COMM 353: An alternative weekly free-lance writer on Strunk, White, prolixity and long-form journalism

In the current issue of Illinois Times veteran free-lancer Jim Krohe has a reminiscence about writing long-form journalism for alternative newspapers. They're kind of a creature of the 1970s. (Don't knock it: So am I.) IT is an example. Riverfront Times in St. Louis is an example. The Chicago Reader is an example. In fact, The Reader is a great example because it was one of the first, and it's still one of the most successful.

Wikipedia, which has a pretty good page on alternative papers, says they're "a type of newspaper, that eschews comprehensive coverage of general news in favor of stylized reporting, opinionated reviews and columns, investigations into edgy topics and magazine-style feature stories highlighting local people and culture." They come out weekly, and they're a haven for long-form journalism.

Boy, do I mean long-form. Krohe says he developed a taste for it writing for The Chicago Reader:

... White and Strunk’s Elements of Style, which urges conciseness and brevity, made as little sense to me as, say, [right-wing tax protester] Grover Norquist on taxes. As a result, I have spent 35 years trying to cram magazine articles into the space of a newspaper column, and book chapters into the space of a magazine article, and haven’t pulled it off yet.

I might have been cured as a young professional had I gone to work for, say, a daily newspaper where reporters are typically given only 250 words to tell 500 words worth of story. Instead, like many a bright young boy from small-town Illinois who goes to Chicago, I met people all too willing to indulge my weaknesses for their own profit. I found them not in the drug dens of the West Side but in a converted warehouse in River North, at the offices of the Reader, Chicago’s alternative weekly.

I was to write nearly 60 pieces for that weekly, several of which were some 10,000 words long. By Reader standards, this verged on the laconic. The Reader of yore was a refuge for the endangered species known as long-form journalism. Ben Joravsky’s two-part report in 1992 on the Roosevelt High basketball program, for instance, added up to 40,000 words. This put the editors at odds with much of their readership, which cherished the paper mainly for its entertainment reviews and classified ads. One of the veteran editors, Michael Miner, recently offered this imaginary riposte to those who complained that even a commute on Chicago’s slow-poke el gave them too little time to finish a Reader cover story. “We’re publishing 20,000 words on beekeeping because Mike Lenehan felt like writing 20,000 words, and we know you won’t read 19,000 of them; but if you do, by God, you won’t find a single typo or dangling participle and you’ll learn a hell of a lot about bees. And if you don’t, no hard feelings and good luck finding that apartment.”

Long-form journalism, as no doubt you've noticed reading James Thurber's "Years With Ross," was developed largely by The New Yorker as life got serious with the Depression and World War II. The alternative weeklies, in a way, took what Ross did in New York and replicated the business model in smaller cities. In Chicago, according to a pretty good Wikipedia profile:

The Reader was perhaps best known for its deep, immersive style of literary journalism, publishing long, detailed cover stories, often on subjects that had little to do with the news of the day. An oft-cited example is a 19,000-word article on beekeeping by staff editor Michael Lenehan. This article won the AAAS Westinghouse Science Journalism Award, awarded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1978. ... Ben Joravsky's "A Simple Game" followed a public high school basketball team for a full year. Published in two parts, a total of 40,000 words, it was reprinted in the anthology Best American Sportswriting 1993.

Ben Joravsky still covers politics for The Reader and has written five books, including a print adaptation of the TV documentary "Hoop Dreams" about high school basketball in Chicago. Mike Lenehan was for many years the executive editor of The Reader. His beekeeping article, which is famous in Chicago writing circles, ran in 1977 and has been reprinted in a book "The Essence of Beeing" (get the pun? get it? get it?), set in 12- and 14-point Cooper Oldstyle type and illustrated by artist and professor Alice Brown-Wagner. It is 45 pages long and costs $300 postpaid.

Harold Ross' New Yorker was the next best thing in the 1930s and 40s. Alternative were for the generation (mine) that came along in the 70s and 80s. What's going to be the next best thing for your generation?