Sea Change: How Newspapers Remind Me That Nonfiction Is Not Doomed

It seems rather fitting that we end this course’s reading on newspaper writing. We began the semester with Paige’s promise that now is the best time to be a writer of nonfiction, and since that proclamation we’ve spent weeks traversing the modern genre, asking what makes good nonfiction, what formats it thrives in, and how it is changing. I think most will agree that we found many (and sometimes differing) answers to these questions. And so now we come to newspapers, those embattled, historic flagships of the nonfiction genre that just about every one of my parents’ friends point to as a reason for why I might just be better off securing a teaching gig and writing “on the side.” Newspapers have been in decline for decades for a multitude of reasons (alterations in ad revenue and direction, changes in media, etc.,) but I’ll go out on a limb here and say that writing and writers are not the primary reason—or even one of them. Sure, each publication battles (or should) with the caliber of its content, but it is rarely the words on the page that spell out this medium’s demise. On the contrary, newspapers provide room not only for excellent investigative journalism and other necessary works, but, as evidenced in this week’s reading, some truly artful, gripping, witty articles of nonfiction. Forget pyramid structuring or third-person removed—Paul Sahre, Amy Ellis Nutt, and Tom Wolfe remind me that while the newsprint word may be faltering, the craftsmanship within it certainly is not. For this reading response, I’ll focus upon “The Wreck of the Lady Mary.”

            I was a little surprised to see Amy Ellis Nutt’s Star-Ledger article on our reading list—not because of any preconceptions regarding the author, but rather because the Star-Ledger was always a staple in my house (as my parents were both NJ natives) but maintained a value amongst the adult readers somewhere above the Detroit News and Ann Arbor News (RIP) but certainly below the New York Times and the Detroit Free Press. I had it pegged as a bit of a rag, which has made my reading of “The Wreck of the Lady Mary” a happy, fulfilling experience. Since reading this article, I’ve explored NJ.com and found that, hey—the Ledger really does print some great work.

What struck me most about this article was its slowness, which stands as a distinct contrast to what I normally think of when I think of newspaper articles. It is careful yet smoothly flowing, detailed but not meticulous. Her characterizations of the men on the Lady Mary, as well as those intimately involved in the after-effects of its sinking, are often, for a lack of a better word, beautiful in its simplicity:

“Tim, still cradled in the basket is carefully lowered to the ground. The entire time, Downham continues CPR, even as Tim is lifted onto a gurney. Both bodies are put in the second ambulance, to be taken to the morgue at Shore Memorial Hospital, nine miles from Atlantic City. Finally Downham stops the compressions. ‘Is there anything else I could have done?’ he asks the EMT. ‘No,’ the man replies. ‘Nothing.’” (The conclusion of Part 2)

Here, I see Nutt using the inherent barriers of newspaper writing to her and to the story’s advantage. This excerpt is filled with fact, with information that helps move the story along—just as a good newspaper article “should” be. Through the display of these facts, however, and without editorializing, she determines for us mood, scene and character. Through the absence of certain stated facts (that Tim and Bobo are long-dead and that CPR was surely fruitless while putting a corpse in a body bag), having trust in the reader and in the thrust of her narrative, she emphasizes the emotional impact of the scene.

            Another element of this article that stood out to me was how seamlessly Nutt was able to build composite scenes, telling the whole story (or something close to it) through a cobbling together of what were surely many interviews. She is able to demonstrate (how, exactly, I don’t yet fully understand) to the reader that there are reputable sources of the information she relays, but she doesn’t muddy up her narrative by telling us directly when and where from which the information came. Take for example the very first part of Part 1. “Seesawing across the ocean, he cannot tell east from west, up from down. At the top of a wave the night sky spins open, then slides away. Buckets of stars spill to the sea.” She lets this image sit with us, the stunning description building immediately the scene, which Jose Arias surely described to her. But she doesn’t write, “As Arias told me.” No, she trusts in her research, narrative and her readers to infer the journalistic integrity behind these sentences.

            One critique of “The Wreck of the Lady Mary” that I can’t quite seem to reckon with is the general lack of answers it yields regarding the “mystery” of the boats’ sinking. To her and her editors’ credit, Nutt was very upfront in her article regarding the limitations she met in trying to uncover what really happened that morning in March 2009. The biggest problem was that they were unable to speak with Reederie Thomas Schulte, the owner of the Cap Beatrice—or anyone associated with him, apparently. It is great that Nutt is so forthcoming about these hurdles, along being explicit about the research she did on scallop boats and on dry suits, but honesty doesn’t make up for the fact that, to me, once the stories of the sinking, rescue and emotional aftermath were told, the article appears to be spinning its wheels. Nutt basically lays out for us the questions that remain amidst the wreck, but is unable to find any answers—which, to me signifies another area where honesty could have been applied. Why couldn’t Nutt have said, following Part 3 that no conclusive evidence was found in demystifying the wreck and, rather than stringing us on for the next 2 chapters, merely cut out the whole “clue” and “lead” thing? There is nothing wrong with exploring the mystery surrounding the wreck, but I ask that we don’t pretend that this article was able to do work that it wasn’t. I suspect that either Nutt or her editors were weary of packaging an article that was geared towards human interest-type story telling, and therefore concluded that the way to keep people readings for 5 separate chapters is to pose a conflict (why did the boat sink?) and a promise of a solution—which never comes. This bothers me because I feel that Nutt’s writing drives this article so solidly by itself that it seems as almost a disservice to her creative skill to frame this piece like some sort of investigation into Titanic’s sinking. However, this critique seems to me to be a writerly one, as I cannot see the average reader having problems with the lack of resolution within this article.

So, it is appropriate that, in a course which promised to change my mood and opinion surrounding the genre, we at last look to newspapers, the proverbial zombie of the nonfiction world and find on its pages living, breathing, excellent writing. I’m happy to report that Paige delivered on her promise—when even the most damned medium of our set is still yielding superior work and forming new places and spaces to share it, I know that now really is a great time to write nonfiction.