Words Weekly, Chapter 2:

Adventures in Criminal Justice…and Texas

Time to waste some digital ink on two of my favorite subjects. (Check out Chapter 1 for this blog post’s objective.)

The Word That Stayed With Me

the verb “city-slick”

This, which I haven’t seen anywhere else, comes courtesy of Gary Cartwright, who only entered my life about a year and a half ago. He started out in newspapers around and in Dallas, then became a staff writer at Texas Monthly. He’s an incredibly clever writer; his sentences just pop off the page like champagne corks. Anyway, this use of “city slick” is in his 1979 book, Blood Will Tell, about the richest man (at the time) ever tried for murder. How he uses it requires some context to have it make sense: The rich dude’s trial was moved from high society Fort Worth to podunk Amarillo, and his lawyers worried they’d come off as city-slickers the jury wouldn’t trust, so:

“They needed one well-known Amarillo lawyer present in the courtroom to dispel the image of themselves as a battery of high-priced outsiders come to city-slick the good folks of Potter County.”

I love it when words are used in interesting and different-than-expected ways, such as nouns transforming into verbs.

Also, I highly recommend that book, particularly Part 1.

The Words I Wish I’d Written

“On April 12, 1987, Michael Morton sat down to write a letter. ‘Your Honor,’ he began, ‘I’m sure you remember me. I was convicted of murder, in your court, in February of this year.'”

— “The Innocent Man, Part One” by Pamela Colloff, Texas Monthly

It’s not exactly the most scintillating word-play out there, but how fast it goes from 0 to 60 fascinates me. The first line is rather ho-hum: OK, so he wrote a letter, so what? Then he mentions being convicted of murder, and it’s like: Holy shit! Even better, the remaining 28,000 words or so don’t let that feeling up.

The Stories I Made Time For

“Is Texas Getting Ready to Kill an Innocent Man?” by Jordan Smith, The Intercept

After the “this is motherfucking atrocious” reaction I get whenever I see these kinds of stories, I quietly think this to myself: Seems like there could be one of these stories for every reporter there is in Texas. The state is so chockfull of them, it made reading this New Yorker story on an innocent-but-imprisoned man in Chicago rather strange — Wait, I found myself thinking, this didn’t take place in Texas? Anyway, David Grann’s story on the execution of a more-than-likely (read: totally) innocent man is required reading.

“9 Exits on America’s Football Highway” by Wright Thompson, ESPN The Magazine

Pretty, pretty sentences. The man writes pretty, pretty sentences. I also admire how he mixes up the length of his paragraphs, sometimes going long paragraph, one-sentence paragraph, long paragraph, one-sentence paragraph, with the one sentence as one of many kickers (or mic-drops) throughout the story. One more thing, I think this is a great observation about suburban life nowadays: “They came to New London to find oil, and they come to places like Allen, north of Dallas, to find affordable land within an ever-expanding definition of a reasonable drive to work.”

The Older Story I Made Time For

“Free to Kill” by Gary Cartwright, Texas Monthly

Cartwright details legendary Texas killer Kenneth McDuff’s two sprees in horrific detail. It’s hard to read. I’m sure that’s the point.

The Article That Got Me Thinking

“Bill Keller Knows Why the Oxpecker Sings” by Matt Negrin, Bloomberg Politics

Keller is the former editor of The New York Times and recently started The Marshall Project that will cover criminal justice (in case you hadn’t heard). The interviewer asked whether the venture was advocacy journalism, to which Keller replied:

Was Watergate advocacy? Woodward and Bernstein and The Washington Post understood there was something really rotten going on in the Nixon administration. And that didn’t make them Democrats or Libertarians or left-wingers or right-wingers. It just made them journalists. … When you look at a system that is not living up to its own standards, and you report on that, that’s not partisan or ideological. That’s just journalism.

This reminds me a bit of what the authors The Race Beat called the “cult of objectivity”: Reporters covering the Civil Rights Era struggled with whether to put denials from racists that they were racists in their stories. They finally decided, essentially, What’s the point? If a racist is a racist, he’s a racist. Being “objective” — and issuing denials — served no purpose, and really was a disservice to readers.

Keller also said this to Vox about the Project:

I like the idea of we’re doing journalism because that’s what I do, but I like the idea of journalism with a sense of mission, a kind of focus, a sense of purpose. Which is not an agenda of specific reforms we want to enact, or people we want to elect, but problems that we want people to think clearly about and understand. And we’ll also write some about solutions and whether or not they stand up to scrutiny.

And this:

I have never believed that impartial journalism — which is the word I prefer to objectivity, just because objectivity sounds like a state of being that doesn’t really exist — I’ve never believed that impartial journalism meant that you didn’t reach conclusions, that you gave equal ink to every point of view, even the preposterous points of view. Impartial journalism doesn’t mean you have to pretend that evolution doesn’t exist, or that climate change is a myth. What it means is that you go into your reporting with an open mind. You’re led by the facts. Sometimes those facts lead to a conclusion; sometimes they lead to a disagreement.

So, fairness > objectivity. Sometimes a story, and the truth, is one-sided.

(OK, I guess that was technically two articles that made me think.)

— h/t American Press Institute

What’s Burning a Hole in my Pocket App

Sometimes I scroll through my Pocket app like it’s a Netflix queue: What do I want to entertain me right now? I’ll pass a title and think, that would be a good film to watch, but I just don’t have the mental stamina to engage with something of substance right now. Same with some articles in that app: I know, at some point, I’ll want to read them, but I want to savor the moment. Needless to say, some stories get stuck in there a while.

This week: “The Endless Odyssey of Patrick Henry Polk” by Gary Cartwright, Texas Monthly

The Book I’m Engrossed In Right Now

The Powers That Be by David Halberstam

Still deep in it but making progress. One thing I didn’t know was that Time was essentially a Republican mouth piece when it started. Its creator and editor-in-chief, Henry Luce, changed copy to make Republicans awesome and Democrats vile and also to reflect how he wanted the world to be, not how it was. And, boy, were (some of) his reporters pissed. Another thing I didn’t know: the founders of the Los Angeles Times thought Time was too far to the left.

Thanks for reading!

Bonus Vid

Words Weekly, Chapter 1:

Ode. What A Great Word. Simple, full of meaning.

Since I was little, I’ve loved the written word. I struggled with it at first, but I overcame it, and I think that’s why I’ve picked my career path. I love how letters form words, how words form phrases, how phrases form sentences, which then form paragraphs, which then form sections in stories and chapters in books. This is my ode to these formations — with a dash of reporting talk mixed in. It’s going to be esoteric, and probably will interest only me. I do what I’ve done below in my head anyway, so I might as well put it in writing.

(I’m going to try to do something like this regularly [once a week], just because I’m obsessed with email newsletters right now and I think having one of my own would be fun; doing a blog post is a semi-slide into that world. I’ll h/t where I get stuff, unless of course I find it on my own, which in that case, uh, I won’t. And if someone comes up with a better name, please let me know.)

The Word That Stayed With Me

perquisite

It’s not the coolest sounding word in the world, but I like it’s definition. It can mean, simply, a perk. But it’s more like an unwarranted reward based on someone’s position. So, like, big Wall Street banks not getting destroyed after destroying people’s livelihoods is a perquisite. This past week was the first time I came across it, in David Halberstam’s The Powers That Be (more on that later). Surprised it isn’t used more often.

The Words I Wish I’d Written

This requires some context. James Kilpatrick, a staunch segregationist (and the subject of these words not the writer), was the editor of the Richmond News Leader, a Virginia newspaper in the 1950s and ’60s whose copy reflected that of its editor. He firmly believed the country wasn’t a unit, but a “collection of individual, sovereign states”:

“Consequently, Kilpatrick frequently noted, readers would never see the term ‘United States’ take the singular in his editorials. Awkward as it was stylistically, the United States was not mentioned in his editorials. But the United States were. Though a stickler on such things, Kilpatrick was not a prude about editorial humor.”

— The Race Beat by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff

Obviously meta, but the writers don’t dwell on how clever it is, just get back to the narrative, and I think that’s so slick.

The Stories I Made Time For

“Double Jeopardy” by Paige Williams, The New Yorker

On judicial override in Alabama. I have a soft spot in my heart for that state because I have family there, but you can’t defend most of the shit that happens in there. A cool note: The “nut graf” comes about halfway through it.

— h/t about every long-form or “best links” thing I follow or subscribe to

“The Long Way Home” by Eli Saslow, ESPN The Magazine

Saslow is my favorite writer, and this story only makes me love his writing more (even though it’s about a Denver Bronco, and I still can’t forgive that team for beating my Packers in the 1997 Super Bowl; I know I was 6, but still).

The Older Story I Made Time For

“Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” by Joan Didion

C’mon, it’s Joan Didion.

The Article That Got Me Thinking

“‘Serial’ and White Reporter Privilege” by Jay Caspian Kang, The Awl

Like many people, I love “Serial” (more for how it details great reporting, and what I can learn from it, more than for its storytelling). Unlike many people, I don’t like Kang’s writing, but he is an incredibly smart dude and he makes a great point here. I’m a white male, so I have a lot of built-in privilege already, so this article is about me.

When reporting on police shootings in Dallas, I think about the dynamic between white and minority communities a lot because I’m covering a community that’s essentially foreign to me. The balance of power seems so skewed in my favor; I’m surprised people talk to me. Good to be aware of that dynamic, but I haven’t found a way around it yet: Usually I just acknowledge that I know I’m white and can’t ever understand what you’re going through, but I’ll listen carefully as you describe it. (This topic deserves way more words than I’ve written here.)

What’s Burning a Hole in my Pocket App

Sometimes I scroll through my Pocket app like it’s a Netflix queue: What do I want to entertain me right now? I’ll pass a title and think, that would be a good film to watch, but I just don’t have the mental stamina to engage with something of substance right now. Same with some articles in that app: I know, at some point, I’ll want to read them, but I want to savor the moment. Needless to say, some stories get stuck in there a while.

This week: “The Ripples From Little Lake Nellie” by Gary Smith, Sports Illustrated

The Book I’m Engrossed In Right Now

The Powers That Be by David Halberstam

He has this tendency to start a paragraph with only a name, then a short or incomplete sentence to describe its owner. It’s pretty awesome, even though sometimes I feel he overuses it.

Examples:

• “Henry Robinson Luce. Harry. Everyone called him Harry, it was a sign of terrible ignorance to call him Henry, though he was not a good old boy, he was not easily approachable, and he did not grant intimacy easily.” Then, later in the book, Halberstam starts another graf about Luce like this: “A curious blend of a man. Part sophisticate and part hick. At once shy and incredibly arrogant.”
• “Chambers. His name is stamped indelibly on that era.”
• “It had started with Harrison Gray Otis. General Otis. General in title, but even more in spirit. A fierce man.”

Plus, the book is about journalism, and who doesn’t love talking ad nauseam about that? It’s really long; it might be here a while…maybe this wasn’t the best idea for a section.

Thanks for reading!