Add This

Friday, September 01, 2006

Spinning gold on deadline

Cause it's been a long week after another long week and I'm tired, I thought I'd leave you this weekend with a terrific piece of narrative journalism.

Tom Hallman Jr. is a Pulitzer Prize-winning feature writer from The Oregonian. He also headed up SPJ's traveling Narrative Writing Workshop this year. I heard him tell the background of this story at the Vegas convention last year. He was assigned to cover a local college graduation, a rather routine story. The PR office was pushing the story of some professor who was receiving some honor.

Tom pushed for something more interesting. He asked if there were any interesting students in the graduating class. He was handed Juan Morales, a 38-year-old former migrant worker from Mexico. Tom spun gold with this story — and he did it on deadline.

Enjoy the holiday weekend!

1 comment:

Kristin Ohlson said...

Ah, wonderful story. Thanks for posting it.