The latest issue of the Nieman Narrative Digest focuses on the most vulnerable of subjects: children in trouble.
"Many newspaper narratives focus in some way on children we worry about," notes the Digest's editor, Nell Lake. "Portray children in trouble, editors know, and readers will care. The question is, how to write well about such emotionally weighty subjects?"
The issue features a new essay by Barry Siegel, director of the literary journalism program at UC Irvine, who won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. Pulitzer jurors called his story, "A Father's Pain, a Judge's Duty and a Justice Beyond Their Reach," a "humane and haunting portrait of a man tried for negligence in the death of his son, and the judge who heard the case." You can read it, as well as Siegel's wise advice to writers focusing on endangered children. His bottom line:
" 'Endangered kids' pieces? Most certainly recognize them as such -- then try to write them as something else, as something more -- as something that gets at all the reasons for why we're feeling so emotional."
The home page also features Sonia Nazario's "Enrique's Journey", Anne Hull's "Young and Gay in Real America", and Isabel Wilkerson's "First Born, Fast Grown", and Diana Sugg's "If I Die."
Think of the way children usually appear in the news: as victims or valedictorians. We owe them more: stories told with sensitivity, nuance and respect for their developing, and all too often, endangered lives. This issue of the Nieman Narrative Digest helps show us how.
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