at my aunt's church. (My aunt lives in what has become a predominantly black town.) Anyway, I show up, and I felt like I had walked into the scene in the "Blues Brothers."

Had no idea that my aunt was a sistah at heart - shirt, Billy Ray Cyrus is her favorite artist other than Elvis - and she watches my kids every single weekday.

Carry on.

 

[doctorquant]

I have been to only two Catholic services -- both weddings in a parish in a German farming community in Central Texas -- and suspect those aren't representative, but I would think that Catholic churches in more suburban/urban areas would be more diverse than your garden-variety mainstream-denomination Protestant church. A very large and active Catholic parish is somewhat "in" my neighborhood, and the crowd walking out to the parking lot certainly strikes me as pretty representative of this area -- lotta white folks, sure, but also a lot of African-Americans, Hispanic and Vietnamese (big Vietnamese presence 'round here).

 

[cranberry]

Yeah, I think it varies quite a bit depending greatly on the location and the denomination, not that I've been to church outside of weddings and funerals the past 25 years.

 

[doctorquant]

We go to a big, ornate Episcopal church in Fort Worth. There are a couple of African-American families (the kids have flown the nest recently so we don't seem them so much), a couple of Hispanic families, one big Indian family, and then the rest of it is pretty much upper- and upper-middle-class white folks (mostly straight, a few gay couples).

DaughterQuant is a once-a-month (at least) acolyte, and I am lector once every couple of months. When I am lector, it is always the 1115 service, which puts us on the road back home around 1215/1230. On those days we're prone to stop at a Luby's (cafeteria) that's on the way home, and apparently this particular Luby's is proximate to a large African-American church. When we go there we are literally the only white people in there. There was a time in my life when I would have felt self-conscious about that, but these days, I'm so glad to see fried chicken or chicken-fried steak on my plate, I really can't think about anything else.

 

[Alma]

I have been to only two Catholic services -- both weddings in a parish in a German farming community in Central Texas -- and suspect those aren't representative, but I would think that Catholic churches in more suburban/urban areas would be more diverse than your garden-variety mainstream-denomination Protestant church. A very large and active Catholic parish is somewhat "in" my neighborhood, and the crowd walking out to the parking lot certainly strikes me as pretty representative of this area -- lotta white folks, sure, but also a lot of African-Americans, Hispanic and Vietnamese (big Vietnamese presence 'round here).

I'd generally agree. Part of that is, there's more uniformity - relatively speaking - in liturgy and worship in a given diocese than there would be in Protestant churches of the same geographical area of the diocese. There's some comfort in that overarching structure. I don't personally think it's in the Bible, but it can negate cultural differences. Every church is a little cliquey, but Catholic ones can be a little less so, I've found.

Non-denom churches can quickly turn into an in group around the pastor. Or, worse, it becomes a cult of the woo-woo leadership, like they had in Seattle, and multiplies.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I'd generally agree. Part of that is, there's more uniformity - relatively speaking - in liturgy and worship in a given diocese than there would be in Protestant churches of the same geographical area of the diocese. There's some comfort in that overarching structure. I don't personally think it's in the Bible, but it can negate cultural differences. Every church is a little cliquey, but Catholic ones can be a little less so, I've found.

Non-denom churches can quickly turn into an in group around the pastor. Or, worse, it becomes a cult of the woo-woo leadership, like they had in Seattle, and multiplies.

I was thinking at Mass last week, I wouldn't begin to know what a Protestant service is like.

 

[WriteThinking]

Something about this first person piece in ESPN still bugs me.

Janay Rice, in her own words

I had the same reaction. First off, probably because, just a few lines in, we find out Janay Rice had final sway over the content and its release. Journalistically, this interview could, without doubt, be considered a great "get." But giving that power to the subject definitely takes away from it, even though it's a "personal" first-person piece. And it makes you makes you wonder what might not be included.

Secondly, there are just some distasteful aspects of the case itself that are probably bugging you. That is certainly the case for me. Like, what man spits on his significant other? What couple marries the day after the husband was indicted for assault -- on his beloved, no less? And the timing of a couple of the press gatherings regarding the Rices and their case seemed off, like, why, really, were they doing this? As long as they are standing by each other, some things need to be let alone to lie. The staged-ness of some of the case, including, to some extent, this interview, if off-putting.

I think it's also important to stipulate we're mostly talking about high-level, ambitious stuff here. Maybe it's in a magazine, maybe it's for a website, but we're not talking about the first person piece about cover high school volleyball. (And I wrote about a lot of high school volleyball!) As I've said a lot of times, I don't like hard and fast rules about anything, but it has to be a pretty special newspaper piece to include first person in my eyes. Newspapers have a different relationship with readers than magazines or long-ass stories you read on the web.

The Final Comeback of Axl Rose

Double Down's point here is a great one.

As for the Axl Rose story, I don't know about the first-personhood of this piece. I don't really think it was needed. But I love the descriptiveness of the writing. Really terrific. I like music but am not a fan of Axl Rose. But there was some writing here that made me glad I read it, anyway.

How about the use of first person in this excellent New Yorker piece about the threat of nuclear war with North Korea?

The Risk of Nuclear War with North Korea

This piece was so interesting for some of the smaller but significant points of information that open people eyes to Kim Jong Un and life in North Korea. It didn't need to be written in the first person either, though.

First-person writing, to me, works best with regard to actually "personal" experiences and topics -- things/subjects that actually occur with/to that person -- the self-discovery, self-impacting things, specific to that person, as mentioned earlier by deck Whitman. In most other instances, it is, frankly, just not really needed.

 

[Double Down]

Here is a feature in the new issue of "Esquire" about the girl who was convicted of manslsughter in her boyfriend's suicide.

The writer takes a long time to enter - nearly three printed pages - and finally does so after unspooling the pretrial background.

The homicide trial began this past June at the Bristol County Juvenile Court in Taunton, Massachusetts. I had been covering the case since last December, when only a handful of reporters clustered together on the frozen concrete, grousing about why they couldn't be assigned a murder in Florida.

The first-person establishes that the writer is an eyewitness to the events she describes in the second third of the story, although she only breaks the fourth wall sparingly for a while.

He's a huge presence in the final third, though, when he analyzes the facts and tracks down witnesses in an effort to reach conclusions about Carter and the verdict. It works for me. By the end, when he renders her determination (in first-person), he has very craftily and steadily, while patiently increasing his involvement, built up the trust with the reader to credibly issue his judgment.

There is no journey of self-discovery for the writer. The focus remains on Carter.

Behind the Scenes of the Michelle Carter Verdict - Conrad Roy Suicide Trial

That was a good piece, certainly more nuanced than the version that originally ran in the Wash Post that made Carter look like a total monster. The first person references certainly didn't distract from the narrative, although I'm not convinced they were necessary. However, I really dislike the awkward construction of "Three weeks after the trial, Carter's best friend met with a reporter" when the *reporter* is the person telling the story, so I think it served its purpose here.

A quick aside: The on-line design of this story really did it a disservice at the end. You have the whole story building to the last paragraph, the fact that she called him and called him, her desperation increasing as he slipped away, and the final section begins with one paragraph, then it's broken up by a giant ad, then it's two short paragraphs to close. I had to read it three times to make sure that was really the end.