A stroke of happenstance while cruising the usual sites led yesterday morning to an impressive piece of writing. My question was, is it an impressive piece of reporting? That turns out to be yes. Here also is an example that, sometimes, an assignment that seems to be falling apart turns out to be doing the reporter (if not the sources) a favor. More on that in a moment. First take in this evocative, melancholy, uplifting, woeful tale of dedication, war, nature, science, and resilience:
- The Crux (Discover Mag-hosted blog) Kenneth Miller: Researcher Studying Endangered Elephants Flees Central African Republic; The story starts slightly ambiguously, propelled by a first sentence rich in immediate, mysterious peril. The border guards, wary of advancing rebels, fired their guns in the air as three motorized skiffs approached along the Sangha River in the late March night.
It'd be hard to stop there. Of course, as those of our readers who already went through the story will likely agree, the rest is worth it. Reporter Miller is a veteran (as his website indicates). He has included science on his palette for more than a decade. His tale at The Crux relates the predicament of forest elephants, and by extension wildlife in general, when they live in a country that is not only poor but becomes desperate and riven by violence.
He has a heroic protagonist, a wildlife biologist named Andrea Turkalo. He has pertinent statistics and the sort of color the gives a story its muscle. The color is second-hand for, while Miller has traveled widely on assignment, this one was via after-the-fact interviews. By the way, sometimes that is an advantage. Remote reporting makes it easier to get to the point succinctly. Go to some exciting place for a few weeks, especially on somebody's else's dime, and a typical dynamic sets in. One is likely to be compelled to write really long, what with all that wonderful stuff in the recordings, notes, documents, and photos filling the travel bags and attachments e-mailed to oneself. Still better to be there. But it is not always all bad to miss the trip.
Not being sure of this story's provenance, Your tracker found Miller's website as well as email address and after an introduction put this to him:
Your piece strikes me not only as good journalism, which one would expect from a person of your experience, but a good example of bona fide reporting appearing strictly as a blog. But I don't know how you put it together, whether you contacted Turkalo and got the statements attributed to her first-hand (ie own-ear), and what led you to do the story. I am always on the lookout for good looking stories that upon inspection stem, quotes and all, from press releases or other reporters' work. Happy to see that nothing like that comes up however, after a routine search, in this case. I do see that WCS [World Conservation Society] follows the poaching and conservation issue in CAR [Central African Republic] closely, and that its president has written recently on the issue but not nearly with the punch and detail that your article today has.
He replied late yesterday afternoon. Indeed, he wrote, the reporting of the exciting part is all his including own-ear quotes.
It also turns out that the story spent more than a year in fitful gestation. He has been interested in his target's work for some time. Early last year he pitched a story on her to Discover. Yes, an editor said. He quickly did two interviews with her while she was visiting her US home university, Cornell. He filed a draft in August. Then, uh oh. Discover moved its offices from NY City to Waukesha, Wisconsin. It had to replace almost the whole staff. His draft went into the not-now bin. Finally, two months ago, one of the new editors called to ask for an update and freshener. He tried fruitlessly to reach his source in Africa. Cell phone calls went nowhere, e-mails went unanswered. He finally called a colleague of hers in England. "Haven't you heard? There's been a coup in the Central African Republic and she had to leave. I think she's in Congo now. The situation is disastrous." (One bets he felt a bit chagrined not to have heard that coup business).
Weeks more went by as he tried to reach her again. Late last month she returned to the US. Miller got his interview. Just guessing here I am, but one expects as she unrolled her tale he felt not only relief that she got out okay, but excitement that his story just got a lot more readable. It hence will have more impact and do more to raise the profile of the danger to some of Africa's largest remaining populations of forest elephants. In Grist below are links to the Wildlife Conservation Society (based at the Bronx Zoo and a backer of the elephant research). It too is freighted with disturbing as well as hope-inspiring information. But it has nothing like the narrative drive that this blog post possesses.
The assignment for a full profile in the print magazine stands. Miller hopes to have it wrapped up and to see it in print in the next few months.
Grist for the Mill :
via WCS site on forest elephants in Central Africa, Huffington Post – Cristian Samper (CEO, WCS): Gabon, Central African Republic Achieve Agreement to Protect Critical elephant Population ; It appears that Prof. Turkalo will be returning to her elephants. Most of them, anyway. Things looking up. Or is it meet the new boss same as the old boss time?
Leave a Reply