Writing 'The Deadly Choices at Memorial'
Tips from Fink
Pitch the story to yourself before you pitch it to others: Jot down your vision, and then walk away from it. Does it still excite you a day later? A few days later?
Ask yourself why you are the person to write this story.
Your curiosity is a good guide to what’s important and will interest your readers.
Try to weigh the information you gather on a scale of “truthiness” to truthfulness.
Challenge your assumptions.
Build incrementally on what you know.
Be insatiable when it comes to knowing your subject. Become the world’s expert.
Rough out a structure before you start writing.
Early in your reporting, start preparing a detailed timeline of events keyed to interviews and source documents.
Keep a running “to do” list of outstanding questions and documents you still need to obtain.
If you’re freelancing and writing an initial draft on your own, go back to old writing textbooks and apply their exercises to your project.
To combat writer’s block, do a bit of additional reporting — reading something or interviewing someone — to rekindle your passion.
When you’re writing, use the comments function in Microsoft Word to annotate, recording the source of the information contained in it.
Give people whose name appears in the story a chance to comment.
When finding a venue for a lengthy story, be persistent, be open to serialization, and don’t discount the Internet as a distribution medium for long-form journalism.
By Sheri Fink
Last August, my article "The Deadly Choices at Memorial," a collaboration between ProPublica and The New York Times, described what happened at one isolated New Orleans hospital in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina.
I was drawn to the story by reports that medical professionals might have injected patients with drugs to hasten their deaths. Three were later arrested and accused of murder in the deaths of four patients. Was it true? What horrific chain of events led to the allegations? Had the extreme conditions brought common but hidden end of life quandaries into the spotlight? What might be learned as American faces future disasters?
What I found, after more than two years of research, was that more medical professionals were involved in the decision to inject patients – and far more patients were injected – than had been previously understood. While those arrested said their goal had been to relieve pain, two physicians told me on the record that they intentionally hastened deaths, and they explained why.
When I obtained toxicology reports and autopsies and matched them with recollections and documentation from the days after Katrina, it appeared that at least 18 deceased patients had been injected with morphine or the sedative midazolam, or both, 17 of them after a long-awaited rescue effort was at last emptying the hospital. While some were extremely ill and might not have survived the evacuation, at least several were almost certainly not near death when they were injected.
The reporting and writing process for this 13,000-word article that appeared in The New York Times Magazine may offer insights for AHCJ members undertaking long-form, investigative reporting.
Recognizing the story
Many stories charm on first sight, but few are worth a long-term relationship.
Pitch the story to yourself before you pitch it to others: Jot down your vision, and then walk away from it. Does it still excite you a day later? A few days later? A subject you might live with for months or years needs to be one you find endlessly fascinating. Ideally, it's both a great tale and one with wider resonance.
Allegations of euthanasia at a hospital during one of the country's worst natural disasters suggested the possibility of both a suspenseful narrative and one that could contribute to discussion of significant national issues, such as end of life care, the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to disasters, and the allocation of limited medical resources.
Another question to ask yourself: Why are you the person to write this story? It may be simply that you're the most passionate and committed to telling it, but more likely it has something to do with the old maxim, "Write what you know."
The Katrina story had parallels to a book, War Hospital, I had written about medical professionals who faced ethical quandaries working under siege for three years during the Bosnian war. I also had spent time as a reporter and as an aid worker in disaster and conflict areas. Take advantage of your previous reporting, writing, education and other life experiences when deciding what stories to pursue.
New Orleans' Memorial Medical Center
(Photo by Maitri via Flickr)
Following a complicated story
Every story requires different reporting strategies, but in general, your curiosity is a good guide to what's important and will interest your readers.
Try to weigh the information you gather on a scale of "truthiness" to truthfulness. Some pieces of evidence are stronger than others. If you're reconstructing a historical event, triangulate the information you get from documents, interviews, and documentary materials. Try to find as many sources as possible for each fact.
Challenge your assumptions. Some of what has already been reported may have been wrong (heavens!).
Build incrementally on what you know. The Katrina hospital story was challenging to report because of ongoing criminal and civil litigation. Many people were reticent to talk or share documents. I worked hard to prove that I genuinely wanted to understand their perspectives and the truth of what had happened. Be insatiable when it comes to knowing your subject. Become the world's expert.
Structuring and writing
When you've amassed a great deal of information, sitting down to write can seem daunting. Roughing out a structure in advance is important. This is what great editors were made for. I was lucky to have several.
If you're freelancing and writing an initial draft on your own, try going back to old writing textbooks and applying their exercises to your project. Don't forget that an hour spent organizing your notes, structuring your narrative, or simply thinking about your subject is every bit as much of an accomplishment as putting pen to page or fingers to keyboard.
Writer's block sometimes reflects a dip in enthusiasm for the story and can be cured by a bit of additional reporting – reading something or interviewing someone – to rekindle your passion.
For "The Deadly Choices at Memorial," the organizing principle was a chronological narrative. My editors and I sketched out a three-part structure consisting of the events around the storm, the investigation and arrests that followed, and an epilogue.
Before the intensive phase of writing, we sat down with a giant pad of paper and, without looking at notes, listed from memory what struck us as the key scenes that needed to appear in each section. This outline was my compass during the writing phase, keeping me on course.
A detailed timeline of events keyed to interviews and source documents also helped-the earlier in your reporting you start preparing this, the better. As I wrote, I used the comments function in Microsoft Word to annotate each sentence, recording the source of the information contained in it. This became a time saver during the fact checking process.
I also kept a running "to do" list of outstanding questions I had for different sources and of the documents I still needed to obtain.
With a long story, the editing process often involves trying out different ideas and seeing how they work, so keep that in mind as you balance how much effort to put into each draft. Sometimes it's best to get something down and worry about polishing and perfection later (I find this challenging).
Nearing publication
Once I had a nearly final draft, I sat down with, talked with, or sent letters to just about everyone whose name appeared in it, even those who hadn't previously agreed to speak with me. I went over the story in detail and read them, often verbatim, the sections that involved them.
This can be tremendously important. It can save you from making mistakes, and it gives everyone a fair chance to comment and to know in advance what your story will say about them. I was also fortunate to work with two dedicated, talented fact checkers from The New York Times Magazine.
Finding support
Sustaining a lengthy project and one that requires many research and reporting trips can be costly. Whether you're a staff reporter or a freelancer, you may need to find additional sources of funding and stretch out your reporting while doing other work, such as pitching other stories in the cities where you need to do your research. Many projects turn into "labors of love."
I began working on "The Deadly Choices at Memorial" as a freelancer without a magazine contract and was fortunate to be chosen for a Kaiser Media Fellowship in Health. The Kaiser Family Foundation also supports global health reporting, and a number of other foundations offer fellowships and travel grants for journalists. I was later hired by ProPublica, which is also supported by charitable foundations.
Finding a venue for a lengthy story seems to be getting more and more difficult. Be persistent, be open to serialization, and don't discount the internet as a distribution medium for long-form journalism. The payoff of a long project, of course, is the potential impact it can have, and the sense of accomplishment you will feel when your work is finally seen by others.
Sheri Fink , M.D., a reporter for ProPublica, has reported on health, medicine and science from every continent except Antarctica.
