Q&A

Ballard: The title of your talk for the Thompson Forum is "Why Write About the World? The Moral Function of Storytelling as It Brings International Issues Home." Give me a overview of what that's about.

Rosenblatt: As a reporter you see so much of the destruction of the world and so many difficult things to write about. In recent years I've been in Sudan, in Rwanda, and before that in Cambodia, Northern Ireland, Israel, Beirut, Lebanon and so forth. And after a while you ask yourself, Ò why write about it?Ó What good does it do to communicate? The same is true for radio and television. If you don't learn to justify that then I think you're in trouble professionally, maybe even personally. So this talk is about the justification of that. Why write? Why tell a story?

If particularly as a journalist you see cyclical patterns of really terrible and self-destructive things in the world, that you know as you write about it it isn't going to change the pattern, why do it? And I came to the conclusion that it's almost a biological instinct. We do it because we're born to tell each other stories. That's the way we make a connection not just with one another in the present, but among generations. We're born storytellers, and we want to get one anotherÕs attention. We have something to say. I suppose ultimately the story we have to tell is the story of ourselves, of our lives. That instinct is so massive, so monumental, so basic and instructive that it drives us to do this kind of work which is journalism, or really do any kind of work.

Ballard: Your background includes telling stories about other countries, their struggles and perhaps their triumphs. But you raise a good question. Why do it? Why tell about events on the other side of the world when there are stories we need to hear about things in our own backyard? Do you hear that often?

Rosenblatt: Not as much because I also write about what happens here. But you certainly do. I remember when I wrote my first big story for Time called "Children of War." People said Ònow that you've done that, why don't you come back and do the interior wars of American cities or just America period?Ó I wound up eventually doing that, looking at rough neighborhoods in Brooklyn and other places. But I guess I never really felt there was much of a difference, that people are basically people both for good and for ill.

People will do awful things to one another under any circumstance, wherever they are, under any nationality. Perhaps the value of saying Rwanda is you, or Sudan is you and so forth, is to remind us of this basic biological connection. I mean we're just one kind of animal. Tribes, nations, territories and borders really tend to make very little difference in terms of basic human behavior and that's usually what I write about.

Ballard: I like the title to your speech, but what is the difference between storytelling and reporting?

Rosenblatt: I think one major difference is that in reporting, you're feeding into the basic nature of the story. You're not telling the whole story though, because the whole story really has to do with the perception of what you reported. This doesn't mean you distort it, but the pieces I write and have written have always been called essays. I'm always surprised by that because while the television essays I do are technical essays, the long reported pieces I do I never think of as essays. But it's instructive, because when people read them, they're seeing the intrusion or the infusion of the writer on the reported material. I love to report, I like it much better than thumb-sucking at home. I've done that a lot. It's easy and you grow fat doing it, and the older you get the more comfortable it is. I don't like to travel. I don't like to go anywhere or see anything . . . I'm terribly reluctant to go off and leave my family. But once there, like most reporters, I change entirely. I become the country. Having reported then, I'm really aware of how much I'm thinking about something or feeling something that I've reported . . . I think your question is a very good one, but my answer is that reporting is the first and basic ingredient of the story and the story consists of the combination of the storyteller and the reported material. In other words, the guy who tells us the story of Job in the Bible, he's got a hell of a story to tell. But, you wouldn't feel much about it without that particular storyteller. Same with any story we get. You wouldn't be interested unless (a particular reporter) was telling the story. It's not just reporting, it's the guy giving it to us.

Ballard: Maybe what you do is an exception. It seems like most of the information Americans get comes to us in sound bites. Of course there are the exceptions, but do we see only the worst or the best of certain situations?

Rosenblatt: Because of the brevity I think you're absolutely right. I think we are led to extremes because of the necessity of truncating complicated material. Particularly in politics. I mean if you and I don't get the whole story, so what? But if we vote for the wrong candidate that's a little more serious. I think that's something the media has to contend with the only way it knows how in a free society, and that's to provide more and better.

News magazines of late, and I mean the last seven or eight years, have really lost their way. It's an interesting thing to watch journalistically. At one time they were indispensable because they gave us weeks worth of news in a perspective that made us understand the sound bites. Now something strange happened and I really don't get it. They could have gone one of two ways. I think the other way would have been fine, meaning to just stay the course. But news magazines saw television and USA Today and other places giving sound bites and they thought they could do that too. Of course anybody can do it, but they gave up the franchise of being the the long-winded interpreter of the sound bite. That was a mistake they are paying for in fewer subscribers, but I think they'll get it back.

Ballard: Does that cheat the American public?

Rosenblatt: Yes. I think it underestimates the American public and that's a very, very grave mistake. My experience with the American public everywhere, in every state, every class, every race and in every circumstance is that they are a formidable, highly intelligent discriminating society. To say we'll give them this or give them a little of that, you know, throw them a bone and they'll take it because there is nobody else who is going to do it. But when you give them something that is the whole story -- take the reaction to the OJ verdict, for which I have to write an essay on for Time -- What can I tell them on Monday that they haven't been thinking about for a week? Now that's not a rhetorical question, I really have to figure this out. That is the function of a news magazine or the longer form. I've got to be able to say to them, "read this, even though you have gone through this question a dozen times . . . read it so there is something in here to help you live with the news."

That is really the important function of journalism. The basic function is to give you what happened. If we tell you how to live in a world full of news, then I think we are doing something valuable, and that can only be done with the longer form.

Ballard: When you talk about longer form magazines changing their formats, I assume some of that is done to battle the competition, especially with all the niche magazines out there. Do magazines worry about that competition?

Rosenblatt: They worry very much about the competition, but here's the logic of it. Let's be the competition and lose to it. That's really what the formula is. I've learned a few things over my life and one is, play to your strengths. Now people always say, "I've got a weakness, I'm going to develop that into a strength." I'm going to tell you that one out of a million people succeeds at that.

The strength of general interest magazine, news magazines, was to give you something that could last that you would want on your table for a week or a month. It had a different time frame, a different perspective. You play to your strength and then you will eventually restore your competitiveness. You give up your strength in order to become your competition, they'll beat you every time. The newspapers now that are imitating the tabloids will eventually lose to the tabloids, because for the tabloids this comes naturally. If the New York Times becomes a tabloid they wouldn't know how to do it, because they don't want to raise their skirts that high.

Ballard: You made references to actually getting out in the field to tell your stories and write your books. How important are the real-life experiences you bring to what you write?

Rosenblatt: It's the best education possible. For one thing it really does help to remind you of what a privileged place we live in in this country. Or what a privileged circumstance you have in this country if you go into the inner city in some places. Or frankly what it's like to live in danger. I've been in a few places that were technically dangerous. It's not just that it makes the blood run faster, it makes you appreciate the contrast. It also makes you want to work for it. You want to make the place less dangerous, or less poor.

Somebody asked me when I came back from Cambodia what I most strongly felt when I was there on the Thai-Cambodia border talking to children who had made escapes from Cambodia into Thailand. It had nothing to do with journalism, I wanted to grab them up and take them home. Almost any person we know would want to do the same. Not out of some facile desire to play Mother Goose, but because you are called upon to draw on things in yourself that simply aren't tested by the comfortable experience of living a middle class life in the United States. I think we need that both journalistically and personally.

For questions regarding these Scarlet pages, contact:
dtaurins@unlinfo.unl.edu
(402) 472-8518, Fax: (402) 472-7825