The Girl in the Windo

Narrative journalism might be a dying breed. At least, narrative journalism of the detailed and lengthy variety that immerses you entirely in another life. Various opinions have been offered as to why this might be happening, with the most obvious suggestion being the effect of skim-reading on the internet just becomes too entrenched of a habit.

I'd like to be optimistic and believe that as long as a truly compelling, genuine story comes by, narrative journalism will remain alive.

Poynter Online pointed me, online (ugh, i hate myself) to this article that takes us into the life of Danielle;

A 7-year-old girl, unable to speak or feed herself, discovered in a filthy, roach-infested room, her diaper overflowing and her body covered with bites. How do you tell a story like this? Poynter's St. Petersburg Times responded by clearing its Sunday features section and devoting six ad-free pages to a 6,500-word narrative and haunting photographs of the girl and her adoptive family.

The project was the result of months of reporting and photographing by two gifted journalists, as well as a behind-the-scenes team. The story is worth a reader's time. And for journalists, it's worth analyzing for lessons learned, including this: A few months into the project, reporter Lane DeGregory and photographer Melissa Lyttle found themselves without compelling content for the Web and had to retrace their steps in reporting this story. (Here's the multimedia presentation.)

Go ahead, click this link, or if you're more of a image & sound kind of person, click this one.

They're both examples of the best sort of journalism, and a careful merging of the two might just be a useful platform based on which narrative journalism can thrive.

As Roy Peter Clark writes, talking about the story,

Here's one argument about the future of newspapers. They should contain more of the elements that make the online experience compelling: shorter bites of information, greater interactivity, links to other resources. But, in spite of its enlightened online presence, "The Girl in the Window" represents the opposite of that experience. It is decidedly Old School in the time required to investigate and write it, in its scope and length, and in its vision of what a reader is willing to enter into. The story says to the reader: "You say you don't have TIME to read this, but we bet you can find the time to read THIS."

If you're interested in journalism and the way it's developing, definitely click that link, and wash it all down with one more analytic response, including an interview of the two journalists who worked on the project.

And finally, if you're still reading this, revel in the fact that you have just contributed to the Fourth Estate, and are part of proof, if you're into those things, that we can still find humanity in ordinary (in this case, compassionately ordinary) lives.

Excelsior.