Good Tidings of Great Joy

Fri, 8 Jan 2010 09:09:24 -0700

Backup

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 11:31:32 -0700

Claptrap

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0700

I couldn’t resist. I sent Mr. Farley the following email:

I've received your invitation to apply for a Phillips fellowship. How about this?

Claptrap: How Right-Wing Journalism Foundations Threaten Democracy

Right-wing "journalism" foundations undermine democracy and rational discourse by conflating "American culture" and a "free society" with bigotry against immigrants, opposition to unions, rejection of social programs, and disdain for progressivism. The unspoken and explicit notions that the only "good" Americans are those who hold libertarian, pro-capitalist, and anti-working-class views divides the nation, marginalizes minorities, stifles debate, and demeans the ideals on which the country was founded.

Think I'd have a chance with that?

Thank you.

I dunno. Am I being churlish? Ungrateful? Ungracious? Or is it time we stopped letting scumbags like these define the debate?

The Gangrenous Limb

Wed, 4 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Only Practical Path is to Dream Big

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:14:53 -0600

Evidence vs. Hearsay

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:06:04 -0600

It seems incredible to have to make this point, but there is a difference between evidence and hearsay. Since apparently some of the smartest among us don’t seem to know this, allow me to elucidate.
On Sunday, The Washington Post ran my review of Rebecca Solnit’s new book, A Paradise Built in Hell. It’s a very good book, and I reviewed it as such.
I offered only one criticism. Toward the end of the book, Solnit claims to have “evidence” of a massacre of black men during Hurricane Katrina by white residents of New Orleans’s Algiers neighborhood. She had no such thing. She had rumors -- some of them quite compelling -- and hearsay. I pointed out that while the issues were worth raising, calling hearsay and rumor “evidence” is incorrect. New Orleans suffered a lot from such rumors. (Babies raped in the Superdome, etc.) I took exception to Solnit trafficking in the same inflammatory practice.
Hoo-boy. The night the review ran, I received this email from Ms. Solnit:

Dear Mr. Baum,

You slander me and my book. My leads, as documented in A Paradise Built in Hell, led to A.C. Thompson's full-fledged investigation, which triggered the current FBI investigation, a trail you could've easily pieced together. I recounted considerable evidence, including, first of all, vigilante confessions/boasts on video in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. Second of all I spoke with people to whom the vigilantes confessed in the immediate aftermath, as well as to a relative to whom other vigilantes had boasted of killings and shown a photograph of murderers posing with a corpse, and to Malik Rahim, who witnessed both corpses and men with guns and threats and racial epithets. There were enough stories by unconnected individuals to make a convincing case, and this material was the opposite of rumor, something people were reluctant to believe and reluctant to talk about--except for those drunken boasts on the videotape mentioned above. Thirdly, there were bodies of black men on the dry streets of an essentially undamaged Algiers, on the videotape I mentioned above (Amy Goodman of Democracy Now witnessed the same corpse on camera for her show). Bodies and confessions are usually considered good evidence of murder, except, apparently, by you. Fourthly I reported on an ongoing investigation by A.C. Thompson backed by the Nation and Pro Publica, along with the other evidence mentioned above; at my presstime, A.C. had published a very strong report concluding from many overlapping reports by both shooters and by other eyewitnesses and victims that several men had been killed and more shot.

I did not call those people a mob, or elderly; this is part of your apparent desire to dismiss my account. Why is it that you want to dismiss it when you admit that the FBI is investigating the matter? The FBI doesn't investigate overheated rumors. If you'd tried a search before you dismissed my material as "overheated rumor," you would have see that another videotape made by two Pennsylvania detectives in the immediate aftermath of the storm has further corroborated my account. In it, another white man says they killed a lot of black men. A.C. reported of these detectives, "Orsini and Balogh say that they saw as many as five corpses lying around the neighborhood, which did not flood and suffered only minor wind damage. Orsini told WTAE, "Nobody took care of these bodies, and these were all individuals who had been shot." The men videotaped one of the corpses, which was lying beneath a sheet of corrugated metal. Orsini and Balogh have turned over their video over to the FBI."

A.C. also checked out Donnell Herrington's story with doctors, medical records, his companions at the time of the incident and other sources, and both of us got to know him and found him a very credible person. Do you routinely dismiss accounts by people with grievous injuries as to how they were wounded as "overheated rumors"? Given how outrageous this dismissal is, it's hard not to wonder whether it's because of the victim's race.

Finally, this vigilante behavior matches both the pattern of elite panic found in many disasters and corresponds to accounts such as Michael Lewis's in the New York Times, about lots of wigged-out white guys sitting on their porches with shotguns. It would have been more surprising, given the region's arsenal, racial history and the state of mind of those white men inflamed by irresponsible media rumor-mongering, had there not been shootings.

The reluctance of the mainstream media to give credence to this story even in the face of substantial evidence has been one of the most shocking things about it. You owe me an apology. You owe a much bigger one to history.

Rebecca Solnit

Here’s how I responded to Ms. Solnit. The exchange speaks for itself.

Jeez Louise, Ms. Solnit. If this is how you go after somebody who writes a glowing review of one of your books, how do you address people who review you negatively?
Let's go through your "evidence," as you list it, below:
I recounted considerable evidence, including, first of all, vigilante confessions/boasts on video in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane.
Boasts! Spent much time in New Orleans, Ms. Solnit? Boasts are not evidence, especially there.
Second of all I spoke with people to whom the vigilantes confessed in the immediate aftermath, as well as to a relative to whom other vigilantes had boasted of killings
That isn't evidence, that's hearsay. Second- or third-hand at that.
and shown a photograph of murderers posing with a corpse, and to Malik Rahim, who witnessed both corpses and men with guns and threats and racial epithets.
I was there for the disaster, Ms. Solnit, and I don't need to be shown photographs or speak to Malik Rahim to know there were corpses, men with guns, and racial epithets everywhere. (I had more guns pointed at my by fear-crazed white folks than I care to remember.) It was an ugly scene. But if that's your idea of "evidence" of a massacre, we live on different planets.
There were enough stories by unconnected individuals to make a convincing case,
Stories again. As I say in my review, illegal killings may have happened, the FBI is investigating, and you're right to raise the issue. The matter at hand, though, is your overheated use of the word "evidence," which is something very different from hearsay, rumor, and boasts. Can't you see that?
and this material was the opposite of rumor, something people were reluctant to believe and reluctant to talk about
On the contrary. A large cross-section of black New Orleans is only too eager to believe such stories, just as a large cross section of white New Orleans was eager to believe in the untrue rumors of rampaging blacks. Your stoking those hateful fires is what has me critical of your final chapter.
Thirdly, there were bodies of black men on the dry streets of an essentially undamaged Algiers, on the videotape I mentioned above (Amy Goodman of Democracy Now witnessed the same corpse on camera for her show). Bodies and confessions are usually considered good evidence of murder, except, apparently, by you.
There were bodies everywhere, Ms. Solnit. Heatstroke, heart attack, falling debris, and yes, homicide numbered among the causes. I stepped over plenty of dead people, on both sides of the river. And please: Embarrass yourself no further. Anybody who'd call Algiers "undamaged" is truly out of her depth. Algiers didn't flood, but it was devastated by wind. There were a lot of ways to die on the streets of Algiers, and while murder may be on the list, a photograph of a body is not "evidence" of a massacre, even on Amy Goodman's show.
Now let's talk about those "confessions." Do videotaped confessions of white folks boasting about massacring dozens of black men really pass your smell test? In my experience, people who commit murders don't go around confessing them to strangers with video cameras. Boasting about "shooting nigger looters" was very common currency in the days during and following the disaster. Is it worth investigating? Of course. That isn't the issue. The issue is your piecing together a lot of New Orleans yakkety-yak and calling it "evidence."
Fourthly I reported on an ongoing investigation by A.C. Thompson backed by the Nation and Pro Publica, along with the other evidence mentioned above; at my presstime, A.C. had published a very strong report concluding from many overlapping reports by both shooters and by other eyewitnesses and victims that several men had been killed and more shot.
I read Thompson's report in the Nation. He doesn't have any more evidence than you do. What he has is a strong case for the FBI investigating.
I must say there’s something vaguely creepy about your implied assumption that African American New Orleans is so fractured, alienated, disorganized, and incompetent that a group of black men could simply disappear with nobody but Rebecca Solnit and A.C. Thompson raising an alarm. Where are the missing men's families and friends? Who has filed the missing persons reports? New Orleans is not Philadelphia, Mississippi, circa 1963. Does it really make sense that white folks could massacre a bunch of black men -- and boast about it on videotape -- in a city with a black mayor, a majority black city council, and a black police chief? Look at the Danziger Bridge incident; people were all over that from the beginning.
To be clear: I believe there is plenty of good reason for the FBI to investigate certain incidents in Algiers. The story about the policemen possibly burning a wounded man to death in his car is particularly disturbing. But I stand by the conclusion of my review: "(Solnit) is right to raise the issue, but she fails to turn rumor into proof." To find, at the end of a such a terrific book about the corrosive power of rumor and prejudice a lapse into just such rumor-mongering was a disappointment. Everything you raised at the end of "A Paradise Built in Hell" was worth discussing. It just wasn't "evidence," and that was my point.
So I respectfully decline to apologize, to you or to history. But it is nice to know who has been assigned the guardian and protector of history. If in future I need to speak with history, I'll be in touch.

Are we all clear now? Rumors, stories, boasts, and hearsay are useful things. They can be the start of an police or journalistic investigation that can uncover ugly truths. After another furious email from Rebecca Solnit, which is in the comments below, I have added a link above to A.C. Thompson’s very good story in The Nation, which in fact has rightly prompted the New Orleans Police and the FBI to investigate what happened in Algiers.

People’s stories, however compelling, aren’t “evidence,” especially in post-Katrina New Orleans. Thompson comes a lot closer to having the goods in his piece than Solnit does in her book, which is why I pointed out the difference between what she presented in A Paradise Built in Hell and what she said she was presenting.

A Paradise Built in Hell, is a very good book. My review speaks for itself. But Ms. Solnit got a little ahead of herself, and she was let down by her editor, who should have caught the mistake and dialed her back.

The State of Editing

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:10:22 -0600

As I’ve discussed here, much of the writing and non-writing world seems to misunderstand and devalue the role of editors. Many writers resent them, believing them naught but capricious gatekeepers and malicious copy-wreckers. Very few editors deserve that reputation. The resentment arises, I believe, from a misguided faith in the cult of the writer -- a belief that writers are divinely inspired beings receiving pure talent directly from God. The New Yorker promotes this nonsense with its refusal to print a masthead and acknowledge the incredibly talented editors on its staff. Instead, all we readers get is the writer’s byline. Anybody who thinks the copy in the magazine is entirely the work of the writer is deluded.

Editing is everything. Writing a first draft is akin to moving a big block of marble into a sculptor’s studio. It’s hard, and it requires some finesse, but mostly it’s just heavy lifting. It isn’t art. The art happens when the marble starts getting chipped away to find the Pieta within. And that is the role of the editor -- with luck, in concert with the writer.

Writers don’t need to roll over to every change an editor demands. Standing up for one’s work is fine. But writers whose first impulse is resistance, who swoon and gnash their teeth over any changes, are making a serious mistake. Writing is collaborative, and that second pair of eyeballs is as important, in many ways, as the first.

The trick is finding a good editor. I worked at five newspapers during the first six years of my career, constantly moving in search of editors who would improve my copy. A main reason why working for The New Yorker was so great -- aside from the money, the prestige, the word-length, and the time -- was the excellence of the editing. For my first book, I had a grand old lion of the publishing world as my editor -- a hard-drinking, cigarette wolfing raconteur who’d edited Norman Mailer and Ellen Gilchrist. He was great on the broad conceptual stuff, but did almost no line editing. For my second, I had a callow young coward who seemed to do nothing but go to lunch for a living. He added no value at all and often got in the way. I struck gold on my third book, with an editor who thoroughly engaged the copy line by line and had a life-saving sense of the extent to which I could employ the tools of fiction in a non-fiction book.

I’ve been able to weather the ups and downs in outside editing because I have Margaret, who has been my wife and writing partner since 1987. She’s the best editor I’ve ever encountered, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. She’s begun editing others’ novels, non-fiction, and articles on a freelance basis, and is making a lot of people happy. Just today, though, she had a telling thing happen.

One of her clients has a contract with a major publishing house for a non-fiction book. The client is getting nothing out of her publishing-house editor and wants to produce a really good book. She asked her editor to free up some money from her advance so she could pay Margaret to edit the copy. She wasn’t asking for more money, mind you, just a little more of her own advance up front so that she could pay a real editor. The publishing house refused. To have allowed her to use an outside editor, it would have been admitting that its own “editor” was useless. So the writer is denied proper editing, and the publishing house will get a less polished manuscript. Everybody loses.

Point is: Unless you’re a wiggy-brilliant once-in-a-generation genius, you need good editors. If you aren’t happy with the ones you’re working with now, find others that you like and trust.

The Proposal Factory is open for business.

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:30:06 -0600

No matter how well you think you could write an article or a book, you’ll never get the chance if you cannot produce a truly stunning proposal. Editors at magazines and publishing houses are deluged with them. Many read the first two lines and toss them aside. Yours has to hook the editor with its opening sentence, and then demonstrate, all the way through, that the book or story you’re proposing is not only a winner, but that you are the writer for the job.

It’s hard, but it’s not impossible. And here’s a little secret: Editors are desperate for good proposals. If they don’t have good books or articles to publish, they’re out of business. Editors earn points with their bosses by finding great new writers. So while they are demanding, they want you to succeed almost as much as you do.

My wife, Margaret Knox, and I have been earning a good living as freelance writers since 1987, writing for such magazines as The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and The New York Times Magazine. We have produced three well-reviewed non-fiction books. We are very good at writing proposals. In fact, the one that first got us into The New Yorker was, my editor there said, the best proposal he’d ever read; he uses it as a model when teaching classes at Columbia Journalism School. You can read it here. I’ll share others with you when we’re working together. Please also look at Wordwork, my blog about making a living as a writer, which contains a lot of good free advice.

I can help you produce proposals that will command attention.

Take a look at my articles and my three books: Smoke & Mirrors, Citizen Coors, and Nine Lives. You can do anything I can do. All you need as a little advice and perhaps a swift kick.

Want to make a living as a writer? It all starts with the proposal....

See www.theproposalfactory.com or send me an email at danbaum@me.com.

Coming in September, The Proposal Factory!

Fri, 3 Jul 2009 13:02:04 -0600

Margaret, Rosa, and I are taking our summer vacation, headed for Echo Lake, to enjoy a few weeks in a cabin you can’t drive to, that has no phone, electricity, or Internet access. Pure heaven.

We’ll be back in mid-August. Margaret is continuing to amass clients for her editing, all of whom seem very happy indeed. And when I get home, I’m going to hang out a shingle of my own, as The Proposal Factory, coaching clients through the process of conceiving stories, researching and writing proposals for books and magazine articles, getting an agent, and all the other hard-headed business of making a living as a writer.

Check back in mid-August. That’s when the hard work begins. In the meantime, I hope you a restful summer.

The Anecdotal Lede Redux

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 10:27:30 -0600

To return briefly to the subject of the anecdotal lede vs. the conceptual lede, here’s a good example of how lopping off the anecdote to get straight to the point can really improve a story. When covering the Asian tsunami for The New Yorker, I originally wrote the piece like this: Tsunami to Meg_1.pdf

Margaret, in her wisdom, drew big red X’s over the first seven pages of the story! (See Strangling Your Babies in Their Cradles.) I almost had a heart attack. What she was doing, though, was digging down through a useless anecdote to get to the concept around which the story was built. Her edit looked like this: Tsunami to Bennet-1.pdf

"Mission to Sumatra" pdf. is how the story ran in The New Yorker. If you’ll notice, it isn’t much changed from the way Margaret edited it.

So, three lessons here:

1.Be wary of the anecdotal lede.

1. Be willing to cut away your own writing, no matter how much you love it, to make the story healthier.

3. Have Margaret edit your copy.