Letter From Lillian
Ross
The veteran New Yorker writer's rules of reporting.
BY
LILLIAN ROSS | Somewhere
along the line, a critic used the phrase "fly on the wall" to describe
my journalistic "technique." Bill
Shawn called it "a silly and meaningless phrase." He said, "It's
for people who don't understand that every writer is different from every other
writer, the way every human being is different from every other." Today,
there are journalism teachers who actually "teach" their students
to "be a fly on the wall." Even I, to my amazement, was asked, as
late as the 1990s, by a former editor at The New Yorker to do a certain
story and to "do it as a fly on the wall." What craziness! A reporter
doing a story can't pretend to be invisible, let alone a fly; he or she is seen
and heard and responded to by the people he or she is writing about; a reporter
is always chemically involved in a story. Any editor instructing a reporter
to be a fly — on or off the wall — is misguided.
Often, when I write my stories, it feels a bit like creating a
short story, but it's more difficult, because I'm working with facts. I don't
believe a reporter has the right to say what his subject is thinking or feeling.
Furthermore, thoughts and opinions and feelings, including those of a reporter,
should be demonstrated in the reporting of quotes and actions. As I write, I'm
always trying to build scenes into little story-films. Whether I'm writing a
short piece for "The Talk of the Town" (about 1,000 words) or a long
one (4,000 to 8,000 words), I always think of it visually, like a film, that
tells a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
In
my introduction to Reporting,
I tried to outline some of my guidelines — I called them "principles,"
a word I acquired in my life with William Shawn. Today, I still try to follow
these principles. I still abide by them. I've repeated some of them here; I've
also amplified them.
Here are my working guidelines:
I try to write as clearly and simply and straightforwardly as
possible. In poetry and fiction, there may be a place for ambiguity, but there
isn't in reporting.
I choose to write only about people, situations, and events that
appeal to me. Every editor I've worked with believed, as I did, that the only
reason to write a story — especially a story about a person — was
to shed some light on what that individual is in relation to the work he does.
Fame or sensationalism alone are never appealing; in fact, they're deadening.
I don't want to write about anybody who doesn't want me to.
I don't want to write about anyone I don't like.
I trust my response to a person in the first few minutes of meeting
him. The first experience — of anything, to me — is the most significant
and the most memorable. It's that sense — of a person or an event or a
situation — that leads me, in the act of writing, to my story. Recognition
of that sense is immediate.
If another person permits me to write about him, he is opening
his life to me, and I have a responsibility to him. Even if that person is indiscreet
about himself, or invades his own privacy, I use my own judgement in deciding
what to write. Just because someone "said it" is no reason for me
to use it. My obligation to people I write about doesn't end once my piece is
in print. Anyone who trusts me enough to talk about himself is giving me a form
of friendship. I am not doing him a "favor" in writing about him,
even if he values publicity. A friend is not to be used and abandoned. A friendship
established in writing about someone often continues to grow after a piece of
writing is published. Although I don't want to write about people I dislike,
I certainly use common sense if I write about a friend. Common sense dictates
that the writer has no self-serving or self-aggrandizing motive for selecting
the subject.
The old fictional portrayal of the journalist — at his desk,
fedora on his head, pecking away at the typewriter, cigarette drooping from
a corner of his mouth, a half-full whiskey bottle near at hand — is for
the birds. Some of my former colleagues who followed that way of life found
that it was damaging to their work, to their productivity, to their lives. A
marvelously talented tennis player, Monica Seles, was asked recently why she
goes on playing competitive tennis. She replied: "It's what I love to do,
and it's given me a special and wonderful life." That's the way I feel.
I resist taking a writing assignment for financial reasons. Earning
money is often mentioned as a way to "free you to do what you want to do
later on." One certain way of blocking you from doing what you want to
do later on is to do something else now for the money alone.
I don't use a tape recorder when I report. To me, the machine
distorts the truth. It's a fast, easy, and lazy way of eliciting talk, but a
conversationalist is not necessarily a writer. Tape-recorded interviews are
not only misleading; they are unrealistic; they are lifeless. I don't want a
machine to do my listening for me. Literal reality rarely rings true. It is
not interesting. Among other things, the reporter hears too much of his own
voice. Tape-recorded interviews by newspaper reporters covering straight news
stories are obviously necessary. That is a different kind of journalism, the
kind I don't do.
As soon as I started reporting, I started taking my notes in small,
3 x 5-inch spiral Clairefontaine
notebooks. I have thousands of these notebooks filled with my scribbling. Most
of the time, I use a Uni-Ball
pen with a micro point; it's fast moving. I try to listen while I write,
and if I can't do both simultaneously, my listening takes priority. Listening
is the quintessential word. I make sure to write down key, identifying phrases
and words that help me remember the rhythm and context of what I'm hearing.
Then I'm able to reproduce long exchanges. When I'm working against an imminent
deadline, I have the theme of the story in mind as I report, and I'm able to
write my story from my notes. Often, I prefer to transcribe my notes as soon
as possible in a way that makes it easier for me to remember exactly the way
the talk, especially the dialogue, went. Invariably — and from the time
I started doing this work — I found that I've had a sense of what the "story"
should be right away, and, as I'd go along in writing it, there has been a certain
mystical force — something outside of myself — that takes over and
the story seems to write itself. Once that force takes over, it makes the work
seem delightfully easy and natural and supremely enjoyable. It's sort of like
having sex.
BY
LILLIAN ROSS | 
In
my introduction to 
