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My favorite part of reporting has always been the moment during an interview when a source breaks from formality and starts speaking freely. It was in these moments of transition between stock quotes and casual anecdotes that these politicians became real people with families, financial concerns, and insecurities about picking up where they left off. It was when former Speaker of the House James Wright told me that losing saved his life-allowing him the time to detect and recover from cancer-that I realized the universal quality of the stories I was collecting. I knew that the heart of my piece would lie in my ability to bring out a human dimension in the everyday experiences of a class of people routinely dehumanized by the media, if not forgotten entirely.
Daniel Pearl made it his mission to give many who were lost or unnoticed a recognizable face and a louder voice. In doing so, he tapped into the poignant aspects of international news stories and made the most esoteric topics relevant, colorful and real. Through his writing, he very carefully and deliberately linked his readers and his subjects. In this spirit, he chose to start an article on the war in Kosovo from the perspective of a Trepca house painter, a bystander suddenly caught in extraordinary circumstances. Similarly, his article on the darker side of Qatari pearl-diving culture explored an easily overlooked niche of humanity, highlighting personalities while at the same time detailing central values of Gulf society that are both extremely similar to and different from those of the United States. I admire Pearls talent for weaving together the subtle stories of individuals to comment on broader issues and undercurrents.
In my short career as a journalist, I have been most drawn to stories that depend heavily on the personalities of the people involved. My objective is always to present them as whole, and as distinctive as possible. Like Pearl, I strive to capture peoples idiosyncrasies, while never losing sight of their commonalities. An article I wrote on a family of airmen for a small-town weekly quietly illuminated the struggle of soldiers living in communities that are vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq. A year later I found myself at a Maryland highway rest-stop asking drivers passing through about the yellow magnetic “Support the Troops” ribbons stuck proudly to (or significantly missing from) their fenders; the casual and impromptu