IN THIS ISSUE
Writers Speak | Russell Working on what journalism teaches
Interview | 4 Questions with Yukari Iwatani Kane
Craft Lesson | Numbers that don’t add up
Writing to Savor | 'Why? Why? Why?' Ukraine's Mariupol descends into despair,” by Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka & Lori Hinnant for The Associated Press
Get a FREE e-book or PDF version of my latest book, Writers on Writing: Inside the lives of 55 distinguished writers and editors
There’s a new Substack app to read “Chip’s Writing Lessons” on your mobile phone with additional features
WRITERS SPEAK
"Journalism teaches you to observe suffering unflinchingly, with a quiet professional sympathy, to interview the prisoner who witnessed a rape in the common room of his cell, and then breathe the pain and outrage that you have suppressed in a story that, rises, walks, and lives on its own." —Russell Working
INTERVIEW | 4 QUESTIONS WITH YUKARI IWATANI KANE
Yukari Iwatani Kane
Yukari Iwatani Kane is a founder and executive director of Prison Journalism Project. She is an author, educator and veteran journalist with 20 years of experience. She was a staff writer and foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, and her book Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs (Harpers Business) was a best-seller, translated into seven languages. Yukari has taught journalism fundamentals, investigative reporting and the Medill Justice Project at Northwestern University and was previously a lecturer at University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. At San Quentin News, where she still serves as an advisor, she developed a curriculum and reader for prison journalism. She is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Emerging Leaders Council and is a 2021-2022 Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow.
What's the most important lesson you've learned as a writer?
I remember listening to an NPR program several years ago where two writers were debating whether writing can be taught. I know it can be taught because I used to be a terrible writer. But I’ve also learned that it’s hard work, it’s a messy process, and it always will be.
I’m a better reporter than a writer. I’m good at research, I have a keen eye for observation, and I can get people to open up. I’m also pretty good at coming up with story ideas. But put me in front of a computer to write my story, and I crumble. I might spend hours agonizing over one sentence, sometimes even one word. And even though I care deeply about my writing, my first draft is so bad it makes me want to cry.
Over the years though, I’ve learned that almost every writer I admire goes through a similar process. It helps to have talent for sure, but every gem of a story you come across that you might wish you’d written is the result of lots of blood, sweat and tears — and probably the help of a good editor.
What has been the biggest surprise of your writing life?
I became a journalist because I wanted to tell stories about people and communities that wouldn’t be seen or heard otherwise, and I used to think that would be something that I needed to do myself. But 20 years into my career, I’m realizing that I can also make a difference as an editor.
About five years ago, I started teaching journalism at San Quentin State Prison in California. Every time I went in, I would come across amazing stories, but none of them were mine to tell. I couldn’t do them justice as an outsider. That led to my current work at Prison Journalism Project teaching incarcerated writers the craft of journalism and writing, working with them to develop their story ideas and editing their stories, so they resonate with readers outside.
I never thought of myself as an editor, but I really enjoy it.
If you had to use a metaphor to describe yourself as a writer, what would it be and why?
I wanted to come up with a clever metaphor, but the truth is that I think of myself as a psychologist. I like to step inside my sources and the characters in my stories and imagine what it might be like to be them and try to see and understand the world from their perspective. In my research, I look for information and background that gives me insight into who the person is. That leads me to people in their lives that might be able to shed light in an interesting way. I am always observing and assessing people and situations, looking for clues as to who they are. Before I can write about someone, I need to feel like I understand them.
Nothing gives me more satisfaction than identifying the one feature or item that best defines a person. When I was reporting on a factory girl in China, I noticed she had braces. That said more to me about her ambitions and dreams than anything she could say.
What is the best piece of writing advice anyone ever gave you?
The biggest influence on my writing has been Tom French, who was my writing coach when I wrote “Haunted Empire.” He taught me many things, but there were two lessons in particular that profoundly changed the way I write.
The first is to think of my pen (or keyboard) like a video camera when I’m telling a story. I zoom in on aspects of a scene, and I pan out to describe the overall picture, but I never jump back and forth because I don’t want to give the reader whiplash. When I write, I think cinematically. This allows me to get my sequencing right without getting too technical about it.
The second is this: Readers are always looking for an excuse to quit reading. That means the last word of every sentence needs to be powerful enough to compel someone to read the next sentence. The last sentence of every paragraph has to be powerful enough to compel them to read the next paragraph, and the last paragraph of every chapter has to compel them to read the next chapter.
CRAFT LESSON | NUMBERS THAT DON’T ADD UP
In school, I hated numbers and loved words. My verbal skills propelled me into journalism where math didn’t matter.
Or so I thought.
When city officials raised property taxes, I needed to calculate a percentage rate on deadline. A press release, which reported statistics behind a new study, needed critical analysis to ensure they supported the findings. A person’s age or a phone number for a festival had to be reported accurately.
Numbers in news stories—stock prices, inflation rates, city budgets, dates, ages, and addresses—abound. But all too often, careless or unskilled reporters and editors let inaccurate ones make their way into the news, says investigative reporter David Cay Johnston, who cataloged common mistakes:
Millions confused with billions and trillions.
Misplaced decimals.
Assuming statistics in official announcements are correct when they “are often rich with math errors.”
INNUMERATES RULE
There’s no room for illiterates in a newsroom, but innumerates—those uncomfortable with fundamental notions of numbers and chance—are everywhere.
Fear of calculating can stop you dead in your tracks when you’re faced with the daily stream of figures that cross your desk or fill your inbox.
Math leaves some journalists feeling terrified, meaning they’ll accept figures from a source or a press release without trying to verify them.
Getting numbers wrong about diseases or accidents can leave readers frightened without reason by journalistic hyperbole and open to fraudulent schemes.
Journalism is crowded with math-phobes who told their professors, “If I wanted to do math, I wouldn’t have majored in journalism.” The result is a cascade of botched numbers and numerical errors that rank among the most common mistakes made by journalists, according to Craig Silverman, whose book Regret the Error, uses corrections to document the causes and effects of journalistic mistakes.
Two examples:
“How to… improve your swimming,” a story in the British newspaper The Guardian had this advice: find a pool “heated” to 28 degrees Fahrenheit. The correction that followed noted that that temperature was below freezing. What they meant to say was 28 Celsius (82F).
The Wall Street Journal issued a correction for a recipe for a Bloody Mary mix after it transposed the amount of vodka and tomato juice, calling for 12 ounces of juice and 36 ounces of booze.
Readers and viewers notice when your numbers don’t add up.
Scott R. Maier, a University of Oregon journalism professor, surveyed 1,000 sources cited in math-related stories that appeared in the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer. They identified “an average of two stories with numerical errors in each newspaper edition,” according to his study published in the Newspaper Research Journal.
“What appears to be lacking,” Maier wrote, “is a willingness to question numbers that don't make sense.”
THREE PATHS TO FAILURE
Numerical errors come in three major categories, says Silverman:
1. Miscalculations or interpretations made by a reporter.
2. A typographical error that misplaces a decimal point, adds a zero, or garbles a phone number or date.
3. Figures provided by a third party and passed on by the media without proper vetting.
WRITING WITH NUMBERS
Words, not data, make a story. Put your verbal skills to work at conveying data without putting people to sleep.
Comparison shop. Put a figure in context by comparing it to something else that people can grasp. “To store a gigabyte’s worth of data just 20 years ago required a refrigerator-sized machine weighing 500 pounds,” IBM says on its website. “Today, that same gigabyte’s worth of data resides comfortably on a disk smaller than a coin.”
Round off and substitute. Economists and financial experts need exact numbers. Readers don’t. If 33 percent of the drivers in fatal crashes had alcohol in their blood, it would be clearer if you say, “one in three drivers had been drinking.”
BANISH YOUR MATH-PHOBIA
You don’t have to be a math whiz to succeed and serve up accurate stories for your audience. Often simple arithmetic, a calculator, and close attention to detail can prevent the most common mistakes. You can find math resources online.
Don’t be afraid to run your numbers by your source before you publish for accuracy, not censoring. Or to challenge them, if necessary.
Find a math-savvy colleague or friend to review your figures before you submit your story.
Keep crib sheets—formulas for how to determine percentages, rates, etc.—close at hand as you work with numbers.
Go back to school, using online resources designed to teach journalists how to do math.
WRITING TO SAVOR | 'Why? Why? Why?' Ukraine's Mariupol descends into despair,” by Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka & Lori Hinnant for The Associated Press
A chilling photograph of a mass grave tops this story, an example of war correspondence at its finest as two AP journalists meticulously document the impact of merciless shelling of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol on civilians, with an assist from a Paris-based correspondent. It’s not for the squeamish, but if you want to understand the horrors of war, it’s a must-read.
“This piece,” said the editors of the Sunday Long Read newsletter, “ranks as the finest boots-on-the-ground reporting we’ve seen from Ukraine, describing in agonizing detail a narrow trench, quickly dug into Mariupol’s frozen ground, that’s piled with the bodies of children.”
TIP OF THE WEEK | TO WRITE WELL, YOU MUST WRITE POORLY
Revision, the final step in the writing process, makes muddled meaning clear. But you have to have something to revise. Whether you call them '“shitty first drafts,” as Annie Lott does in “Bird by Bird,” or a “discovery” draft, swallow the bile that rises in your throat when you think what you are writing is terrible. Keep typing.
It’s dangerous to judge first drafts as you’re trying to do two things at the same time: create and criticize. When they collide, writer’s block ensues. There’s a good chance your criticism is off base. “
Stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea,” Stephen King in his essential memoir “On Writing. “Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.”
No matter how messy or muddled, the first draft always contains the promise, delivered with revisions, of the final one.
FREE BOOK OFFER
Last December, I self-published two books, “Writers on Writing,” a collection of 55 “Four Questions” interviews with leading writers and editors, and “Writers on Writing: The Journal.” Both are available on Amazon as a Kindle or paperback, or through a locally-owned independent bookstore if you’d rather turn your back on the 800-pound gorilla in the room. You can find them at writersonwritingbooks.com
But now there’s a way to get the interview collection for free, with just one slight catch. Actually, it’s more of a request. If you do click on the link below to get a PDF or e-book file, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave an honest review on Amazon after you read it.
So why, you may ask, am I giving away a book that could possibly put money in my pocket?
Amazon reviews are critical to a book’s success for two reasons: social proof and algorithms.
Most of us check out reviews on Amazon before we buy. Reader reviews provide proof that real-life human beings are reading the book. They do the same to Amazon’s mysterious and powerful algorithms.
Every book I give away is a bet that someone else will read a review and buy one, a risk I’m happy taking.
Also, I believe in the book’s value to instruct and inspire writers and editors and want to spread its message as far and wide as possible whether or not I get paid. Paid is better, of course. :)
Just click on the link for your free copy of Writers on Writing: Inside the lives of 55 distinguished writers and editors.
And please, leave a review.
If you read “Chip’s Writing Lessons” or other Substack newsletters on your mobile phone, how there’s an app to make the experience more enjoyable. This video shows off its features. It’s limited to phones using IOS, which means basically iPhones, but you can join an Android waiting list.
Thanks for reading. See you in two weeks and may your writing go well.
Chip
BEFORE YOU GO
If there’s one person you think would benefit from the interviews, craft lessons, writing tips, and more that appear every two weeks in this newsletter, please suggest they subscribe @ chipscanlan.substack.com
Please consider becoming a paid subscriber if you’d like to support Chip’s Writing Lessons. Once a week, these members receive an extras package featuring excerpts from my books of writing advice, fresh interviews with leading writers and editors, inspirational quotes, coaching tips and more recommended readings and listening options.
Thanks.
NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK AND EBOOK
Writers on Writing: Inside the lives of 55 distinguished writers and editors
“By asking four questions to 55 of our finest writers and editors, Chip Scanlan has hosted one of the greatest writing conferences you will ever attend." - Roy Peter Clark, The Poynter Institute, “Writing Tools”
"A marvelous book for writers, people who have a passion for writing, or simply, who want to become writers. Yet what strikes me about this book is that it is not just for writers only." The Blogging Owl
AND
Writers on Writing: The Journal
Available on Amazon and through a local independently-owned bookstore @ writersonwritingbooks.com
chipscan@gmail.com | +1-727-366-8119
Thanks for reading. See you in two weeks.