Behind the News, The Water Cooler
‘A Good, Old-Fashioned Human Triumph’
G. Wayne Miller of the Providence Journal on devoting an entire year of reporting to “an ordinary person who has done some extraordinary things.”
By Gal Beckerman Fri 6 Oct 2006 04:02 PMThe Providence Journal has always had a reputation as a newspaper that values narrative and gives space to long-form journalism that tells stories rather than simply reporting what happened yesterday. This kind of writing has, of course, started disappearing from newspapers, and not just from the Journal. It was reassuring, then, to read G. Wayne Miller’s 12-part series that appeared over the past two weeks in the Rhode Island paper, telling the remarkable story of Frank Beazley. Abandoned by his unwed mother, sent to orphanages and foster homes, and then tragically paralyzed at the age of 38 and left to spend the rest of his days in the care of a local institution, Beazley nevertheless is a figure of humbling resilience. He has become an acclaimed painter, a poet, and an eloquent advocate for the rights of the handicapped. In Miller’s telling, Beazley’s life is one filled with human drama and, surprisingly, enough suspense to keep readers craving for the next installment in this compelling piece of reportage and storytelling.
Gal Beckerman: You first met Frank in 1992.
G. Wayne Miller: I had actually met him prior to that. He had testified at a hearing or two [on the rights of the handicapped] that I had covered as a beat reporter, almost twenty years ago. But I didn’t connect to him as a person, as an individual, until 1992. At that time, we had a feature that ran in the paper on Christmas called “Good Folks.” And the task for the reporters was to find one good person and write a brief story. I went out and interviewed him and that’s when he told me that all he had ever wanted for Christmas was for his mother to call him “son.”
I got a little bit of the back-story then. Didn’t much think about it afterwards. And then a year ago, summer of 2005, I was casting about for another series. I had always been intrigued by the hospital where he lived. It had been a tuberculosis sanitarium established a hundred years ago. When I got to thinking about what I wanted to do next, I was drawn to it. So I drove up there, reintroduced myself to Frank and talked to the people there and just sort of brainstormed. Once I got to talking with him, I found out about him being abandoned, about the orphanage, the foster home, and then I found out he had some of the records. I realized that this was a special story, and that we had more than just memories. The more I dug into it the more interested I got. The series is the result of a year’s work.
GB: And then what was the process of getting the story from him. Was he forthcoming? Was this something he wanted to do?
GWM: He did. I connected to him on a basic human level. He’s a very decent, good guy. He was very forthcoming. I’ve done enough of this kind of work that I’m very suspect of memory. I don’t like building a piece like this entirely on memory. I won’t write that kind of a piece. But his memory, with a few exceptions, always checked out, down to the names of the nuns. So that impressed me, too. And the story was compelling too, as he told it. I would interview him and then I would pursue records and other people who might have memories of him. He gave me access to his entire medical records at the hospital, which goes back almost forty years and covers thousands and thousands of pages.
GB: It’s interesting what you are saying about the fallibility of memory because I noticed that you chose not to have retrospective quotes, not to quote him talking about his memories.
GWM: I find those clunky. They get in the way. Because I’d like to tell a story the way a novel would run. I didn’t use quotation marks unless it came from a medical record or something I witnessed in my time with him. He would tell me about conversations that he had decades ago and I was convinced that he was telling the truth, but I wasn’t there, I hadn’t heard the words myself.
GB: That’s an interesting ethic, because a lot of writers do quote without having been there, when it’s impossible to verify. What do you think it is about your paper that allows you a whole year to write this gargantuan series about a man who is basically a regular person, not a celebrity or a world leader?
GWM: The candid answer is that this newspaper, along with a few other newspapers, used to do a lot more of this type of work. In the case of the Journal it’s had a very strong writer’s tradition that precedes my arrival there. But unfortunately with belt-tightening and cost cutting there aren’t too many of us left at the Journal doing it.
GB: Or at all.
GWM: Or at all. I haven’t done any great canvassing or anything, but certainly that is my perception as well. It was a huge investment of the paper’s resources. I did almost nothing else for a year. We had a photographer, who wasn’t full time on it, but still devoted quite a bit of time. To put this whole thing together involves a big commitment of resources and manpower.
GB: When I see a series like this, I think how unfortunate that there isn’t more of this in newspapers, because it could be one of the answers to the question of what newspapers can provide that other media can’t. I wonder if you have a bigger idea of why this long-form narrative journalism is dying. Are people not interested in reading something like this anymore?
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