Either you're with us

My comments' box here at Blogger seems to be able to swallow comments rather than publish them - but one was rescued in summary and sent to me by e-mail in stead:

The commentator, R, had a striking experience with Danish reporter Camilla Stockmann's writings. A few years ago Stockmann covered an event in R's own professional surroundings, and her account struck him as arrogant and condenscending as she was portraying his colleagues as members of some peculiar, exotic tribe in a remote country (which, in fact, they are not).

Then, via links in my previous blogpost, R read Stockmann's account of Alexander Brener and Barbara Shurz' provocative appearances in Copenhagen last year. As it happens, R himself has encountered Alexander Brener live in Ljubljana, Slovenia, a couple of years ago where Brener turned up at a public meeting where Brener approached Slavoj Zizek, who served as a moderator at the event, and spat Zizek right in the face, twice. Reading Stockmann's reportage R suddenly found himself siding with her, partly grateful for getting some more information about Brener, partly having his feelings of contempt for the man confirmed.

So what R is suggesting is that Stockmann's writing style is certainly able to communicate a sense of facination, but also a - cheap, says R - sense of identification at the expense of people who are portrayed in the journalistic coverage without getting heard.

I've returned to Stockmann's text on several occasions now, so it may not come as a surprise that I tend to agree with R. Stockmann's article immediately caught my interest when I originally saw it in the paper, but as I was reading it I felt invited to develop contempt for the two provos, even to pity them. And they may have deserved it, the text does make a good case that they do deserve it, but the reassuring or affirmative drive of the narrative against the two still seemed unfair. Let me stop here, though, and just link back to October06.

What's the sound of a name dropping?

A reporter hanging out with celebrities is in a position to investigate how it is that people feel aroused, elevated, humbled or annoyed by celebrity presence or by having celebrity names dropped at them. What forces are at play? They are strong forces, for sure, which are used daily to get all sorts of people hooked on journalistic stories.

In an article (in Danish) on star quality in reporters I have argued that a given reporter who himself admits to feeling hooked or somehow affected by the stardom of people he is interviewing, has gained some common ground with his readers by acknowledging an element of more or less irrational fascination. But what is more, he has also reached a level of awareness where he is able to play with namedropping as an element of style and be critical of the dynamics that it may cause in the reading process.

My article is not an academic piece, and one reader, I've been told, has already concluded that it sounds like something out of a ladies' magazine. So I'm ready for all sorts of comments on my specific readings (of four first person accounts of reporting in the company of celebrities) or on the subject in general.

(The idea of studying star quality in reporters was inspired by an article by Nadja Pass in Reflexioner (2004) on the various dimensions of character which might add up to media stardom.)

Unobtrusive

Capote, the movie, (orh yes, it's highly recommendable) portrays Truman Capote as not just a vain reporter, but one who gets heavily involved, personally as well as financially, in the story he's covering.

[15:35-- Hmm, when I say financially involved I'm thinking of Capote taking some action to influence the legal proceedings, offering some sort of support, pulling some strings, but actually I don't remember the details as to whether or not money was involved.]

All the more striking is his self-portrayal in writing. This is how obtrusive he gets (and I suppose it's him though he doesn't even use the first person singular) - and this is how much he lets readers in on the explicit subject of his field work - after more than 300 pages:

'That was a cold night,' Hickock said, talking to a journalist with whom he corresponded and who was periodically allowed to visit him [on Death row]. 'Cold and wet. It had been raining like a bastard, and the baseball field was mud up to your cojones. So when they took Andy out...

What was he thinking?

In an attempt to challenge my suspicion towards American style narrative journalism I've been reading Truman Capote's 1965 classic In Cold Blood. Surely a memorable book. Surely a "remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative" (thus the back cover of my Penguin), but the synthesis remains dubious too. No matter how many farmhands, friends and relatives Capote has been interviewing I can't help feeling offended by his way of reconstructing another man's unaccompanied morning walk on a particular morning.

Capote builds such a narrative which suggests an interior monologue, a train of thought, that the thinking man in question, Mr Clutter, has not been alive to confirm:

After drinking the glass of milk and putting on a fleece-lined cap, Mr Clutter carried his apple with him when he went outdoors to examine the morning. It was ideal apple-eating weather; the whitest sunlight descended from the purest sky, and an easterly wind rustled, without ripping loose, the last of the leaves on the Chinese elms.

"It was ideal apple-eating weather" - says who? Said perhaps Mr. Clutter on a previous occasion? And then probably thought so on this morning too? Personally I wouldn't ever want a reporter to ascribe an observation like that to me without asking.

More about Capote's writing style later. For now, here's a sample.

Not going native

So, I'm back from the family cottage up North where (access to) "the net" is advertised in inverted commas in order to clearly differentiate internet from fishing nets.

Or am I jumping to conclusions here in order to write a neat totem story and poke ever so gentle fun at the locals? Ever since I saw the poster I've been wanting to pass it on as a telling anecdote, and I'm not a reporter, but, well, my point is that the tempting totem story presents itself, even when you're just writing a post card. Or a blog post.