Blog 19 – ‘Process Journalism’

Tracy Kidder, born in 1945, is a Pulitzer-prizing winning author who attended Harvard and studied at the University of Iowa. He is best known for “The Soul of a New Machine,” a meticulous account of the development of Data General’s minicomputer. Other works include, “Mountains beyond Mountains,” “My Detachment,” “Home Town,” “Old Friends,” “Among Schoolchildren,” and “House.” Kidder’s latest book, “Strength in What Remains,” is about a Burundian genocide survivor and was released last year. Kidder is known for his distinctive style of research, for which he spends considerable time observing and, in the case of “The Soul of a New Machine,” producing “a more textured portrait of the development process than a purely retrospective study might.”

The introduction of “The Soul of a New Machine” starts out with a scenic description of Data General’s site location and incorporates some elements of literary journalism, such as, listing, a voice of the narrator (and some first-person point-of-view), and status details. The following excerpt from the introduction (second paragraph) serves as an excellent example of the “nonfiction novel” aspect for which Kidder is aiming: 

“A few miles north of the junction of Route 495 and the Massachusetts Turnpike, off an access road, sits a two-story brick building, surrounded by parking lots. A sign warns against leaving a car there without authority. The building itself looks like a fort. It has narrow windows, an American flag on a pole out front, a dish antenna on a latticed tower. Mounted on several corners of the roofs, and slowly turning, are little TV cameras.”

However, aside from this descriptive introduction, I found the first chapter of “The Soul of a New Machine” to be mostly informative instead of literary, with only a twist of personal insight, such as seen in the following sentence,

“The TV cameras on the roofs, the first defense against unscrupulous competitors and other sorts of spies and thieves, must comfort those who have a stake in what goes on inside. As for me, I imagined that somewhere in the building men in uniforms were watching me arrive, and I felt discouraged from walking on the grass.”

To me, these excerpts read as if Kidder is a straight-laced journalist, but aims liven up his process reporting with some literary elements. [Full disclosure, however, I was slightly bored with the topic at hand.]

Though once I started to delve into Kidder’s other works, I began to see the literary journalism that I’ve come to love this semester. For example, his book, “Among School Children” chronicles the dedication of a fifth-grade teacher in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in her effort to teach “the economically and emotionally deprived urban children in her classroom.” His work is truly immersive and from the excerpts I perused on Google books, the writing is fascinatingly descriptive and the product of a long, arduous, (and eye-opening) reporting process. Equally as enticing is Kidder’s latest book, “Strength That Remains,” in which the author recounts the story of Deo, a Burundian former medical student who becomes an American émigré, told in flashbacks. Kidder is described as writing with “an anthropologist’s eye and a novelist’s pen” and allows his readers to walk in the footsteps of one subject and “see worlds new and old afresh.”

In a certain way, process journalism – like all literary journalism – takes on the magic of combining hard fact and the personal in a way that broadens the readers’ world lens. If done well, the practice should inform and simultaneously move readers toward realization and, in some cases, compassion. Story ideas that might lend itself to this type of literary journalism might be tales of war/tragedy or expressive subjects with a unique history/story. However, Kidder makes it seem as if one could write about practically any topic, from American elementary schools to third-world countries.

The major hindrances I would foresee in this style of literary journalism would be two-fold: patience and time. Kidder’s writing takes on an almost Capote-like amount of research and immersion and a journalist would have to be truly dedicated to the subject or event to be willing to put this much time and effort into the process. I’m not sure I could tackle this style. Four months into writing my thesis and I’m already bored of the content. However, given the unique opportunity (and privilege) to be paid for writing an in-depth, immersion nonfiction novel, I am sure that my love for research and narrative would prevail.  

[Note: When reading the blog assignment, I first thought that Dr. Rodgers was referring to another “process journalism,” which is a media technique that involves telling the reader what you know (and don’t know) in practically real time. That would have made for a very different blog, indeed.]