Power of painting with details
Binyamin Appelbaum of The Washington Post writes about the fallout of bank failures in Charlotte, N.C., as part of the paper’s Consequences of the Crisis series. Binyamin’s story uses details to paint pictures of how Charlotte has changed.
For example, he uses numbers to illustrate the economic impact banking had on the city:
At the peak of the boom, Bank of America and Wachovia employed about 35,000 people in Charlotte. Bankers made up 10 percent of the city’s workforce. And the richly rewarded bankers collected 22 percent of the city’s wages — well more than $1 billion pumping into the local economy each year.
And here’s another great detail from Binyamin, who used to work at The Charlotte Observer:
Grady Parker, who has shined the shoes of bankers for 23 years in a retail arcade across from Wachovia’s former headquarters, said days now pass without a single customer climbing into one of his worn leather chairs.
Today’s Tip: Telling details give credence to articles and better illustrate the story.
In an article titled the “Power of Detail,” Chip Scanlan of the Poynter Institute says: “Writing with details demands reporting for detail. Details show the reporter hard at work, observing, sensing, questioning, noting. But details must be relevant and used judiciously. Like a strong spice, they can overpower a story or mire it in minutiae.”
The article also offers tips from Best Newspaper Writers winners on gathering details.
My own reporting for details improved from working with Hank Klibanoff, then business editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer. I’d written about a college student who’d launched an ice cream business. Hank asked lots of questions that required several calls to sources. I saw how important those details were as I sat next to him during the editing process. My goal became to never have to call a source back again because Hank had a question.
