OPINION: The pain of trimming the fat

I’ve been working at the CNA for a little over two years now, and I’ve written more stories than I can count. Over that time, there’s been details I could include in stories that I’ve, unfortunately, had to leave out.

For example, one of my stories in our Progress Report on Friday, was about SWCC transportation coordinator and stand-up comedian Dante Powell. He’s an incredibly sincere and honest person who can talk about things like ego and expectations without seeming pompous or overimportant.

Part of our conversation drifted to talking about former NBA player and coach Willis Reed, who grew up in Powell’s hometown of Bernice, Louisiana. How Reed inspired Powell is, in my opinion, pretty interesting.

Reed, who grew up in a segregated south where his family had to find a place for him to receive a proper education, has the type of story which makes a hometown hero. Someone who would return and give away backpacks with the New Jersey Nets logo (the team he coached in 1988-89 and was senior vice president from 1989-2004) after becoming an entertainer and household name.

Powell explained what it was like to meet someone so successful like this, and how he could relate to something which could drive him for years to come.

“You go, ‘Oh, I know I’m never going to be an NBA Hall of Famer,’ because you meet him and he’s like 6′10″ and you’re like, ‘Oh, that explains a lot.’” Powell said. “But then I went, ‘Well, yeah, he’s 6′10”, but I’ve seen how hard people laugh when I get a joke off.’ [Seeing him,] it makes the things that seem crazy and unattainable very much attainable.”

Unfortunately, due to the nature of having a limited amount of space on the page, this portion of the interview didn’t get used in the actual article.

While it was one of my personal highlights in the interview, I had to justify whether a mass audience would find it as valuable as I did. And, unfortunately due to limited space, it was not as important as everything else I had written.

That’s the pain many writers feel when having to cut for length or knowing what’s interesting to them won’t always be interesting to an audience. Part of this job is translating an interview into something digestible, and that means figuring out what the proper portion size is.

One of my personal difficulties is trying to preserve the personality of the subject I’m interviewing. Are they funny? Is there a quote I can use to showcase that? Do they embody leadership; how can I portray that? There are several judgement calls that need to be made before something goes to print.

I’m guilty of extending interviews far longer than usable because I like talking with people. I’m an incredibly boring person to meet outside my job, but when I get to talk to people in an extended conversation about what they’re passionate about, I feed off that energy like a four-eyed vampire.

Yet, the nature of translation means removing as much of myself from my writing as possible. Objectivity has always been a pillar of good journalism, and the irony is that journalists, no matter how good their writing is, have to essentially remain invisible and let the information speak for itself.

So, there is real sadness in cutting something which I find personally interesting or valuable. That conversation still occurred and that information is likely to be retained in my own head, but I wish I could share truly everything.

Here at the CNA, we joke about how the Iowa Newspaper Association has a category for Best Podcast. In our specific division (based on the number of subscribers), we would be the first to make a podcast and have a guarantee win every year.

If we were to make a podcast, for real though, I think it might be the best way to preserve some of these interesting conversations. Those tangents wouldn’t be lost, and we can showcase the personality of our subjects even more.

The logistics are all over the place and there’s no way to guarantee a consistent schedule, but as someone who really does appreciate the time that people have and what they’re passionate in talking about, I don’t think it’s entirely crazy to think about a podcast.

But, for now, what we, myself and everyone else in this extremely talented newsroom, will give you are quality stories, interesting conversations and the type of local news you can only get from dedicated reporters like us.