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Episode 417: 'Stories Can Save Us' and the Enduring Legacy of Matt Tullis
670 Plays6 months ago
Justin Heckert (@justinheckert) is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in countless publications from Esquire to The Ringer, from Garden & Gun to the New York Times Magazine. Justin wrote the afterward to the late Matt Tullis's post-humous book Stories Can Save Us (Univ. of George Press).
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction and Tribute to Matt Tullis
00:00:00
Speaker
Okay, but listen, CNFers, I'm not one for ads on this show, you know that. I don't really court them. I only do them for cross-promotional purposes for the most part. No IRS involved there. Let's keep the man out of it. ah This show takes a lot of time, and part of what keeps the lights on is if you consider hiring me to maybe edit your work. A generous editor helps you see what you can't see. If you need help cracking the code, you can email me at creativenonfictionpodcastatgmail.com and we can start a dialogue. Oh, this podcast is also sponsored by Objectionable, offensive to good taste, manners, etiquette, propriety, etc. Many people find this podcast, and by extension, its host, Objectionable. The assumption that anybody would get there is why the the beginning is always the most important part to me.
00:01:01
Speaker
Well, welcome to the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the craft of telling true stories. I'm your objectionable host, Brendan O'Mara. Now, who's on the docket today? Oh, it looks like it's Justin Hecker. And he's here to celebrate the life of Matt Tullis, who died after complications from surgery to remove a tumor two years ago.
The Book 'Stories Can Save Us' and Contributor Insights
00:01:23
Speaker
Matt died with a book in progress based on his Gengre, the podcast. show where he interviewed narrative journalists about particular stories they wrote and how they go about the work. The name of the book is Stories Can Save Us and it it is published by the University of Georgia Press. Seth Wickersham, the brilliant ESPN investigative reporter and author of It's Better to Be Feared, helped ferry this book along into production and into publication and into your hands.
00:01:56
Speaker
If you go to your bookseller of choice, the book is a series of transcripts with some of the best, most popular guests Matt had on his show. Justin was a pal of Matt's and wrote a fine afterward for this book and gave Matt the treatment he gave so many of his guests on his podcast. And the show notes all include links to Matt's previous appearance on this podcast, as well as the Remembering Matt Tullis episode I put together shortly after he passed away, where I interviewed a handful of Matt's friends and peers and stitched it together.
00:02:37
Speaker
for you to listen to. The weekly newsletter format has been pretty fun. It's demanding, keeping that content mill going, but it is fun nevertheless, and I think people are digging it. You know, digging that greater frequency as it ties into that week's pod and gives you the text of that week's parting shot. So head to BrendanOmero.com, hey hey, for show notes, and to sign up for that Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter, I haven't been on the socials in several weeks, So this is where you'll find updates to the world of the podcast and my various intellectual meanderings.
Engagement and Community Building
00:03:13
Speaker
Got a new review for the podcast. This from Kami D, and I think that's a Kami a Deadwiler, and she wrote, Love, equal parts, entertaining and insightful. Awesome.
00:03:26
Speaker
Yes, and if you leave a review similar in nature ah Send me a screenshot when it publishes and I will coach up a piece of your work of up to 2,000 words You might dig it friend And a little about Justin. He's at Justin Heckert on Twitter and Instagram. He's had to date the career I wanted but wasn't good enough to pull off. He writes long features that take months to report. He's deeply attentive to stories on a sentence by sentence level. He's meticulous as he is curious and his body of work is a stunning illustration of the breadth of narrative that often is at our fingertips if we just look up.
00:04:06
Speaker
His work has appeared in Esquire, The Ringer, of The New York Times Magazine, and like a billion other places.
Justin Hecker's Career and Personal Journey
00:04:13
Speaker
He was Matt's very first guest on Gangray the Podcast and Justin is a fun guy to talk shop with because he's really thoughtful and takes the work seriously and treats his subjects with care and dignity. First, after this interview, we talk a bit about Justin's approach to the work. Then we dig into Stories Can Save Us and Matt's enduring legacy as a writer, reporter, and teacher. you know Matt and I started our podcast right around the same time, so we were running more or less parallel to each other. He had asked me to write a letter right kind of like advocating or recommending that his department at Fairfield University provide funding for his podcast endeavors, given that podcasts were on the cutting edge of storytelling.
00:05:01
Speaker
or should be in the toolbox for a young up-and I was on the show once, and I think he only entertained my inviting myself on the show since ah he was on mine for his memoir, Running with Ghosts. I don't have the guts to go back and listen to that, but you could. Parting shot, of course, at the end, dealing with recorders and notebooks and note-taking and so forth. so If you're ready to rock and or roll, let's hit the riff button.
00:05:47
Speaker
really right at of school as as a writer at atlanta magazine you know, writing, writing all kinds of stuff, but really, ah like i I did the calendar for the magazine, but but the justification was that I could do like, you know, serious long form stories um while I was doing some kind of and and and and and pretty soon after they hired me, I was just doing those types of things. But yeah, I met a du Amanda, uh excuse me who was uh she was a she was an intern there and i was a really young writer there so the interns weren't very much younger than i was but um i remember i didn't want to like totally socialize with her at the magazine because i didn't think it i don't know but but like after she quit being an intern we um kind of started a relationship and it it went from there so
00:06:41
Speaker
Oh, fantastic. what what is the What is that like you know being married to an editor and you being a writer? it's ah What's that dynamic like? Well, it's funny because ah we really don't talk about work that much. um Yeah. We don't spend our days talking about writing. First of all, I think it's cool because, um you know, she's really ambitious and I've gotten to sort of follow her. career I followed her around, you know, where she's moved to have a job. You know, first it was Atlanta and then she was the editor in chief of indian Indianapolis Monthly. She was the youngest ever
00:07:16
Speaker
editor in chief of Indianapolis Monthly. And I was like, I would have never imagined living in in Indiana under any circumstance. But it turned out to be great and made a ton of friends there. Of course, I was just freelancing while we were randomly living there. Her family is kind of amazing. Like I love my in-laws and she's a big ah family person. So she wanted to kind of try ah ultimately move back closer to her family. She has a brother Uh, we have two little nephews, um, who were born like 2013, 2015. So there we wanted to come back to kind of be around them. And she honestly got like the only job and in national magazines where she could both move really close to home and further her career, which is a garden gun. Been an amazing experience. Uh, you know, just sort of vicariously watching, um, you know, her be the executive editor there.
00:08:10
Speaker
Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, it's a yeah that's one of I feel like it's one of the I won't say the last but but it feels like one of the last great places to do kind of the the narrative long form journalism that you know that that really makes us salivate and it's nice to see it's still great to see that there are champions for it out there and in places like
Challenges and Techniques in Narrative Journalism
00:08:30
Speaker
that. I knock on wood, man, like it's a magazine that has money to pay for beautiful photography and writing. And it's just, I just kind of thank my stars that it still exists and they can pay her and they want her to, she really, when she came, um she did change the magazine in a way that um she began sort of ushering in a new kind of era of, you know, a little bit different long-form writing in the magazine. I mean, it's not that we don't,
00:08:59
Speaker
ever talk about writing. i always and talk you know um She knows what i've got all got all I've got going on. um It's more like she works all day at the magazine and you know if she wants to talk to me about what she's editing or whatever um she will. But once in a blue moon in my career, have I experienced, have I had like a really bad experience ah with an editor in some publication? And at at that point, I will give it to Amanda because I really value her opinion. And I'm like, help me. It doesn't happen all the time, thank goodness. But if if ever I've experienced in my career, you know, working for all these different publications, somebody who I didn't think
00:09:39
Speaker
Like, oh my God, I don't think they know what they're doing. um I will give them to Amanda and ask her for her help. You know, it's been a great, she's sort of been working from home since the pandemic. I mean, I've been working from home since like 2006. So it's been really cool to have her here. And, you know, we both read and we both like love this. And, you know, and she always knows what I've got going on. and But I hardly ever like, Here's my first, you know, I don't like give her my drafts before I write them for an editor. She, she usually reads my stories when they come out in print or online. Like that's the time she'll read them unless I'm having a problem and I really need her help. Um, I will turn to her because I, I trust her opinion. I mean, she's made the magazine was already good, but you know, she's made garden gun that much better.
00:10:31
Speaker
ah That's amazing. Yeah. And you mentioned, ah you know, ah Amanda's ambition and being ambitious. And I wonder over the over the years of you ah doing this kind of work, you know, how your ambitions have changed and you what your relationship to ambition is at at this point. When I got hired at Atlanta magazine, they they hired me off of my sort of some long form clips and essays I had at the University of Missouri. um And I had interned at the Los Angeles Times and then ESPN Magazine. And while I was an intern at ESPN Magazine, they liked my writing at the University of Missouri so much they let me do a feature. um You know, I was like 20, 22 years old, 21 or 22 in New York City. And so I did a feature as an intern for ESPN Magazine, a national magazine feature. Atlanta Magazine hired me based off that. You know, it takes an ego to do this anyway, but I mean, at that point it's it's kind of all I knew. um
00:11:28
Speaker
like ambition can be motivating and suffocating. And I had all these stars in my eyes. ah You know, I really wanted to do like lyrical, long-form literary journalism. And I was reading Esquire and GQ, of course, and The New Yorker. The first story I wrote for Atlanta Magazine, um I got a call from an editor at Esquire after it published. And I was terrified at 23 years old that Esquire would have already been paying attention to me. But it also made my head like, you know, a thousand times bigger than it should be. I then it should have been i wasn't really ready to write for Esquire at that point. um I don't think I was scared. I was 23. But ah ultimately I did when I was like 25. I had my first story published there. And in my 20s, I was um
00:12:19
Speaker
I mean that was that's kind of all I had was ambition. I i remember one of the I was atlanta at Atlanta magazine and you know sort of doing my normal work. I wrote four or five stories the two years each year the two years I was there and on the weekends I tried to I i got i got a story in the Oxford American which was a big deal then. lots of great writers were being published by it and the the print product was amazing. like every Every time it came out, I had like a whole music CD, you know, along with it. And so like I got published in the Oxford American when I was 24 and a feature and I just felt like, ah you know, i'm I'm going to be somebody who's a name in this business in my 20s. And it sort of worked out that way. And it
00:13:06
Speaker
sort of didn't because magazine started to change. And I had a I had a feature killed by Esquire when I was like 26. It really hurt me. But but parallel of that, I got a national magazine job that same year at ESPN the magazine, they hired me to be a feature writer, you know, when I was like 26 years old. So not the type of ambitious that would make me impossible to be around. But it's it's much different in that from there, it's it's not different at all and it's much different. And then I've lived 20 years since then. I mean, i've I've experienced a lot of ups and downs in the profession, highest highs, you know, lows when a story gets killed back in the days when they would actually, you know, kill a story. I still wanna do great work. You know, I still want to, I'm writing i'm writing my first story for Harper's Magazine right now.
00:13:59
Speaker
I wanted to write for them since I was you know wanted to do this. So there is still an ambition. I want people to know who I am. I want to write a book. you know I've had a literary agent since I was in my 20s and I've never written a book for him. I've i've sent other people to him um who's gotten books published. So you know that's something that I still want to do and i I actually have an idea that I'm working on right now that hopefully will be. but I think that I'm more easy going and like much more laid back in regards to sort of how ambition would affect my actual life, but not not in a way that's like, i don't I don't really care about this anymore. You know what I mean? Like, yeah I'm still trying to get published by the New Yorker. So close two or three times, like an actual assignment that didn't work out. You know what I mean? Like, wow. And i right now, I'm very grateful, right now,
00:14:56
Speaker
you know, ambition, like, I have four big stories going right now. Harper's Magazine, New York Times Magazine, The Ringer, ah yeah ESPN. And it's like, it's almost kind of nerve wracking how much I've got going on at the same time. But that's something I would have dreamed about when I was 25. So it's both happening. And it's also like, it's not Ambition isn't the most important thing to me. You know, it's like, if I was, if I was like 23, and like, you know, right when, right when, um you know, I heard from Esquire or whatever, if you had told me I would have like, having a relationship, and like finding this amazing partner who I love to death,
00:15:42
Speaker
would have been more important to me than like being some star magazine writer, you know, but when I was 23, I don't know. I would have been like, you know, ah that'll never happen to me because like, this is all, this is all I care about, you know, through the years, ambition changes in that way. Like I would follow Amanda to kind of the ends of the earth, you know. With with four big features in the hopper in various stages, I imagine of reporting research and writing or whatever. um How do you keep that straight for yourself? I'm not good. um My wife is so much more organized. um I have a stack of notebooks here that's like for one story, I have a stack of notebooks on my right side it's for the other story. I still transcribe everything myself, which
00:16:32
Speaker
and kind of at this particular moment, um I always think it's a good thing because it makes me go back over and listen to what happened. And, you know, that second time through, not only reminding yourself, but it's really important for, you know, these stories, I think, but like occasionally I wonder if I should, you know, try to have somebody else do it. And I've had before, you know, like yeah ESPN has transcribed ah something for me. I think Esquire did once. The the people out there exist who do this. But i I try to do all my transcribing when I can, which plays into the fact that it's it's stressful right now because i'm i've tra I'm transcribing all this stuff for these stories and they're different.
Writing Process and Career Reflections
00:17:17
Speaker
And like, you know, on my phone, they all the files are not completely together. So I've got to go back and figure it out. I mean, it takes it takes forever
00:17:27
Speaker
to re It's like an I just listened to an hour long interview that I did and took me like three hours to transcribe it because i'm I'm rewinding it and like making sure like it's it's it's a really good thing. I'm really excited and and grateful because the nature of this business has changed so much since I was in my 20s that I have all this stuff going on and it's some pay more than others, but yeah I'm also thankful that they pay um you know, pretty well, all of them, enough to make a living on. And it it is a lot at once, but I think that four or five big stories a year with some other little stuff is like a good year, um especially now. And I'll try to do more than, I mean, the last one that I've got um is like the reporting is in June or July. So I'm gonna try to have something else going and constantly.
00:18:22
Speaker
Querying editors and I know so many of them now That I have enough ideas You know that a lot of times i'm just waiting around talking to different people sometimes sometimes my pitches Depending on on on where it is can vary, you know when I wrote a piece of vanity fair um last year My pitch was ah about 800 words and i I tried to make it a little story. You know, now I have a relationship with that editor. I can just you know and they send a paragraph just to entice them. They've already worked with me. So kind of like if I'm pitching anything now, mostly it's a paragraph or a few sentences and I don't have to write a thousand words. So, you know, I, I was having dinner with a really great friend and, um,
00:19:13
Speaker
who's someone who's turned out ah turn you know ah turned out to be a mentor since I was 23 who actually got um who actually gave my first story to the Esquire editor, which is Tom Janot. He was talking about, you know, how how sort of imagining this hustle, he because he's, you know, he's always been kind of a staff writer and an icon of this um profession. And it made me think, yes, a lot of it is just hustling a pitch or constantly thinking about something else I might need to be doing after whatever I'm doing is is finished.
00:19:47
Speaker
And the funny part is, you know, I'm not sure which of these stories will, you know, and need to be finished first. A couple of them are longer term, like the yeah ESPN story probably won't run until the fall. So I i don't know. I just try my best to to keep them all sort of... you know I literally have you know like a sheet of typing paper and on the typing paper, I have like the name of the story in my mind and like I put a check mark that it's assigned and I've been reporting on it. It's very archaic. It's like lose a sheet of paper with my handwriting on it instead of like some you know Excel spreadsheet ah just to remind myself that that's what I've got going on.
00:20:32
Speaker
i I love this idea that you've you've really had a like ah ah a ah vision of how you've wanted to accomplish this kind of work and you've wanted to do it for for as long as you've had a ah a mindset for what a career could be. And that goes all the way back to an email you sent to Walt Harrington back in the day. And I wonder if maybe you can take us to that to that to where you were at that moment and and just ah expound upon the reply Walt gave you. Sure. i was I think it was a junior at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
00:21:06
Speaker
and i I had always wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, a writer or an artist. I think I found something in like, you know, my keepsake box that I'd written in a little thing when I was fifth grade that I wanted to be a writer. My mother is a writer, poet, she's taught English literature for years and years and years. ah You know, I was reading, I've always been a a really serious reader. I went to the University of Missouri. Nobody in my family had gone to the state school. It was far away from home. And I went there to major in art. This is a long explanation to get to Walt, but I'll try to make it quick. And I thought I would major in art. And ah freshman year, one of my art teachers pulled me aside because she knew that I was serious and said that they didn't have a good art school. So
00:21:53
Speaker
I thought, well, you know, I don't know what to do in the freshman year. um Maybe I'll just try to get into the journalism school. So really, just randomly, ah you know, i I applied for the journalism school, took the classes, got in, and all of a sudden, i had to pick a I had to pick a beat at the paper for a class. And the sports department was the loudest in the newsroom, i just like taking a tour of it. they And like one person who was loud was Wright Thompson, and the other was Seth Wickersham. Both have gone on to ah you know fame, and just just like so, I'm literally gonna be famous when I was a kid. they' so They're like loud and funny and big personalities, and like, talk about ambition, like that's sort of where I got a lot of that ambition from, and seeing how other people operated. But I quickly fell into
00:22:45
Speaker
You know, that I'd never really read Esquire Sports Illustrated. You know, a lot of people who want to be long form writers and stuff like I've been reading Sports Illustrated since I was a kid. Not me. I'd never even read it really, except at the doctor's office. And I think like writer, or you know, somebody or the sports editor handed me like a Gary Smith story or I quickly discovered like Michael Paternitti and Susan Orlean and intimate journalism. You know, that book. where Walt Harrington, who was a ah ah feature writer at the Washington Post Magazine, put together a book with some of his favorite stories of that era, you know, 80s, 90s. And I read that book and and all of them were like, you know, I loved short fiction. And those were like way closer to anything I imagined as being writing than like what what other people were doing at a newspaper. So I kind of like, I read that book and it had a really profound impact on me.
00:23:39
Speaker
and what I wanted to do. I could see myself in and a lot of those stories in the book. I've got it right here, actually. it's my My copy is dog-eared and beaten up. um And I've got the best highlight you know highlighted stories in there. I read the book. a lot of our I liked a lot of my professors at the University of Missouri, but um hardly any of them were like actually published authors. So I emailed Walt. And I did not, i just say I emailed Wall. I was like, you know, um I can't remember. Maybe that was, you know, maybe i I won the James Atwater Prize for best writing in the Missouri School of Journalism. And I wrote him and maybe I was feeling like really cocky. And, you know, here's some of my styles like here's some of my stories.
00:24:26
Speaker
like, you know, they're good. And a couple months later, I got this like 5000 word email back. And he was like, yes, I can see some promise, you know, but um but, you know, he wasn't calling me great or anything. He's like, you know, here's what you need to do. And in in, you know, the the the the the wall Harrington email, which I showed all my friends and been published it on gangray.com years and years ago uh in its entirety it's just for anyone it was this amazing road map of what it takes to do this i've it's it's unbelievable like i would have never thought i would have had the chance to share it when i was 2020 or whatever
00:25:13
Speaker
you know i showed it with my friends I showed it to my friends. It really changed um my my outlook on things as far as it was very humbling. Here's what you need to do and here's what you could do and be a cops reporter or do this and toil away. and like It won't be until you're 37 that you have anything worthy or whatever. um But my God, that he you know he is't ah he is a terrific, terrific writer and journalist. And ah the fact that he would have taken the time This is before you could tweet at anybody you know or send a DM. It was before you could reach. We're not in the dark ages, but it was just, it kind of seems like yesterday, but it was before you had the power to reach anybody. It was before Walt Harrington you know would have been on the creative nonfiction podcast. I mean, the only thing you could you could learn or or attempt to like get inside of his head is just to read his stories.
00:26:11
Speaker
and You know, he has a little, he has an introduction to this book, narrative journalism and journalistic anthropology and all this shit. um that That email, what you know, I got it when I was a kid in college still who had really kind of crystallized even then, you know, what I wanted to do. i didn't I made the decision pretty early on after I interned at the LA Times, which was an amazing experience that I did not want to be a newspaper writer. The LA Times wanted to hire me. And I was just like, I don't want to be a newspaper writer. And the one of the main editors of the paper was like, it's going to be a very lonely life. And I was like, shit. But that, e I mean, I don't know what to say about it, except that it was it was is a ah big part of my young life entering into this career. And
00:27:07
Speaker
it helped me um establish a relationship with a great writer. I had never really met, you know, a great writer in person. ah Who was like of that ah cat? We had Mary Kay Blakely taught at the school and she was published in New York Times Magazine and Miz. So that's, you know, she was great and awesome. But just somebody else who wasn't at the school, who I all of a sudden knew and who had taken some time to share his thoughts on this with me. It was just kind of an incredible thing to receive at a very, at an age where I was easily kind of influenced by anything. Yeah, there are moments in his reply that I've underlined and, you know, at one point he got citing, you know, Gary Smith and Mike Sager. He's like, they're well-trained reporters. And then he goes on and he's like, I suggest an attitude of determined humility. Yes, exactly.
00:28:00
Speaker
you know, set your own standards and keep them. ah Growing up is pretty important part of doing grown up work and then recognize just how dumb you are. I've experienced everything that he wrote about in there in my actual career. um but You know, a lot of it's been very humbling. And, you know, when I was younger, I would take things more. It's a personal business, just period. I mean, you're sharing your own ideas as capital. I think every one of my ideas should be assigned. You know what I mean? Still, if I care about something, I think I could make other people care about it, which is why it's hard. Like 90% of things are turned down. You know what I mean? Uh, still, and and no matter how much you work on it or,
00:28:52
Speaker
yeah know Part of me is just at this point is just like, I'm interested in this, let me do it. It's definitely not how it works. That's not how it's ever worked. When I was younger and somebody would turn something down or or whatever, I would just ah was much more argumentative and much more aggressive and in terms of asking why or even being edited. I'm totally different now. but I've experienced a lot of the, you know, everything he wrote about that would hypothetically happen to take a career in this has happened to me, so. I love in um in The Next Wave, and another SEGA group title book of which you been were anthologized for for the piece, Lost in the Waves. ah in the In this book, they allow some latitude for you, in this case, or the authors of every piece to kind of expound upon
00:29:45
Speaker
ah sort of an epilogue of sorts to the approach to writing it. I love this one ah this one line that you had. you know for any story um i'll just you see For any story I'm writing, I have to get the first sentence before I can write anything else that follows. And ah you know this book came out in 2012, so you wrote that story sometime before that, 12 intervening years from now. So does that still hold true to you that you really want need that as your lighthouse to light the way? Absolutely.
00:30:17
Speaker
And since then, I have met any number of journalists who I respect and admire. That seems like a very alien notion to them. Anyone, I feel like a lot of people think the ending is more important. I will die on the hill of the ending being way less important than the beginning. because, yes, you have to arrive at an ending and it has to you know hopefully be good, but nobody is going to get that. I think it's like the assumption that anybody would get there is why the the beginning is always the most important part to me. It's how I read. If it doesn't intrigue me or entertain me, whether it's a novel or a short story or piece of journalism,
00:30:57
Speaker
I'm not going to make it to the end. I don't want to say a professional reader, but I mean, I've been, I've been, I've loved to read my entire life. The pandemic really changed things in that I read way more now than I ever have. I think that, you know, maybe sometime you can start somewhere else or depending on the circumstance. I totally understand that. I buy everybody else's way of doing it. You know, there are much more successful people who, who don't do it that way, but personally, Yes, always thinking about a first sentence. The first paragraph is laborious.
00:31:32
Speaker
um and Almost the second sentence is ah is the the pain in the ass because if you have a good first one, it's like, well, what is my second sentence? I swear to you that I have spent so much time on the first and second sentences that that's just the way it is for me. And it has not changed since then. ah Even the you know ah a story that I'm almost done with, I have to go back and reread and to go back and reread the entire thing to where I'm writing. So I always go back, and no matter where I am in the piece, and just reread the first you know a couple graphs, and are they still good? Are they still enticing me? And it's almost like my
00:32:15
Speaker
I have to hear the story for myself. ah The story has to sound a particular way to me. And depending on the subject matter, the story might sound differently. But it's where somebody else might just type this out. or you know So many people are like, just get it out and then go but you know get it out on the page and then go back.
00:32:36
Speaker
I will stare at a page until I have a first sentence. i have to I have to hear it in my mind before I can progress. It's the hardest part of the process for me and it hasn't really changed because yeah maybe I would be better or more successful if I did it differently. But I just ah just can't do it that way. i This is how I am. And you know even doubling down on a lot of shit I said in that interview back in 2012, I feel stronger about it than I do. you know Maybe I did then. but I think a lot of a lot of long journalism doesn't draw me in. And I think that you really got to hook people. you know That's what I think.
00:33:27
Speaker
Oh, for sure. well And as important as that is, and I think a lot of people tend to put a lot of energy into the lead, a lot of energy into the ending, and as a result, ah sometimes the middle can really sag. ah So in terms of pacing and ah the way you're structuring your entire story, and especially the middle so we don't get bored in the middle, you know, at what are you thinking of come, you know, the middle of the story, 1500 words in, 2500 words in? Um, i that's a good question. You know, I don't usually outline. So in a sense, not exactly, but in a sense, sort of treating every section or paragraph, you know, every new section is like, it's it's very difficult. um And I don't, yeah, I don't usually think about like, is this not interesting now or ah compared to,
00:34:26
Speaker
The ending, which sometimes I don't even know where the... and A lot of people know where the story's going to end, um but sometimes I don't. When I'm looking at something I've written and I'm like 2,000 words into it, I'm actually not thinking about being in the middle. I'm just trying to keep it truthful and interesting somehow. um And like, is this the right way to go with the story? Occasionally I will hash out a ah vague outline, um rudimentary, not one A or one, but just like, you know, four sections or whatever. um So to answer your question, I don't know. i'm I'm usually not thinking that way within the body of the story. yeah um It's mostly trying to make it as interesting as I can, um depending on how the material has presented itself on the page.
00:35:18
Speaker
A lot of, I've seen people who I know who are my peers sort of roll their eyes when I'm like, the words just kind of come to me. I don't, you know, you're sitting there and it's kind of like the magic happens and that's just kind of how it is. I don't know. Yeah. Well, it's kind of like there is something to be said for just kind of surrendering to it in ah in a sense where it's just it no sense in overthinking it. You've done the reporting and it's kind of like, okay, you know, let's let's just see how it unfolds from the heft of the the heavy lifting you've done. And then you can always shape a little bit more later, but there's no sense in blocking yourself. Just kind of let it flow out and you'd be like, oh, wow, that that sounds pretty good. we're We're definitely going to keep that one.
00:36:04
Speaker
I'll give you an example of what you just asked. It was in the the story I wrote about the yeah the kid who was influenced by Jackass and who was basically the most successful kind of you know new generation of a Jackass type performer in the middle of the story, hoping that people have gotten there. One, I have ah i have one whole section that's a dissertation on testicles. And I was like, this is the right time. Like it definitely want the reader who has made it this far. It's almost like an interlude. We use into the next thing, which is this kid had always wanted to meet Steve-O. Steve-O being this giant influence. I treated this so seriously. I talked to Steve-O on the phone, you know, the raspy. It was amazing. I couldn't believe that this was happening and what we were talking about. Cause we were talking about balls and
00:36:57
Speaker
There's like the deep end of the story, but not at the end. You know, one of my favorite sections is is like, Steve-O kicked him in the balls. It's like the first sentence of the section. And it's a, it's just about Steve-O not understanding how much pain tolerance Zach has for taking a shot to the nuts. And you just hope that somebody has made it that far because it's one of the best parts of the story. And it's not the beginning or the end, but you know, it definitely is interesting throughout and you know there was a purpose to kind of leading with the here's everything that's happened to his balls and then boom like the most famous anointing thing that's happened to him is like steve-o kicked him in the nuts the first time they met and a lot of people were like you know this i tell you like this story doesn't have any
00:37:51
Speaker
justification, you know what I mean? But to me, it's so interesting. I tried to make it a very serious, funny, but yet poignant kind of explanation of why anybody would would do this. And I'm not, you know, like a few of my friends and like my mom read it, but I'm not sure how many people made it through all the things I was trying to make it interesting and and rhythmic and like lure them into to the middle of the piece where like, you know, Steve-O meets him. And you do I would just hope, you know, you just hope that the people will get to the end, which at the ending of that piece, they try to one up themselves and like glue all of these. I had alluded the fact that they were going to do something in this parking lot earlier in the story and the end kind of like the ending of the piece sets you up to experience a stunt with them.
Matt Tullis's Legacy and Influence
00:38:42
Speaker
Well, they like they took this boxing, one of those boxing things that goes back and forth when you punch it, that's on like a pendulum or whatever.
00:38:50
Speaker
And they glued nails to it and like hit their faces with it. so And, you know, that was the end of that piece. And so, you know, it just and honestly, I was just trying to enter with these stories. I know what I like to read. I know when I'm having a good experience reading. And in my mind, when I'm writing this piece, I'm trying to write a story. to entertain myself. Does that make any sense? Oh, for sure. yeah Yeah, it's it's following, you know, if it's if it's satisfying your taste, you're going to be that much more engaged in the research and the reporting and certainly the writing that ah this thing on its surface, which might not be, ah let's just say a a reader passerby. But if you're
00:39:36
Speaker
If you're engaged and you're excited about it, it's going to pulse through the entire thing and be like, all right. that Well, i I just spent 45 minutes. I didn't think I'd be spending on this. And thank you, Justin, for that. Yeah, I hope so. You know, getting into I don't know how you want to segue into math, but I mean, essentially, you know, he. he endeared himself to me because he liked my writing and visited me in person you know to tell me so and you like that stuff is really important you know what i mean um he made a friend for life when he uh drove up from ashland university when i was speaking at in cleveland and um you know i would like uh he just it was so cool to see somebody who was uh you know
00:40:24
Speaker
reading these stories they're not just for me they're not just because essentially I don't have a reader in mind I am the reader I ah don't picture you know somebody in the suburbs or whatever yeah even when I'm writing for a magazine for a particular audience I'm the audience I like to read if if it's good then I'll read it Yeah, and it's funny you bring up um ah with the the jackass thing with pain tolerance. And that kind of, speaking of a subway, a segue to to Matt, the you were his first guest ah at when Gangray the podcast you know came out, episode one, and it happened to be the ah the profile of the teenager at the time. She's in her 20s by now, I imagine. Yes, it's weird to follow her on Facebook. She's definitely in her 20s, and yes.
00:41:18
Speaker
Yeah, and she has she basically can't feel pain. And this is the story that you ba a kind of got you into Matt's orbit, so to speak, and on the show. And it's i that's ah that's a great way to spring off and and talk about Matt and his ah you know his legacy in this line of work that we're also drawn to. Yeah, um I was nervous doing that because I'd never done a podcast before. Again, that was years ago. It's not like every a lot of people are doing them. But I always wish like if he'd given me another crack years later it would have been better because I was really stuttering, I think.
00:41:53
Speaker
um but i Yes, I did that before I actually met him in person. And um he seemed like a very charming, ah sweet, interesting dude. And I was thrilled that he had read the piece. And You know, that's kind of how we met online first. Yeah, it's funny, like he and I kind of, we started our podcast at this kind of pretty much the same time. And it's ah it was kind of always cool kind of shadowing each other in that sense. And we didn't like, where I never met him in person, unfortunately.
00:42:27
Speaker
ah But we did grow to be ah digital friends as a result of ah doing this kind of thing on the mic and like just being just outwardly you know curious about how other journalists go about their work. And like the first sentence of your in memoriam piece to him in Stories Can Save Us was, he wanted to know about writers. And that's just it. He had a burning curiosity to see how the writers that we admire and he admired work and went about the work. Yes. And I mean, I have his, you know, you don't meet somebody all the time who takes that curiosity and shares it with people. I mean, I'm i'm a similar way, but i I haven't ever really been that ah vocal about it. And that is the kind of person who for, like I said, for his own edification, just so other people could learn,
00:43:26
Speaker
has done all these interviews and has asked all of these journalists and writers about their process and about their you know little individual individual ways they work and the little minutia of being a journalist and the notebooks and how to decompress. very All these are the you know very important questions he's been asking for years. I met him in in person in like 2015, like I said, in Cleveland, he came up there. And, you know, he was great. And we had dinner and just bullshitted about writing back and forth. And I've, I've, I've met him like two, two other times in person, just a funny dude. You know, I think is, ah you know, um I'll give a plug for his memoir, um Running with Ghosts. It's a great book. And it's, <unk> I've got it right here. And like I said, in the, in the, in the afterwards,
00:44:23
Speaker
it's it's It's fairly devastating to read it knowing that a subtext of the book, and in some places just ah ah openly, is knowing that this could harm him as an adult. you know All the radiation treatment he had in his teens for acute lymphoblastic leukemia was was saving his life as ah a kid, but um there's a line in here that I've got. You know, sometimes I'm shaving my head. I'll stop and stare directly at one of the two scars, which, uh, skin cancer from all the radiation that he had like shot into his head. He had all these like, so you know, um, he had skin cancer on his head when he was an adult. Sometimes I think far worse things like what if there's a brain tumor in there somewhere hiding in the folds of my brain, not yet causing any damage, but just waiting to wreck what has become an amazing life.
00:45:19
Speaker
Surely there is more to come. And it's like, Jesus, he absolutely knew that it was hovering over his life and ultimately took it, ah you know, when he was 46. And he had, and i I could tell this in person, though we weren't always talking about cancer or anything. um I don't know if I've ever met anyone who had like, who had as a profound of understanding of his own mortality. Um, he's been writing about cancer since he was a kid. Like he did his thesis about cancer and he wrote stories, you know, for the Columbus dispatch about it. And he wrote the essay for SB nation long form about it. And when he was a reporter, he would write about other people who had cancer. And his memoir is really, is really good in that, in that way, especially ah devastatingly. So now, uh, when you read it.
00:46:18
Speaker
Yeah, it it takes a lot for um for a book to, um I can cry easily, but it takes a lot for a book to make me cry, ah just because there's no underlying music that helps elevate the mood and whatever. But for some reason, of all places in that book, there there's tour me to shreds. was is He's in his hospital bed and he's like watching DuckTales, this cartoon, on the hospital TV. And the way he described that, I forget the exact wording, but it just, for some reason that scene ripped my heart out and I just was like sobbing for him like as I was reading that it's just uh I don't know how to explain it other than it just was so specific and that just the fact that he even knew the cartoon and that's like a we always hang on details like that and just for some reason that cartoon and his being a 13 year old there and laying in bed and watching this cartoon it's just that yeah it just gutted me to pieces something he does in that book um
00:47:17
Speaker
which is also a teaching instrument, is that in the book he went and got, and I glean it was over a series of trips that he went back to the hospital and he got all of the doctor's paperwork and observations. It was almost like a going to the courthouse, you know what I mean? yeah And getting a thousand pages of hospital documents where the nurses were writing their observations and describing him, which is really strange. And it really, I mean, the book is almost like he wrote about himself the way you would like. You have a court document that sort of explains everything in detail about his own life. And I just say the court document because it's paperwork. Like he went and got medical documents.
00:48:06
Speaker
where other people were sort of describing him on a particular day or what ice cream he ate or if he vomited all over the, you know, or whatever. Having been in the hospital myself as a child and having gone back to St. Louis Children's Hospital to to reread some of those documents for a piece I did in 2004, it's a really weird experience. I didn't write a memoir. I wrote like ah a 7,000 word piece, but um that must have been such a weird experience to have in your life, not just that you went through it, but to go back and recount it as a journalist. I thought about that the entire way through the book.
00:48:42
Speaker
Yeah, I remember him talking about it and what really cracked the code for him wasn't so much talking about his own cancer experience of which he does, but turning the lens outward the way a narrative journalist would to a lot of the others who didn't fare as who died young and he got to live. And once he focused on everyone else, the code was cracked for that book for him. I mean, and that's not even right. and You know, all the kids And this is the same thing that kind of happened. like I made a friend in the hospital, Wesley, who had cystic fibrosis. And years later, we my mom and I went back to the hospital, and I inquired about what happened to him, and he died as a kid.
00:49:26
Speaker
yeah um so Yes. The book essentially builds to that place where he starts writing about, you know, his friends who didn't make it and him being a survivor, which ultimately was he, you know what I mean? Matt, Matt survived childhood cancer, but ah some part of cancer got him in the end. Uh, but right, like he builds to all the people he was with who didn't, who weren't as lucky. And, um, it's it is very, it's a very moving book.
00:49:57
Speaker
What I always love about you're in reading several of your pieces is like the the almost the itemization of certain details that you're able to tease out from just hanging out with people and what those what those things that you say about them. you know And you do that particularly well with with Matt's piece here. you know When you start off a set piece about him being habitual and then you just kinda go down the list of all these really all these wonderful little grace notes that that help build a character. And I just love that sense, and i get I get the idea that you really wanted to honor the person who was so captivated by other people's habits and rituals that you're like, I need to really drill down on his. Yes. Essentially, he spent years absorbing
00:50:52
Speaker
other people's advice, other people's habits, the ways other people wrote and the ways other people outlined and the ways other people did their thing for journalism. And obviously he was you know he he took all those and was working on this book. And I just thought in my mind, now that he's gone, nobody ever got a chance to, he he never personally, wrote that about himself, never shared those um personal bits of his process or you know the way he did things. And so my goal with the epilogue, instead of writing a sad remembrance or, hey, I met Matt in 2015 and he was a cool guy, was to literally do to him what he had done to the other writers over the years.
00:51:46
Speaker
you know, that's what I, it's almost sort of like a profile or, uh, you know, I couldn't set it up like the other things in the, the other Q and A's in the book because he's, he's not there. But, um, in talking to other people, I could treat him at the end of the book, he has the last word kind of about his aspirations and what he want, how he did this and what he liked and where he worked and what it looked like and how it helped him. And that was my goal was to, communicate how he did this with the readers of the book who, you know, read all these journalists before before we get to Matt. um and And, you know, simply I wanted to get a chance to to kind of ask him about his process, which came through other people. Yeah. How did this assignment essentially measure up to a lot of the ones you've done in the past?
00:52:41
Speaker
It wasn't an assignment really. um you know when When he passed away, I think Seth had just talked to him in his class before he had brain surgery. um and i had just c send him you know I didn't talk to Matt every day or anything, but I just c sent him a you know like a twitter message about our friend jim schiller who also died and i didn't get a response and you know he was in the hospital and then um so we knew that he was working on this book and it wasn't finished and so seth who you know has
00:53:18
Speaker
and written a New York Times bestselling book and has another one coming out, kind of took the reins, when went to the publisher and said, can we help finish the book? And so we he had a list, Matt had a list of other people he wanted to interview. And ah we interviewed some of the people on, I interviewed Audra Burch at the New York Times, who I knew and who I ah really admire. I love her work. So I interviewed Audra for a couple hours and you know um i I arranged the interview as Matt had arranged the interviews already for the book. And then I was like, well, I know Matt ah you know i know matt kind of better than the other people.
00:53:56
Speaker
And i I'd hung out with him several times. And so, like, I wrote something about him on Facebook. And it was like, essentially, I feel like I owe him something I'll never be able to repay. Not only did he have me as the first guest on his podcast, he annotated one of my stories for the Neiman storyboard. You know, he ah he got a story I wrote years ago republished in a literary journal called Riverteeth. I mean, that was all Matt. He liked it. He knew the people at Riverteeth. I mean, he interviewed me after the pandemic about, or during the pandemic about, you know, what my office was like. The guy really, you know, nobody ever asked him to really did a lot to kind of help or further my career. And so I, I honestly felt like I owed the guy something I'd never be able to repay. You know, I, I, I wanted to write an afterward.
00:54:50
Speaker
And after a while, I was like, I don't want to sit here and like write an extended piece of like my Facebook post about how awesome he was or, you know, how much I owe him. I want to do something smarter and more lasting than that. So I just, why, why not do this about Matt at the end of the book as he has treated other writers in his life. And it would kind of like organically happened while we were, while we were working to finish the book. Yeah, it's like what better way to honor a reporter than to do a reported piece on him and his habits and. Exactly. and Right. I mean, I think, yes, I think that if any one of us had been like Matt Tull is R.I.P. at the end of the book and the essay, if you write an essay like like my Facebook post, you can almost argue it's about you. You know what I mean? Like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Matt meant a lot to me and, you know, he
00:55:47
Speaker
He drew people's attention to this story that I wrote. You know, it's kind of about me. and And I did not want it to be that. And, you know, I just hope it's I ultimately wanted to honor him by writing something I hope that he would have like ah about himself. And I'm sure if he'd been alive and you said that, like, I'm going to write the thing, he might've laughed at me. You know what I mean? Like, you know, the book, the book had a title that was sort of like, you know, narrative journalists or, you know, something like that.
00:56:19
Speaker
And he had a tattoo on his arm. um Stories can save us from a line in the Tim O'Brien book, The Things They Carried. And ah you know it's something that, like were he alive and we were hanging out and having a beer in person, I might have ah like busted his balls about having. But posthumously, it's really kind of amazing. And it was a perfect title for the book, I thought. Yeah, I think so too. And um it's ah given that, ah let's say like the great center Bill Walton just passed away and ah and he was sort of heard some things on radio, people's remembrances of him and how he, just the way he lived life, he had a very good zeal for life, didn't take anything for granted, that those kind of things. really yeah
00:57:05
Speaker
energized people he was around. And ah similarly, you know, I think Matt had that effect on a lot of people. And I wonder, you know, for you and maybe other people you've spoken to, you know, what ah what what impact did Matt have on, you know, your life and on people in that circle that that you're aware of? Well, I know I obviously didn't take one of his classes either at Ashland or Fairfield University. But I know that he was like super outgoing advocate for his students and he was really approachable. And instead of wanting to be called, you know, professor or whatever, he wanted students to call him Matt and he had pizza parties at his house. And like, if they had closed the paper and everybody was tired, you know, he would bring food and he created the, uh, you can't remember the exact name of the awards, but like, you know,
00:57:56
Speaker
at Ashland like he created the Journalism Awards. And I know people remember him being that he really cared, that he was really present, that he was always accessible. And I mean, he delivered the papers himself um sometimes at at to the school at Ashland. And ah for me in person, you know, sometimes when we got together, he would talk about writing so much online and like, you know, ah if i was if I was speaking a couple times, you know, he would just sat in the audience like a student and would ask questions. But, you know, it was more like when we were hanging out randomly at a bar or something, you know, we we might not talk about writing, we might talk about his kids or, um you know, what what he was working on. Like, um you know, if he was working on the the story about the girls' basketball
00:58:48
Speaker
teams in Amish country for SB Nation long form. I think we talked you know about some of that. He was funny and he was i mean he was kind of like acerbic a little bit. like you know He might he might make fun of you. you know In my dealings with him, he was he was a really nice guy who cared about this as as as much as anyone I've ever met. And I think what's great, at least you know a silver lining to him no longer being alive, is that we can still go hear him in the archives of Gangray and we can certainly read him and hear his voice through this
Insights on Matt's Storytelling and Personal Impact
00:59:26
Speaker
book too. So in a way he's he's very much ah alive in a way that maybe someone else passing might not necessarily be because we can still access the Matt's archive even though he's gone. It's definitely true and something that is in the epilogue
00:59:45
Speaker
and that I was, ah you know, ah really hit me is that Alyssa, his wife, after Matt passed, first of all, after he passed, ah several days later, she got like this big order of books through Amazon. And she was like, is is he sending me a message? You know what I mean? Like, is this his last message with these random books? You know, he he loved to to buy and accumulate books. But she began at the beginning of the podcast. And you know, like any but I'm not I'm not sure Amanda is going to like
01:00:17
Speaker
read every single word or listen to every single thing I've ever said to somebody. So, you know, she probably had missed some episodes. She went back and listened to all of them and she could hear him. Obviously, she went back to hear him. And she says that she learned so much more about his interest and why he wanted to do this. And I mean, my God, I can't. um it's It's hard to imagine somebody being gone, your significant other being gone, and then you can just go back and start and hear years of their podcasts. It's heartbreaking and amazing. And she said that that is only when she realized kind of the scope of this. you know she would She would ask him, you know oh, this is this is a book that's kind of like ah you know it's kind of like a textbook about long-form journalism and how to do it. And he was like, no, no, this is much more than that.
01:01:15
Speaker
And she realized that clearly when she was starting to absorb all those podcasts through the years and just how much it meant to him and how much it interested him to talk about this. that I mean, you really, i I can only imagine how much she learned about Matt even though she lived with him just by going back and listening to all that. Yeah, and all the more heartbreaking too is like learning so much about almost this not like a shadow life in a very nefarious ah kind of way, but there almost is this shadow life that exists in audio, and you might learn something, and then there's no capacity to follow up and ask, be like, oh, I didn't realize you were into that, or tell me tell me a bit more about that. You you know, you had never brought that up in the 20 years we knew each other. I'd love to know more, and it's just like, it's gotta live the way it's living right now, and that that you just have to be somehow okay with that.
01:02:11
Speaker
yeah Well, one of the things that really got him to do it is that you know he was a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch and had an MFA in creative writing. But I glean that he might have not kind of open or shy to trying this until you know he had that um He talked with Tom Lake and Chris Jones and and Ben Montgomery and they encouraged him to try. And so he started doing this, you know, that the first story he wrote for SB Nation Long Form, which might have been technically his first long piece of journalism.
01:02:48
Speaker
It was, it's really good. Like it's, it's about horseshoes and it, but it turned out to be, and this always happens with, with any story, I think they change from when you pitch them or when you go out, he was following like a guy who was like the second best horseshoe player who, who, who had a really good shot to win this tournament. And what happened in front of his eyes is like this guy choked and he all of a sudden like forgot how to play horseshoes while Matt was covering him. And with and that is an a i mean that is like an example of of kind of something amazing that can happen to you while you're reporting a story, something that only he could he would have seen. And so instead of just, I guess, being a story about this horseshoe tournament, it's about this guy trying to kind of like losing the ability to play. And that was his first big long form story. And I think, you know, to kind of um
01:03:45
Speaker
To assure himself he could do this, and he could, he interviewed all these people and you know accumulated all of this information. you know he never He would have never said that he didn't agree with it or whatever, but picking out the things that would help him you know be a better writer, that's that's what we all want. And over the course of your you're reporting for yeah the the epilogue profile, you know what did yeah given that you had known him for years, um what did you learn about him ah over the course of your writing and research of ah for this piece? I learned about the way he operated, which he was very
01:04:22
Speaker
His workplace was a picture of order. He did a lot of these interviews at his home with the microphone. He needed certain things, which you can read about. I learned about his like personal habits, you know what I mean? like Which would have been kind of inconsequential had he been ah been alive and been my friend, or he was my friend. But if we're just like my friend, I don't think about people's personal habits. But in this particular piece, He had asked other people about such minutia and you were talking about almost like the list nature of it. I learned so much about kind of what he needed to talk to people and to prepare and, you know, what kind of professor he was. I almost forget that he was a teacher. You know what I mean? Like he's got so much writing out there. He he did, you know, a ton of writing for the Neiman storyboard and
01:05:19
Speaker
you know, talking to people about these things. It's ah almost forgot that he like, you know, led the, let me, let me look at this real quick. Like, led the sports media program, you know, and the integrated media lab at Fairfield University. I mean, the dude had like an academic job where he taught people. So I learned a lot about the ways he was a teacher. He didn't like sitting at a desk. Like he preferred kind of standing and walking around and they're the conversational ah nature of maybe not just sitting down and cracking a book, but more like, all right, let's ah I'm going to walk around and let's all kind of be involved. Just a ton of stuff like that that's that's only really, really interesting when somebody is gone, I think.
01:06:05
Speaker
Oh, for sure. And then like through the the podcast itself and then what's curated for this book, oftentimes, as much as a question is being ah directed at a guest to unpack some information, the question reveals just as much about the interviewer as it might as it does as as the interviewer hopes to get out of the interviewee. Obviously, I wasn't looking at it as an assignment. It was more like, this is something I really want to personally do. And I want to, I want to commemorate him somehow. This was not an easy piece to undertake. I mean, he hadn't been gone that long. And to talk to Alyssa was, I didn't even know how to do it yet. Still at 45.
01:06:51
Speaker
After interviewing all manner of people all throughout the year since I was in my 20s and they had gone through crazy shit and interviewing people who had died and being around trauma and it's still at this point in my career that was a really hard interview both to think about to kind of figure out what I wanted to know and you always kind of follow up with people when you have more questions just the act of kind of emailing her and being like, Oh, I forgot to ask about this. And it was something like when you said he kept his water bottle, you know, was it his left side or his right side? And it's like, my God, that sounds
01:07:29
Speaker
that sounds ridiculous and i hope she isn't offended that i really wanted to know that stupid little piece of thing you know what i mean yeah well i think it was what's kind of crazy is if she didn't already know and maybe she did but you asking that kind of detail that granularity is what great narrative reporters and narrative journalists do and in a sense it's it's also an entree into the way Matt's brain worked because that's the kind of detail that mattered to him and if it mattered to him by extension it probably matters to her having done this for a while now obviously I don't feel like I've learned everything under the Sun it's a it's it's a constant you're you're constantly learning new things
01:08:14
Speaker
hold where was i going ah Well, it kind of echoes what ah what Walt Harrington wrote to you of just like you have to grow up to write grown-up stories and You at 23. There's no way you could take on something of this nature, but you at 45 Dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of long stories hundreds of other reports It's just like it's a it's it's the lifetime of a body of work that gives you the confidence and the gravitas and the heft to be able to
01:08:46
Speaker
you know, pull off something of this nature and stick the landing and and honor a peer. Yes. um But you know, what is funny about that is that when I was in my early 20s, I was confident that I could, i and I was wrong probably, but that I had the kind of stuff to no matter if I had not experienced anybody dying, which comes later on, um you know i could I could write about it. And I remember I interviewed, um I did a long story about a woman who transitioned. I was writing about her transition. Obviously she had been Jim in her previous life and had recently transitioned. um This was a woman named Shelly in her early fifties.
01:09:38
Speaker
And she let me write about her life, and I was 23 years old, and I spent months and months and months with her about kind of, you know, obviously 2004 was different than it is now, but to me it it sort of encapsulates, it's still a story about kind of somebody's taking their life into their own hands and and sort of, um she she knew that, you know She had been lying to herself for her whole life and this is who she was, Shelly. She let this 23-year-old kid hang out with her for months and months and months. and I remember doing that piece. There was no time when I was like, I'm not ready for that. It was stupid. You know what i mean like you have to kind of think that you can do it. you know Even now, i
01:10:25
Speaker
I might've been even more, back then I might've been even more confident than I am now because I had nothing to compare it to. I had no career to compare it to. I could do anything. And now, you know, things have changed a little bit and kind of the nature of stories that I want to do or the things I might pick. But back then, every story had to be like, something had to be, the tension had to be high and the stakes had to be high. Yeah, in a different way, the stakes are high for this too, being able to honor his body of work and his life in a way that's gonna live at the back of this book for University Press, so it'll be in print forever. So in that sense, it's kind of an immortal text. God, I didn't think about that until you just said it. Yes, I didn't think it's always gonna be there.
01:11:18
Speaker
I, you know, I worked on it hard enough to where subconsciously, I'm sure I was sort of thinking about that, but I really treated him as I would have treated anybody. And just, it's this strange thinking in the back of your mind that you know this person and you're kind of wondering what they would have thought about this, or is this good enough? Did it honor him in a, in a way that, you know, that was kind to him and honored who he was, but also he probably wouldn't have liked it if it was like too glowing. You know what I mean? Like I also learned that about him. Like he, he was realistic and like, you know, didn't like fluff and I wanted it to be real. You know what I mean?
01:12:00
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, man. Well, as a I want to be mindful of your time here and as we as I bring these conversations down for a landing, I always love asking the guests for a recommendation for the listeners out there. So, you know, as we bring our conversation down for a landing here, Justin, I would just extend that to you. yeah What would you recommend out there that you're excited about the to share with people? I honestly, if this is, if if other reporters are listening to this, I just got a leather Clayton and Croom like binder for my notebooks. And it has my initial, you can get your initials on it, um but it allows you to put a pin inside of it.
01:12:41
Speaker
And it allows you to snugly secure your notebook in there. So sort of instead of, and like for 20 years, you know, reaching in my pocket and pulling out a raggedy ass notebook, the last two reporting trips I've been on, I pull out this like tiny little leather booklet. You can't really see the notebook inside. And I feel like it makes me look way cooler. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. I'm a notebook nerd. Love them. I'm my favorite right now is ah field notes heavy duty. It's about the size of a smartphone. It's got double ring ah so you can really flip the pages and that they don't get stuck and it's got a real nice year. Yeah.
01:13:24
Speaker
Yeah, the real heavy chipboard is important to me. um And the Blackwing reporter notebook is pretty good too. A little flimsy, but okay. And then if it's raining, you need to write his reign. But ah aside from that, yep but yeah, but notebooks, I can geek out all day on notebooks. But I but i love that, man. That's a- I actually, that's kind of, I actually do have another one. If you want to use it, I'll be very quick. Um, I have been playing a game. Uh, I would, I technically wouldn't call myself a gamer, but I am enough to where I've written a few like narrative stories in some way inspired by video games. Um, yeah and I'm working on a project right now. My, my dear roommate from college, one of them has ALS and one of the ways that we are.
01:14:11
Speaker
First of all, like we're, you know, we're, we're on a text thread with my other roommate, but one of the ways that we're supporting him is by playing video games together and not exactly online, but we're all playing the exact same game at the same time. The game that we're playing right now is called animal well, uh, animal W E L L. And I recommend it for anybody who, um, hasn't even played video games and forever or hasn't. It's a very simple, beautiful little game where you're a creature. um exploring this kind of otherworldly territory in search of four flames. And the the game is based on, it's like a little novel, the game is based on secrets and there are no there's no talking, there's only animal sounds and secrets and you have to find these little objects.
01:15:02
Speaker
to help you get past like a dog or you Google animal. Well, when we get off here or yeah it's YouTube, video it's a magical little experience that right now, uh, hopefully for yeah as part of a much longer project, I'm kind of experiencing this little game right now, uh, at the same time as my friends. And I'm really enjoying it. I think about it all the time and, um, it's a, it's a really beautiful little game. Oh, that's wonderful. Well, well Justin, i this is I'm so glad we finally got the talk on the mics here just ah about some craft and, of course, about ah yeah Matt's legacy and his book, Stories Can Save Us. um So just thanks for hopping on the show. And I look forward to this being hopefully being the first of many conversations we have going down the road. ah Brendan, I can't thank you enough. i am I am sorry that I misspelled your name the other day in a rush. um But dude, um
01:15:56
Speaker
Thank you so much for doing this and it is my pleasure and I can't thank you enough. I really appreciate you doing it.
01:16:09
Speaker
Awesome. Yes. That was cool, right? I thought so. And if you didn't, and know we'll we'll try again. We'll do it again. Thanks to Justin for being the ambassador for Matt's books. Stories can save us. And thanks to Seth Wickersham, too. He was instrumental in getting this book published. And Seth will be on the show next year, I believe. He's got a book coming out about NFL quarterbacks.
01:16:38
Speaker
Yeah, should it should be a good one. It will be a good one. Seth wrote my single favorite long form profile um about YA Tittle, the New York Giants quarterback of of your, of lore. In any case, um my favorite piece, look it up. It's great. All right, Justin brought up ah in this interview a little bit and it comes up a lot when you'll hear my conversation with ah Darcy Frey, author of The Masterpiece, The Last Shot. ah But it's this idea of using a recorder ah versus merely using a notebook to take down your quotes and your dialogue and etc, etc. Most people
01:17:28
Speaker
use a recorder darcy when he was reporting for the last shot though he could have used a record he did not which will be uh... it's a really rich part of that conversation i can't wait for that to come out probably sometime in july it's the great debate among reporters and i've had the conversation a bit over the years on the show uh... but for many there's no argument use the recorder it captures everything verbatim sure it's a bitch to transcribe even if you use a service like otter But at least you didn't miss anything. You don't have to worry about not being able to read your nasty penmanship when you're like, oh crap, that was a good thing he said or she said and I can't, I can't read it. So it's gone. If someone is recounting dialogue, you get all the tasty bits.
01:18:20
Speaker
And yet, because the recorder doesn't filter, it can kind of feel lazy. And this is john that's John McPhee's argument against him, is that it's it's not slight. the The recorder can be off-putting to people. It can feel
Reflection on Journalism Methods and Podcast Future
01:18:35
Speaker
intrusive. To put a machine between you and another person feels invasive. or impersonal. Taking out a recorder often is awkward and clunky. Recorders require batteries. It could break. You could drop your recorder on the ground. You could step on it. You could drive over it. You could drop it into a ah vessel of water.
01:19:00
Speaker
You can imagine what kind of vessel that could be, it'd be it a toilet or a pitcher of beer. And notebooks don't die. The files don't get corrupted, maybe by your own penmanship, but maybe that's a price willing to pay. Scribbling at times means you don't get every single word down like the recorder. In fact, you lose a lot because you can't keep pace. Or your handwriting is such you can't read what you wrote down. someone could be talking and you're kind of like scribbling down, you're scribbling down sentence one as they're saying two and three and you're trying to, and they keep going and you're trying to keep pace. And naturally you slow down. So yeah so in a sense, you kind of have to be a bit assertive. Maybe if they were saying really good stuff, you'd be like, oh, just say, but hold on just a second, I need to get this down.
01:19:53
Speaker
But sometimes with a recorder, you don't have to interrupt them. You can just let them go. Some of the best features I've ever written were just notebook and pencil. It's old school. I feel more connected to the material when I carry nothing but a notebook and a pouch of sharp pencils. Yeah, I conducted an interview just the other day for the Prefontaine book with a sports psychologist. And i I did it just a notebook. What I found is that reporting this nature means that what I scribble down is the sticky stuff. It's what is good, you know, without the filler.
01:20:33
Speaker
You know, you just naturally filter things out. You know, you go back a little later and you fill in the gaps while your memory is fresh and boom, there you go. Then you can go type it out, type it up. And you have these prime cuts from the conversation that naturally shook away a lot of the, a lot of the junk. you naturally declutter a conversation just by the very nature of the tools at hand. yeah I conducted 99.9% of my book research with a recorder. And even when I uploaded those files to Otter, it was still a mess to clean up, took forever still. Plus, I didn't feel as connected to the conversation as odd as that sounds. like I intently listened, of course, but the passive nature of a recorder felt, well,
01:21:25
Speaker
passive like I was just along for the ride instead of driving. You know, that said, there are dozens of conversations I had with sources that I'm so glad that I had the recordings because the details were so vibrant that I wouldn't want to miss a single word. I also have this romantic ideal when it comes to reporting of being armed only with a writing implement and a notebook. It allows the writer to kind of blend in more. you know You don't have to start and stop the recording. You don't have to carry extra batteries. You don't have to worry about the thing breaking you know with hours worth of tape. You're too lazy to dump.
01:22:03
Speaker
But as I already said, i'm I'm more willing to lose some information if it means I feel more connected to my material and my reporting. And that's this the indisputable feeling I experience when I issue the recorder and trust in my note-taking. The dead leaves naturally shake themselves out. I always go back and forth on this and and maybe there are situations where you have to use a recorder or should use a recorder. ah But when it becomes a crutch, if it makes you lazy, maybe try a low stakes piece and see what happens.
01:22:39
Speaker
Now, for many reporters, we often rely too much on bloated quotes anyway. So the verbatim nature of quoting sources should more often than not be paraphrased in the writer's words, and the notebook kind of does that for you. You know, with so much tech around us, going to something that's tried and true, analog in nature, and far more human, I don't know. I really can't recommend it enough. So. that's okay That's kind of where I stand on this. So I think I'm going to just and put the recorder in the drawer for a while. anna and And trust in my notebook scales, man. So stay wild. See you in efforts. And if you can't do interviews, see ya.
01:24:00
Speaker
you