This might be my most favorite of your columns since the one about being a Jefferson descendant. It touches something I've come to call "feminist journalism," though it isn't exclusive to feminists and indeed predates the modern feminist movement. The realization that "objectivity" doesn't exist. That journalism is ipso facto exploitation -- journalists come into other people's lives and take those people's truths out of context for an audience that usually doesn't include them -- but that sometimes justice, humanity, illumination, truth, any or all of those things, comes out of it. Maybe being able to write the story of how you got the story is what it's really all about. The heart of it anyway. This is a keeper. Thank you.
Many years ago Harry Reasoner did a special class for rhetoric grad students before a speech he gave about media to a large paying audience. He was asked the obligatory question about objectivity. He said of course objectivity was an ideal, a moving target, perhaps an impossibility. He then looked at each one of us and said that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aim for objectivity in everything we wrote. Taking someone’s “truth” out of context isn’t something anyone should ever do.
Lucian, yours is the one email in my in-box that I never delete before reading. Your essays always evoke an emotional response and I can almost smell the places you describe. In this era of stale “journalism”, you are a breath of pure oxygen.
I enjoy the hell out of you essays. I look forward to them and really enjoy your stories from your early days as a writer. Happy new year to you and your family. Peace.
A judge smuggled me into juvenile court. A young black woman confessed she had thrown her baby out the window. It was gold, tarnished gold, and the story won a Bar Association prize.
Guilt? Nah, because after the journalism is printed and distributed and we all had what we needed to know about that experience at the time we are left with your history, a recorded first person account, of what the possibilities were, what life was like for women in that position in that place at that time.
a wonderful column with a lot of "inside stuff" that people who want to write about some aspect of reality need to know. everything about it makes me nostalgic. between about 1961 through say, sometime in the middle of that decade, I spent a lot of time doing things in midtown (Sam Goody being a prime attraction), beginning to discover what an outer borough kid is supposed to know about "downtown." I can remember every one of these things like photograph's, the same way I can still taste a Tad's steak or mac and cheese (35 cents) at the automat. there were a bunch of Tie City stores, but all the ties were hideous. lots of box candy stores and more of those dance places ('30's Warner Bros movies always refer to them as "clip joints") than just The Tango Palace, but that one had the best name. I remember an old girlfriend whose best poem ended with her memory of going places with her mother as a kid and one of them being (or her remembering seeing) "The Tango Palace."
but another thing strikes me about the piece that's an even more intense source of nostalgia, and that's the extent to which journalism seems to have less and less of a sense that these sorts of features are one of the big reasons people like newspapers of whatever kind. there are, needless to say, many fewer venues. the copy of The Village Voice that was one of the several most important weekly things which EVERYONE read...not there. when I talk about nyc to younger people, one of the things I like to stress is how really inexpensive pretty much all of whatever good stuff there was could be, if you knew the least bit about the city. if you wanted to learn something (anything), you could immerse yourself in all kinds of information about that thing. I will maintain to y dying breath that, whatever its unique conveniences, the internet can never offer a "researcher" the kind of serendipity that can occur because of the simple physical presence of books to other books. just the simple fact of having a real conversation with a real person is always radically altered when the seeker takes out his or her tape recorder, cell phone or whatever. once you're "recording" the nature of the relationship shifts enough to become the subject itself. but what about this great nyc tradition of roving feature people risking the emotional exposure of an actual existential encounter (the sort of encounter this old piece describes so elegantly) without any intervening technology? it could be that I'm just misinformed or that my information sources are just too restricted, but I read a lot of the same stuff people here read and I'm not finding too many of these guys who made journalism look like the great profession it was when it was most itself. and still can be. or maybe my sense of what is "most itself" is flat out wrong. my own professional brushes with real journalism were few and too far between. but I remember nyc exactly as it was then, and remember Lucian's column every week and it was as NECESSARY as anything else, this being a really nice example of "why.".
My writing students are going to read this column, Lucian. For them it will be gold. For me it was too. Happy New Year to you and Tracy. I sure would love to see y’all in 2022.
My story has a similar dimension, but with a twist to it. I was in private law practice at the time, and from time to time I would need to subpoena a witness for a trial that my client was participating in. Subpoenas are compulsory process, and I was acutely aware of the imposition that I was making on people had information to relate to the presiding judge at the trial. When I call people to testify under subpoena, I made it a point to thank them for showing up, and I would apologize to them for intruding on their privacy and on their time. They had a story to tell, and I needed to get that story before the court. I don't know how many lawyers did that, going out of my way to treat trial witnesses with respect and consideration. They had already given me the evidence I needed; I just needed to put it on the trial record. The fact that I had the legal power to use compulsory process made it incumbent on me to bend over backwards and letting those witnesses know how much I and my client appreciated their willingness to come forward and offer their testimony in a case in which they had no stake in the outcome. I have to believe that other trial lawyers do the same thing; at least the smart ones ought to be doing that. Lawyers have a bad enough reputation as it is that I wanted nothing to do with adding to that frame of mind. It's not that I would ever see these people again; and in fact I would not. But it certainly has a lot to do with implicitly inducing a fact witness to resolve whatever lapses of memory or doubts about what they saw in my favor. What goes around comes around.
Super !!! Reminds me of the night I arrived in Manhattan for an 18-hour whirlwind visit (age 19) after a flight from Seattle after a hard month of construction labor and got parked at the Iroquois hotel (no lock on the door). It would be cool to read a few of your rock star interviews or memories.
This might be my most favorite of your columns since the one about being a Jefferson descendant. It touches something I've come to call "feminist journalism," though it isn't exclusive to feminists and indeed predates the modern feminist movement. The realization that "objectivity" doesn't exist. That journalism is ipso facto exploitation -- journalists come into other people's lives and take those people's truths out of context for an audience that usually doesn't include them -- but that sometimes justice, humanity, illumination, truth, any or all of those things, comes out of it. Maybe being able to write the story of how you got the story is what it's really all about. The heart of it anyway. This is a keeper. Thank you.
Many years ago Harry Reasoner did a special class for rhetoric grad students before a speech he gave about media to a large paying audience. He was asked the obligatory question about objectivity. He said of course objectivity was an ideal, a moving target, perhaps an impossibility. He then looked at each one of us and said that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aim for objectivity in everything we wrote. Taking someone’s “truth” out of context isn’t something anyone should ever do.
Lucian, yours is the one email in my in-box that I never delete before reading. Your essays always evoke an emotional response and I can almost smell the places you describe. In this era of stale “journalism”, you are a breath of pure oxygen.
What a great story. Being a reporter isn’t just about asking questions. It’s about listening and catching the unexpected answer.
You did catch gold
I enjoy the hell out of you essays. I look forward to them and really enjoy your stories from your early days as a writer. Happy new year to you and your family. Peace.
A judge smuggled me into juvenile court. A young black woman confessed she had thrown her baby out the window. It was gold, tarnished gold, and the story won a Bar Association prize.
Guilt? Nah, because after the journalism is printed and distributed and we all had what we needed to know about that experience at the time we are left with your history, a recorded first person account, of what the possibilities were, what life was like for women in that position in that place at that time.
Lovely article, Lucien. I am a new subscriber and I appreciate you so much!
I wonder if the people you wrote about saw it… ?
a wonderful column with a lot of "inside stuff" that people who want to write about some aspect of reality need to know. everything about it makes me nostalgic. between about 1961 through say, sometime in the middle of that decade, I spent a lot of time doing things in midtown (Sam Goody being a prime attraction), beginning to discover what an outer borough kid is supposed to know about "downtown." I can remember every one of these things like photograph's, the same way I can still taste a Tad's steak or mac and cheese (35 cents) at the automat. there were a bunch of Tie City stores, but all the ties were hideous. lots of box candy stores and more of those dance places ('30's Warner Bros movies always refer to them as "clip joints") than just The Tango Palace, but that one had the best name. I remember an old girlfriend whose best poem ended with her memory of going places with her mother as a kid and one of them being (or her remembering seeing) "The Tango Palace."
but another thing strikes me about the piece that's an even more intense source of nostalgia, and that's the extent to which journalism seems to have less and less of a sense that these sorts of features are one of the big reasons people like newspapers of whatever kind. there are, needless to say, many fewer venues. the copy of The Village Voice that was one of the several most important weekly things which EVERYONE read...not there. when I talk about nyc to younger people, one of the things I like to stress is how really inexpensive pretty much all of whatever good stuff there was could be, if you knew the least bit about the city. if you wanted to learn something (anything), you could immerse yourself in all kinds of information about that thing. I will maintain to y dying breath that, whatever its unique conveniences, the internet can never offer a "researcher" the kind of serendipity that can occur because of the simple physical presence of books to other books. just the simple fact of having a real conversation with a real person is always radically altered when the seeker takes out his or her tape recorder, cell phone or whatever. once you're "recording" the nature of the relationship shifts enough to become the subject itself. but what about this great nyc tradition of roving feature people risking the emotional exposure of an actual existential encounter (the sort of encounter this old piece describes so elegantly) without any intervening technology? it could be that I'm just misinformed or that my information sources are just too restricted, but I read a lot of the same stuff people here read and I'm not finding too many of these guys who made journalism look like the great profession it was when it was most itself. and still can be. or maybe my sense of what is "most itself" is flat out wrong. my own professional brushes with real journalism were few and too far between. but I remember nyc exactly as it was then, and remember Lucian's column every week and it was as NECESSARY as anything else, this being a really nice example of "why.".
I love this Lucian. I can smell the Tango Palace. I worked somewhere like that.
Ok you got me, you really got me. Times Sq late '60s, mid '70s I was there
Truth, as always.
Thanks, a good story about life!
My writing students are going to read this column, Lucian. For them it will be gold. For me it was too. Happy New Year to you and Tracy. I sure would love to see y’all in 2022.
Glad to have been of service!
My story has a similar dimension, but with a twist to it. I was in private law practice at the time, and from time to time I would need to subpoena a witness for a trial that my client was participating in. Subpoenas are compulsory process, and I was acutely aware of the imposition that I was making on people had information to relate to the presiding judge at the trial. When I call people to testify under subpoena, I made it a point to thank them for showing up, and I would apologize to them for intruding on their privacy and on their time. They had a story to tell, and I needed to get that story before the court. I don't know how many lawyers did that, going out of my way to treat trial witnesses with respect and consideration. They had already given me the evidence I needed; I just needed to put it on the trial record. The fact that I had the legal power to use compulsory process made it incumbent on me to bend over backwards and letting those witnesses know how much I and my client appreciated their willingness to come forward and offer their testimony in a case in which they had no stake in the outcome. I have to believe that other trial lawyers do the same thing; at least the smart ones ought to be doing that. Lawyers have a bad enough reputation as it is that I wanted nothing to do with adding to that frame of mind. It's not that I would ever see these people again; and in fact I would not. But it certainly has a lot to do with implicitly inducing a fact witness to resolve whatever lapses of memory or doubts about what they saw in my favor. What goes around comes around.
Super !!! Reminds me of the night I arrived in Manhattan for an 18-hour whirlwind visit (age 19) after a flight from Seattle after a hard month of construction labor and got parked at the Iroquois hotel (no lock on the door). It would be cool to read a few of your rock star interviews or memories.