MARREN: Reporting through show and tell

Opinion

January 20, 2008

By Tim Marren/marrent@gnnewspaper.com The Lockport Union-Sun %26 Journal Sun Jan 20, 2008, 12:34 AM EST

“Show me, don’t tell me.”

Those words, uttered by a professor during one of my first journalism courses, still ring through my head as I read stories and look over photographs our staff generates on a daily basis.

They are words that every journalist should live by.

Good writers are descriptive. They don’t start a story reporting that 15 inches of snow fell during rush hour. A descriptive writer would open a story describing how those 15 inches of powder caused Jane Doe to drive her red 1991 Mazda into a ditch, with her 10-month-old son in the back, with only passersby coming to her rescue because the police and fire departments were occupied in other parts of the city.

The goal is to show the reader, not tell them. It makes for a lot better reading.

In most cases, photojournalists have it easy when it comes to showing and not telling. Take a picture that tells a story — that’s it. If you have that, and it’s good enough, our headlines become obsolete. The picture says it all. That’s the sign of a good image.

That’s what we had on the front page of Tuesday’s Union-Sun & Journal.

I know some think our decision to run the picture of a distraught and apparently suicidal man with a shotgun to his head on the front page was irresponsible. It’s a horrible cliché, but “a picture says 1,000 words.” If that’s the case, I could probably tack on a few more after some of the e-mails I received. I’ve talked to a few of you and have also responded to every e-mail I’ve received on this topic. The decision we made Monday night to run the photo in Tuesday’s paper wasn’t an easy one.

But in the end, the photo had to run. It showed every reader exactly what transpired Monday morning, just two blocks away from a city school. The story by reporter April Amadon that accompanied the photos was very good, but the photo showed it all.

It told a story.

It showed a troubled man, who for a few hours, thought ending his life publicly was the only choice he had.

It showed multiple police forces, which your tax dollars pay for, with their guns drawn. Heroically they stood just a few feet away from this man, unsure of what his next move would be.

It showed concerned parents wondering why their child’s school was either locked down or locked out for over an hour.

It showed the standoff exactly as it happened. It showed everything you, as a resident, need to know. If we don’t deliver that every day, we’re not doing our job.

For those who said “my kid reads your paper” or “they send your paper to schools for educational purposes” — I know. I want kids reading the paper as much as the next guy. But understand there is some responsibility on you, the parent, if your kids are reading the paper. It’s not all sugar plums and gumdrops.

I’m managing editor of a newspaper, not Highlights magazine. We report and capture photos of reality. The events in and around Lockport are what you pay 50 cents for every day.

Sometimes the news will be positive, other times, like Tuesday, it won’t be. Those are the times when you have to explain to your kid why something is in the news.

Please don’t ask me not to run the best photos we have because of your kids. That would mean we’re keeping the news from you and not showing you exactly how Lockport is. The reality is Lockport has crime. It’s not Mayberry.

As far as this case being a mental health issue, I’m not qualified to determine that. I’m not a doctor and can’t diagnose that. What I can say is that mental health issue or not, someone could make a case that any of the accused in the police blotter each day could be considered to have a mental health issue. But we still report on all of them.

Finally, a lot of people asked if we considered the family before publishing the photo. We did. But like we do everyday in our cops and courts coverage, we go with what we know. Many families ask that we keep certain police reports out of the paper. It never happens, no matter who you know or how much you cry.

If someone gets caught doing something illegal and we get the report from police, it goes in.

The family didn’t agree with our coverage, obviously, and didn’t want me to write this column. But as editor of the paper, it’s my duty to explain to readers why we do what we do.

Our job is to report both with our words and our photos. Leaving out either, if it best tells the story, is doing our readers a disservice.

Managing Editor Tim Marren’s column appears every Sunday. He can be reached

at 439-9222, ext. 6238, or marrent@gnnewspaper.com.

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