gay-hate, journalism and compassionate questioning.. Sunday, Sep 6 2009 

WEEK 5 stefanie 10:58 am

As this interesting comparision was written by my own teacher, Marcus O’Donnell, it is safe to say that i do not see it fit to critically analyse my superiors work. I will however, comment on the interesting nature of the comparison, given that it is such a prevalent topic in today’s society.

As a mutual observer, being a heterosexual, i guess i can sometimes overlook the imbedded discrimination in reporting of homosexuals and this reading brought to light that prejudice. This was interesting as it was a straightforward reading and didn’t include much emotion. It got the facts across and delivered a clear comparison between the two reportings of the Matthew Sheppard incident.

Once completing the reading, it is clear there are vast differences between the two investigative reportings, in terms of style, emphasis and angle of the reporting. JoAnn Wypijewski’s story in Vanity Fair, titled ‘A Boys Life’ tells the story in a form of anecdotes by the town people, the family and friends of the people involved. O’Donnell defines her work as:

“What marks Wypijewski’s work is that she is able to respond compassionately to all teh characters in her story while still maintaining a strong moral voice throughout. Unlike some of her informants, who want to both condemn and excuse McKinney and Hnderson, Wypijewski is clear that there are no excuses but there are multiple explanations.

O’Donnell finds this aspect different to the 20/20 investigative reporting by Elizabeth Vargas, which was set up as a ‘scoop’ and promised revelatory new evidence that would forcea reinterpretation of the accepted facts of the case. O’Donnell explains it as:

“The program set out to resconstruct  what happened the night Matthew Shepard was murdered, it sets up two seemingly irreconcilable possibilities. 1) Shepard died because he was gay and the victim of a hate crime; or 2) McKinney and Henderson set out to rob a defenceless college student but took it toofar because they were struing out on meth. At no point does Vargas seem to entertain that the two are not in fact exclusive options.”

O’Donnell outlines in his reading that the Harper’s story (JoAnn Wypijewski – ‘A Boy’s Life’) won a gay and lesbian human rights press award and the 20/20 report (Elizabeth Vargas) was condemned by gay activists as an attempt to ‘degay’ the Shepard murder. This was interesting, as the two stories had both touched on similar issues and had used some identical sources in sections.

I learnt a lot from the reading and it was interesting to see how two different reportings on the one incident can produce such diverse outcomes. I understood why Wypijewski’s feature was recieved better then Vargas and the aspects and techniques she used it reporting the story that made it a fair and more appropriate reponse to the complex and sensitive situation that occured.

 

into the red… Friday, Sep 4 2009 

WEEK 5 stefanie 4:55 am

Published in The Monthly and written by Nicolas Rothwell, ‘Into the Red’ is a literary journalism piece that centers on both a symbolic and a physical journey taken by two colleagues through the Australian inland desert. It dealt with artistic elements in full, the picturesque landscape of the Australian desert and the sounds of classical artists such as Bach.

This comparison of the landscape and music in my opinion, made for quite a dry literary journalism piece. I am not a classical music fan, nor am i a fan of discussing landscape and together i found the combination hard to digest. It was rather specific in its language and how it spoke about the two aspects, there was some jargon used which made it difficult to completely understand.

The structure of the feature was interesting, in that the first part of the feature comtained a lot of dialogue, which i actually found to be an interesting tactic. The dialogue enabled a large proportion of the story to be delivered without the depth of text. The second part of the feature was reflection and Rothwell’s interpretation of the landscape proceeding his first visit with Venn.

Rothwell immersed himself into the story almost completely and it really was a story about his adventures and a personal situation for him. I found this an interesting element and i understand literary journalism has the capacity to involve the author in some respect, i just didn’t realise that it could include the author so completely.

Reading this example of a literary journalism piece, aided in my understanding of literary journalism and the variety that it allows. Although i didn’t enjoy this feature nearly as much as the others, i still found it useful in expanding my knowledge on literary journalism features and the various techniques that can be utilised.

 

a boys life… Thursday, Sep 3 2009 

WEEK 5 stefanie 6:56 am

Having won a gay and lesbian human rights press award, ‘A Boys Life’ written by JoAnn Wypijewski was a deep dive into the happenings that fateful night Matthew Sheppard was murdered. Her take to the story was written and researched in such a way that made it highly entertaining, sensitive to all characters and extremely informative.

I thoroughly enjoyed this piece of literary journalism and found her way of constructing and writing the events to be intimate in style. She took no side or showed any bias in her reporting, she spent a lot of time explaining the livestyle of Laramie and the mentality of its residents, which enlightened the readers to this very different and narrow-minded town.

She explained the upbringing of the two murderers – Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney – she interviewed a lot of people associated with these two men and it revealed a lot about where they had come from. She didn’t do this in a way to excuse the murderers, or to perhaps make excuses for them – this was just a part of the story and a part of understanding the characters.

Wypijewski changed her style of writing from informative and factual, to expressive and descriptive. She revealed certain things about characters, then swapped to discussing facts revealed in court and then swapped again to something you initially think is completely unrelated, until its revealed how it relates.

A fine example of how she passes no judgement in her reporting style and uses quotations within the story effectively, can be evidenced in the following paragraph. This follows a couple of paragraphs written about the high drug use in Laramie, that ‘Wyoming’s eighth – graders use meth at a higher rate than twelfth – graders nationwide…’

…Maybe McKinney is lying and maybe he’s not when he says Sheoard “mouthed off”, prompting him to the fatal fenzy ofviolence, but one crank-head told me that he once almost wasted someone just for saying hi – “You’re so paranoid, you think, ‘why is he saying hi? Does he know something? Is he a cop?'” And maybe all the meth users i met were lying or wrong or putting me on in saying they immediately took the murder for a meth crime because it was all too stupid and, except for one heinou detail, all too recognisable.

None of this is a defense for what happened, but it all complicates the singular picture of hate crime. Why did they kill him? “That was the meth talking,” i was told. But why did they pick on him to begin with? “Because he was a fag.” So why do you think they didn’t kill him because he was gay? “They were regular guys, and then they beat up the Mexicans.” And anyway, “what kind of a man beats the shit out of a wussy guy?”

I think that the way she put all the information she had acumulated together was done in such a respectful and insightful way. I enjoyed reading the story and i felt that it did not make Sheppard look like a fool, whilst revealing important details about the murders and the lifestyle of the towns people.

She has a way of capturing the audience and making you want to continue to read the entire thing. I’ll end with how Wypijewski started, the introduction that was the hook to getting you into the story and really, helping to  narrow down this complicated situation.

“When i think of how fragile men are,” a dominatrix once said to me, ” i feel so much pity. All that fear, all that self-mutilation, just to be ‘men.’ When i heard that those guys in Laramie took Matthew Sheppard’s shoes, i was so creeped out. I mean, shoes are so symbolic – ‘walk a mile in my shoes’ and all that. Why did they take his shoes?