Bypassing the default ending

Greg Myre of The New York Times gives a powerful demonstration in today's edition how bypassing the kicker quote--journalism's default ending--intensifies a story's climax. It's on display in Myre's account from Haifa, Israel ; his interviews with wounded Israel soldiers portray their Hezbollah foes as the kind of wily insurgents that won the Vietnam War, drove the Soviets from Afghanistan and has turned Iraq into a civil war bloodbath. (See Reading List below).

“Hezbollah is everywhere, but they are very hard to find,” [an Israeli tank commander told Myre]. “They work in small units or two or three men. They wear civilian clothes. You don’t see them. You just see their fire.”

From a craft standpoint, what impressed me most was the way Myre ended his story, not with the customary quote that too many journalists rely on, but with narrative details that convey the realities of warfare.

"As the soldiers recuperated in their beds, the thumping of incoming helicopters was audible outside, as more wounded came in from the battlefields of Lebanon.

With wounds still raw, the soldiers at the hospital are already contemplating their future.

Captain Daub said he hoped the doctors would clear him to return to the command of his company as soon as next week.

Sergeant Yousef, who is facing six months of recovery, according to his doctors, expressed regret that he would not be returning to his unit.

And Sergeant Bar-On strummed his guitar in bed, saying the loss of his lower legs would not keep him from performing in his heavy metal band, Vendetta."

Quote endings often signal the writer's not-so-subtle bias, a subjective take that uses a source's quote to carry a story's ideological water.

Myre's closes with a gallery ending, a device usually reserved for leads. it's replete with status details (could you make up a more ironic fact than an Israeli soldier's heavy metal band is named Vendetta?) that lets the reader decide its meaning, rather than giving a limited option pre-determined by whoever gets the final word.

Myre's choice brings to mind T.S. Eliot's "objective correlative," which relies on concrete objects to provoke an emotional response.

Those emotions reflect the reader's perspective, rather than the writers. For me, the examples of what lies ahead for three wounded soldiers that end Myre's story evoke these reactions: war is quicksand, the unbreakable bond between soldiers, and resilience.

What's your response to the same trio?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reading List:

"Ghost Wars "by Steve Coll

"Fiasco" by Thomas E. Ricks

"One Per Cent" by Ron Suskind

"Rise of the Vulcan" by James Mann

"The Looming Tower" by Lawrence Wright

Thomas Ricks' 10 Non-Iraq Books for Understanding Iraq

(Image: Michael Kamber for The New York Times

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Great example. I thought about the humanity of war and the fact that war is something to get through so you can keep doing what you enjoy...simple things like playing in a band.

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Chip,
Started discussing Fiassco with Jay and it struck me "what is the truth about war?". Interviews with Lebanese soldiers would show the same motions and desires. So who is "right" and who is "wrong". Can the media help or muddle?

Roger

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